A is for Addiction, D is for Drugs

I have been writing this story in my head for 10 years and yet I cannot find the right words now.  There are no words from this parent who has lost her child that can make any sense of it, other than to say that sometimes love is not enough.

The foothill community has held a dark secret for a very long time. Among the beautiful mountain views and quaint businesses lurks a drug culture that has found a home here. It has permeated our streets and invaded our homes and schools. It has taken our children. It is time to shed light on this problem and bring it out into the open. I believe, as a community, we can do it together.

My earliest recollection of drugs came during the late 1960s when “free love and smoke dope” became the mantra of the young generation. Most people like our parents seemed okay with a little alcohol and marijuana use but it was during this time that we lost Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Drugs became so widely available that it seemed that the destructive lifestyle that killed these brilliant musicians was here to stay.

In the 1970s, at age 11, drugs took on a personal meaning for me. My hippie, politically radical Uncle Bill overdosed on a mixture of heroin and morphine and died at age 24. The family was devastated. I became instantly aware that there are some seriously dangerous drugs out there and that using them is not just fun and games. Somehow this realization did not affect me much. I had already tried alcohol at age 10 and got drunk at a sixth grade party at 11. I started smoking pot at age 13, which led to a teenage life that was completely reckless. I skipped school and partied with my friends, usually with alcohol and pot, but I experimented with cocaine, speed, Valium, Quaaludes, PCP, acid, mushrooms and, embarrassingly, inhalants. Of course, I knew better but I just didn’t care. Our generation was riding the coattails of the 1960s and didn’t see anything wrong with zoning out although we all drew the line at heroin and morphine. Those were the bad drugs.

Through it all, I was able to complete high school and college and earn a degree. I had already lost some classmates to overdose and suicide by then and I started to ask myself why I was being so self-destructive. I took a hard look at what I really wanted to do with my life and committed to make it happen. It was a wake-up call, for sure.

Once I set myself straight, I followed my path to career, marriage and family. It felt good to be taking care of myself and I never forgot the lessons I learned from making so many bad choices.  I was determined to guide my children so they wouldn’t have to learn it the hard way, like me. I wanted to warn them about the dangers ahead so I regularly had honest conversations about drugs, even from an early age. I told them, “There will be drugs in school. There will be friends who take and sell them. There will be friends who die as a result. It is up to you to turn from that path and to help others who struggle.”

Parenting is a hard road. Sometimes your guidance sticks; sometimes it doesn’t. And the new crop of drugs, with names like molly, bars, ladders, clear, black, white, K-pins, and wax, were all foreign to me. My husband and I tried very hard to keep them out of our household and to keep the love in – but those bastards won in the end. 

And that is a very sad thing.

Susan Bolan

susanbolan710@gmail.com

  Susan BOLAN