Kim began the process of letting go of her fear and shame and trauma. She began to blossom. Though, as I say, she had relapses after that, Kim tells me the core experience of learning to trust herself and other women at the recovery center stayed with her. Getting into recovery is a process, and rehab is an important first step, but often it can be just that. Kim had to move far away from all the “people, places, and things” that tempted her in her home state, get a good sponsor—a woman with longer recovery who advises and supports a woman who is new to recovery through the inevitable growing pains—and open up to recovery because she wanted to. Her path has been full of the ups and downs of being a young adult, plus dealing with the aftershocks of active addiction, such as paying back her debts, dealing with health issues, emotional issues, and generally needing to acquire life skills. Today, our relationship is based on truths that were painful and hard-won for both of us. It was Kim who had to make the decision to get well. I had to learn to let her.
Accepting my child was addicted was the first of several difficult steps I had to take. Later came clarity about separating the addiction from the child and learning new ways to protect both of us from her addiction. That I couldn’t fix her was one of the hardest truths I’ve ever come to terms with. But step by faltering step, it was also liberating. And it was essential in order for the healing to begin. How I wish I had known sooner how to love my addicted daughter more effectively. That is why I’ve written this book, to share a wealth of tools and tactics and information about treatment that best serves young women caught up in addiction. As parents and loved ones, let’s arm ourselves with the most effective knowledge. And, just as importantly, let’s avail ourselves of nurturing lifestyle changes. We can make the journey to peace of mind and offer the strong possibility of a healthy life to our kids. As one parent of an addict who is now in recovery, journalist Bill Moyers, said, “If your daughter came to you and said she had breast cancer, you would work out a way to have it treated. The same goes for addiction.”5
It is us parents and caregivers who are on the frontlines when our children find themselves in trouble with substances. I hope this book will offer you hope as well as useful, practical support and guidance for both you and your daughter.
Notes on Chapter One
1. Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), 19.
2. Ibid.
3. Sabrina Tavernise, “Deaths in Painkiller Overdoses Rise Sharply Among Women,” the New York Times, July 3, 2013.
4. National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), June 2012, “Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap Between Science and Practice,” http://www.casacolumbia.org/addiction-research/reports/addiction-medicine.
5. Bill Moyers, “Addiction Can Be a Disease and a Behavior,” the New York Times, April 10, 1998. William Cope Moyers is the author, with Katherine Ketcham, of Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption (New York: Viking, 2006).
Does Your Daughter Have an Addiction Problem?
“I think parents put on blinders,” confides Amy. A young woman in her early twenties, she has been off drugs for a year and a half. She describes growing up in a loving home in a stable community. Then in high school, feelings of awkwardness about herself led her to try pot, and next the readily available prescription painkillers that were hawked around the school. By the time she graduated she was snorting heroin. Since Amy managed to keep up her work and got into college, her family thought she must be okay, if a bit depressed. It wasn’t until she was arrested for possession of illegal drugs in college and faced significant jail time that they realized they had ignored a lot of troubling signs along the way.
Taking the First Steps toward Change
Will a parent see trouble ahead when they are reassured by signs of achievement, even if their daughter is withdrawn or moody or rebellious in other ways? How can we distinguish between a little experimenting, risky behavior, and abuse of alcohol or other drugs? Isn’t it a rite of passage for kids to “experiment” a little? Isn’t it usually just a phase? Many young people stick to “recreational” use at parties with their friends, and that’s as far as it goes. Some parents who may themselves have indulged in their youth don’t want to be hypocritical. They might even feel a bit nostalgic.
What you need to know: The possibility of a child’s using drugs or alcohol usually begins around puberty. For girls, this age arrives increasingly earlier, and by age thirteen, “more than twice as many girls as boys are depressed, a proportion that persists into adulthood, regardless of race or ethnicity.”1 And depression increases the risk of addiction. It could be you become concerned about signs of depression in your daughter and seek help for her from a counselor or therapist. But a depressed young woman who is using substances is more likely to hide her substance use and to be treated for depression than for her drug use, whereas a depressed young man who uses substances is more likely to get treatment for his addiction. In fact, women of all ages are less likely to be diagnosed with addiction than are men.2 Therefore, if your daughter is depressed, have her checked out by a competent physician for possible drug use. Many parents of young women using drugs I’ve talked to sent their kids to therapists. The girls were sometimes prescribed antidepressants—but their use of substances went undiagnosed.
There are, of course, many factors besides depression that drive girls to use substances. It seems parents have a different view of what motivates their children than the kids do. In one study, when asked to choose from a list of reasons why kids use drugs, most parents picked “peer pressure” or “it feels good.” But their kids mostly chose “stress.”3
Stress for girls and young women can coalesce around their body image. Lifestyle marketing bombards them with sexually charged ads that depict women as thin, thin, thin. Not long ago, the tobacco companies had tremendous power over young people’s decision to smoke. Remember Virginia Slims? That power may have been curtailed, but it’s going strong in the liquor industry. Ads infused with glamour show smiling (thin) young women sipping concoctions like the Skinnygirl Cocktail line. Or have you heard of alcopops, those cocktails on training wheels?
Illegal drugs, in turn, have won a subversive glamour of their own in America in waves of different epidemics over the centuries. I was surprised to learn the first big drug addiction epidemic occurred in the late 1800s, led by legally prescribed opiates such as laudanum, as well as patent or over-the-counter medicines that contained such additives as Coca-Cola syrup, which at that time included cocaine for a pick-you-up, marketed mostly to women to increase energy.
As Thomas Deitzler, Director of the Young Adult Program at the Caron Center for Recovery, put it to me in a conversation in 2010, “Addiction is in epidemic proportions with this generation.” Again, the vast majority of risky users and addicts start when they are teenagers; women get addicted to alcohol and other drugs more quickly than men.4 Yet they often hide their use more than young men do. “Boys learn from their earliest days on the playground, jumping at dares, that the willingness to take risks is part of what it means to be a man. For adolescent boys, alcohol and other drug use is the next step in the natural progression of risk taking . . . . Boys who drink may feel invincible, immortal, and beyond the reach of the law.”5 More often than girls, boys using substances may also seek negative attention, like being suspended or kicked out of school, getting arrested, driving too fast and having a car accident, until it becomes clear to those
