fbpx

Category: Addiction/Substance Misuse

A Dance with the Devil. My son’s decades-long battle with addiction and recovery.

by Connie

Connie

New Year’s Day 2020…my cell phone rings, I recognize the number. It is our son, who has been in an addiction spiral for the past eight months. 

“Mom, if I don’t get out of Richmond I am going to die.”

Another New Year starting with the same message for the past 15 years. With each request, rehab, and relapse my husband and I had grown weary from the emotional, financial, and spiritual drain this disease had inflicted upon our family. We had learned detachment, setting boundaries, quit enabling, and threw out tough love methods.

We … Read more...

Town Hall on Addiction Recovery

As board members for 2 End the Stigma, many of us attended this town hall on addiction recovery with our state and local representatives and Ryan Hampton a recovery advocate, to talk about addiction and where the gaps are.

So what are we lacking right now for addiction recovery? Sheriff Leonard says transportation. It’s hard to get to your job when you have $20k worth of fines on your record and no way to pay them off. And in Chesterfield County where this was taking place, there is no public transportation system, leaving those in recovery struggling to make … Read more...

What is 710 day?

by Laura Stack, Founder Johnny’s Ambassadors

710 day dabs

Make sure you know where your teenagers are at 7:10 PM on July 10.

Why? Because 710 is Dab Day. Turned upside down, the digits 710 spell “OIL.”

Why? Because participants are high on cannabis oil, which is one type of high-potency marijuana. While 420 Day celebrates marijuana in general, 710 Day celebrates the high-potency extracts called “dabs.” At 7:10 PM, users will celebrate the holiday with a dab.

What is a dab? Dabbing involves extracting the THC (the part that gets you high) from the cannabis plant (see photo). Users place a small … Read more...

Sam’s Soul Journey. A mother’s grief

by Lynda Harrison Hatcher

Lynda Harrison Hatcher, author of Mothering Addiction

At 2:37pm on a Friday in February, an unknown number lit my mobile screen. “Are you kidding? I’m not answering that,” I said melodically, as I weeded through a storage bin stuffed with an assortment of photos, many of them stuck together from years of moisture. Most would be hurled into the dumpster I’d reserved for the next three days. Early spring cleaning.

Seconds later, a text from the same area code – “That’s weird,” I said, then scanned the words: “Lynda, it’s Lissie. Sam’s friend. Could you please … Read more...

For my son’s birthday in heaven, I got a tattoo

by Kerry Rhodes

So if you know me, you know how much I disliked Taylor having tattoos. When he turned 18, he begged to get a cross on his chest with Frank Woolwine’s name on it. Frankie was his good friend who was killed in a car accident the year before.

I knew better than to think I would stop Taylor once he was 18, so I said let’s go with something small. He agreed and I paid for it for his birthday. If you give Taylor an inch, he could sometimes take a mile. So that one tattoo turned … Read more...

Video: Amanda talks about the dangers of Adderall and Suicide

This video was originally shared with me by Tara’s mother, Catherine McMahon Miles who lost her daughter Tara Marie McMahon (12/18/98-2/21/21) to depression that was complicated by an Adderall addiction which led to her suicide. Tara had been off Adderall for a year but had self-medicated her depression with it previously and she had called Adderall her “death certificate.”

In Tara’s journals, she asked her family to share her story to help others and the video was created by her best friend in college, Amanda, and originally posted on Facebook to warn others who might be thinking that Adderall … Read more...

Love and let go is the antidote to insanity

We translate a lot of these terms we hear into what we think they mean.

Love and let go to one person could mean kicking a kid out of the house due to his substance misuse. Sometimes it does come to that but that isn’t the definition of the phrase.

Love and let go to another might mean simply seeking to allow a brother to experience consequences instead of loaning money as one did in the past.

When you file through the inventory of all you’ve done due to a loved one’s addiction or mental illness, it’s natural to gravitate … Read more...

Step Away

by Bart Bright

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is bart-and-family.jpg
Kevin Bright is on the right who died of marijuana/cannabis-induced psychosis that lead to his suicide

On August 14, 2018, my son, Kevin, died by suicide. He was 29 years old. Kevin suffered from depression and cannabis-induced psychosis, (a diagnosis in the DSM-5).

Kevin told my wife and me about his cannabis use at 15

He agreed to get help. Over the next 14 years, Kevin participated in many recovery programs. He experienced periods of health and happiness while in recovery. Unfortunately, after a while, he would go back to his drug of choice, high THC cannabis. … Read more...

Stories over Stigma. Share Yours

The Central Virginia Overdose Working Group is a collaboration of stakeholders joining forces to coordinate efforts to identify gaps and develop real solutions to the overdose epidemic. These stakeholders continue to work with families and advocates to change the false narrative that substance misuse is a choice. The outdated word, drug addict, and that concept should be erased.

Substance use disorder (SUD) is a medical condition–a disease linked to biological predispositions, mental health, isolation, community negligence, recidivism, and suicide. It’s time to erase the stigma and be Silent No More when it comes to tackling substance misuse and encourage life-saving … Read more...

Overdose is not the only way those with addiction die

While overdose dominates headlines, those who struggle with the disease of addiction die from many different drug-related causes. These are just the few I know about.

Suicide

We don’t really know how many overdoses are intentional but scientists believe it could be as many as 25%. For it to be ruled a suicide, there has to be some evidence of intention such as a letter indicating it was self-inflicted. Otherwise, we don’t know. We do know that addiction itself and all the relationship, legal, health, and financial problems it creates, along with withdrawal, relapse, and even recovery can drive a … Read more...

Audio version of Diary of a Broken Mind

Voice by Lisa Williams. It took a while but the audio version of the book is out. And of course, paperback and kindle as well. Audible audiobook is on Amazon.

Audible version
Charles’ personality was so big
… Read more...

It’s the helplessness

After Charles died, helplessness and I had a come-to-Jesus moment. I couldn’t make it budge, reverse engineer it, or even make it change its mind.

It stood stubbornly in its place reminding me that I couldn’t change the outcome. That I was a victim to the emotion to which I was now facing. I didn’t want to do grief. I wanted to back out of it. But it swept me away anyway. I had no choice.

Helplessness and I first met when a loved one started using drugs and alcohol as a teen. I couldn’t stop it, change the course, … Read more...

In April 2020, my life almost came to a halt

by Jessica Donovan Amend

Sitting in my bathroom, with my then fiancé asleep in our bedroom just a few feet away, I sat with tears streaming down my face. I literally fell to my knees praying that God would help me figure this out, help me through this agony that I felt so deeply in my soul.

Now I’m not going to say that YOU need to believe in God and I’m also not going to say that I know anything for certain, but what I do know is that this night, God showed up for me. That night I … Read more...

You’ve helped me give away 63 books

It all started with Ryan. He is a young man, a student, studying in the funeral director’s track and had lost his dad. While I have donated books, it’s usually in person at events and I can’t afford to lose money on it. Buying my own books and then shipping them gets costly. But it got me to thinking.

How many who were not able to afford it right now, want it? I figured no one would be interested in gifting someone else a book or getting one. I don’t know why. And I feel awful for underestimating your generosity … Read more...

How do you help someone who doesn’t want help?

We want our loved ones to go to therapy, rehab, take their medication or do their follow-up. But many times with those who struggle with behavioral health, whether mental illness, addiction, or both, don’t always want to comply with treatment. What’s more, teens doing drugs want even less to do with healthcare because they have “all-natural” solutions to the pain they are enduring. Never mind that they move to unnatural remedies.

The point is, they don’t want to listen to you. And you may not have the relationship now to get them to accept treatment or take medication. Not because … Read more...