Just when you think things could not get any worse.....

Thursday May 28

Things were going really well with Our son until last night. Since his return from Carrier in March he has had two minor relapses but for the past 40 days he has been clean as a whistle (as far as we could tell). He was going to his out-patient treatment at Summit Oaks three mornings a week and to nightly NA meetings. He hasn't gone out every night and when he did he was meeting his curfew. He found a sponsor and was starting his Step work. We found him a new Psychologist that seemed to be starting to work out well. My biggest complaint was that he was not doing anything else, not working (or looking for work) and not thinking about going back to school in the fall. However, since he still is in the stages of Early Recovery that is to be expected, especially with someone with multiple issues (medically termed a dual-diagnosis) due to his addiction, ADD, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. My wife and I go every Tuesday night to a Parent Support Groupmeeting in Summit for parents of addicts, and our younger son has started to see a psychologist as well (this is effecting him as well, in ways we may not know for years).

So, things were moving along until Our son missed his curfew on Wed night and by 3am I was driving around trying to find him (or the car of the friend he was with). He eventually called me around 3:30 am to say he was arrested and that he would not be released until the judge set bail in the morning. Seems that he had 30 Percacet on him (he said he found them, we know better) that he was going to give to a friend who wanted to buy them. He was with a good friend around 11:30 or so and his friend made an illegal U-turn on Northfield road and got pulled over. The cops thought they smelled pot (there wasn't any) and that was excuse enough to search the cars and the boys, and of course they found the 30 Percacet that Our son had in a baggie on him. He was arrested and Thursday morning the Judge set bail for both boys (the driver was arrested as well, because of Our son's possession) and Our son's was $75,000. On Thursday morning (yesterday) I had to call abail-bondsman to bail Our son out, pay him a 10% fee ($7,500) that we will never get back in order to have Our son released, otherwise he would have to go to the Essex County jail until trial or we could come up with the $75,000 cash.

I believe what happened with the percacet was that Our son got a call from one of his drug 'buddies' from school and he wanted to know if Our son knew where to get some for him. Our son probably figured this would be an easy way to make a little money, had the pills dropped off (either here or left somewhere) and he was going to give them to this guy for a little cash. Of course, when this happens Our son becomes a cop magnet, and if it wasn't for his friend making an illegal u-turn (his friend had no knowledge that Our son had the pills on him) Our son would never have been caught.

By the time I was able to get Our son out it was mid-morning and we had heard back from our Attorney (My wife called him while I was at the station) and we went over to meet him. Our son has a number of very serious charges against him right now due to the fact that he had 30 Percacets on him, which implies the intent to distribute. One of the charges is a 2nd degree charge (the degrees go from 1-4 with 1 being the worst) due to the arrest being 500 feet from a school (where the boys were eventually pulled over) and this charge if he is found guilty of could give him a 5-10 year jail sentence in a state facility. Of course, our lawyer says he will be found guilty of this over his dead body and I believe him because I know how good he is (and he is, and worth every penny). After talking with the three of us (Our son crying most of the time and My wife and I barely holding it together) he asked Our son to leave the room so he could talk with us about the situationand more importantly the cost. He has ALOT of work to do for this that will include multiple visits to the prosecutors office (this is an Essex county charge now, we are no longer in a municipal court for this arrest due to the severity of it) so he can work on getting the charges downgraded to minimize or eliminate any jail time (more on that in a moment). His normal fee for this is $50,000 (I almost had a stroke) but because we have used him and his partner in the past (for Our son's other arrests), and because he knows our family and knows we are doing everything we can for Our son he told us he would cut that fee in half, which basically means for us that all of the rest of Our son's college money is going to help pay for his attorney.

When we got back home after the lawyer, Our son went to bed (he was up all night in the local jail), and we got busy on the phone to get Our son into a in-patient facility that is able to deal with a Dual-Diagnosis patient. We spoke to Summit Oaks and his psychologist, and they agreed that an long-term in-patient center was the best bet for him, and our lawyer said that this can only HELP him with Our son's case, and that he could possibly have some of the charges dismissed or the penalty being no jail time since he is in a treatment facility. We also spoke with the leader of our support group and she agreed that this was the best thing for him. Even though he has been clean for 40 days, he is still making stupid decisions and thinking that he cannot get caught doing what he was doing. He needs to get more intense treatment for his addiction and have his brain re-programmed to get a better sense of what is right and wrong. Unfortunately, there are not alot ofplaces that treat dual-diagnosis patients in NJ, PA , or NY that are within a few hours away, and that have a bed for him. We found a place in south Jersey that does, and they come highly recommended (one of the other families in our group sent one of their daughters there, so we called them and spoke to them yesterday). Our son agreed to go there (voluntarily) because he knows that this may be the only thing that keeps him out of jail.

So, today at 3pm we will drive Our son down to Keyport for his intake meetings (we do one, he does one, we all do one together) and then we will be leaving him there for up to 90 days. If all goes well, he will be allowed to step-down to a half-way house in the area there to continue his treatment and get a job, reporting back to the house each day after work. This type of a program totally removes the addict from his comfort environment that has the triggers for addiction issues (and in Our son's case not totally knowing the consequences of his actions and the possibilities of what could happen).

I thought leaving him in the Psych ward after his overdose in February was hard. I thought leaving him at Carrier Clinic in February for 10 days was hard. This is devastating. Our younger son was hysterical all night last night once he found out what was going on and was crying this morning before he went to school. My wife and I are basket cases right now but know that this is the ONLY thing we can do, and the ONLY thing that gives him a chance to not go to jail. Just when you think things are going great, just when you think things could never get worse, this happens, and this is just the worst thing (other than a devastating illness or death) that a parent can ever go through with a child. My wife and I are doing the best we can right now (we both took off of work yesterday to make our calls and arrangements) and are both working from home today since we have to leave by around 3 to take Our son to the facility. We still have alot of things to do with thisincluding calling his Probation Officer for his November DUI regarding his community service that he will no longer be able to fulfill, we have to call his NA sponsor, and have to call another NA guy that Our son was working with to run one of his weekly meetings. Then there are Our son's friends....the good ones that he has remained friends with that know his situation and have been helping us keep him on the right track.....that we have to call to let them know the situation.

This is it. This is his last chance. Short of selling our home or wiping out our 401K's there is no more money left for him. This episode is going to cost us almost $40,000 (bail-bondsman, lawyer, fines, figuring in the insurance co-pays) on top of the $12,000 we have spent on the other cases (lawyer fees and fines). While addiction IS a disease that needs to be treated like any other serious disease, he does have some control over his actions and should be able to keep himself out of trouble, which he has not been able to do. I will pay for his medical but we are done bailing him out and paying for lawyers. As hard as this will be for us, at some point he has to stand up on his own and deal with his issues. We are hoping that this is his bottom (it certainly is ours) and that things will get better from here.

Friday night, May 29

So we took him last night, and it went well. We won't be able to talk to him for about a week (he is in a black-out period, normal for a person's first entry to a place like this). It is actually a nice place, an old Victorian house right on the bay in Keyport (that is the residence) with the treatment center a few blocks away. Insurance is going to cover most of the expense. The real challenge will be afterwards because insurance does not cover a half-way house which he will need to go to afterwards and that will run about $3000 a month. A half-way house will be continued care and a place where he will go off to work each day somewhere in the area. We have to get him to that place first.