Mother of a Fifteen Year Old Son:

I have a son 15 and he has eight months clean. We've been going to PARTS for about a year and a half. He was having lots of problems in school and we were having a lot of problems with his whole change in behavior. Things were real different as far as the change of friends, the change of attitude, the change of his perspective on life, and his values. Maybe if I had known more I would have had him drug tested earlier, but I just thought they were normal teenage problems. I wasn't really looking for drugs entering our family life.

It was about two years ago. He probably first tried marijuana couple of a different times when he was 12 in the sixth grade. In seventh grade it became more regular, and in eighth grade it was like milk and cereal to some of us. A daily habit. I have to be very thankful to the school counselor because we were talking about his lack of motivation, ADD, and being a teenager. Then he asked my son, "Have you tried any drugs?" He said, "Oh, yeah, a couple of different times." The counselor took me aside and said, "Any time they say a couple of different times you can probably multiply or cube that number.

That's when we started taking a look different look at him and realized that with addiction, they're going to lie to you. One time, within a week or so, he must have taken something that was a whole lot stronger than marijuana, probably crystal, or whatever, and he was very, very nervous. He talked very fast and he could hardly contain himself. He seemed like he was so excited, and that was such an antithesis of his lack of motivation. I point blank said, "I'm gonna take you to be tested." And he said, "You don't have to. I'm higher than a kite." We sat down and talked about it and it hit us between the eyes that he didn't think anything was wrong with this kind of life. He said, "Hey, it's just marijuana. I'm not gonna do anything heavy," and "Marijuana is not any different than people having a glass of wine." We realized that there was a real difference between his values and those of our family.

We really felt like we needed to do something, and very quickly. He was just 14 years old. So we got him right into a program at Kaiser. Kaiser told us about PARTS, and it opened up our eyes as parents. At PARTS I was able to see what other parents had gone through with kids that were 12 or 13 and what happened to them at 16 and 17. It gave my husband and I the strength to say, "We need to do something right now, not go ahead and decide whether he's got a problem, or how much he's doing it, or find out more information. Let's not accept any part of his lifestyle and do everything possible to let him know that it's unacceptable. And tell him there is help here and go from there."

It was almost as if I was going through something terminal. I mean it was very traumatic. We weren’t looking for drugs to be part of my 13 year olds life. I have known people, but it was always somebody else. Now it was me and I had to face that. I was devastated, but only for awhile. When I came to PARTS, I was able to see that there were parents from every economic strata and every ethnicity, We were all devastated. No matter who you are, this tears the family apart. You have something hanging over you that is unacceptable. I had a whole new problem to deal with and it wasn't teenage behavior, it was drug addiction. Whatever your son or daughter is going through, you're all going through at the same time. I didn't want to accept it and yet here we were going to meetings and going to counseling. We also found out that we were working a whole lot harder than my son. We wanted him to recover, and he didn't. There was a period of time that was pretty difficult because with something like cancer you want to get well. You don't know whether you're going to or not. We didn't know whether our son was deciding to stay clean. He proved us wrong for a long time.

He's not into recovery. There are a lot of changes in attitudes and he’s working through the steps but he’s abstaining. He does some of the things towards recovery. He was out of the home for six months at a Christian boarding school. We decided to get him away from all of his friends and out of the environment. He was not making an effort to stay clean and we said over and over, "In order to stay in our home you have to be clean." We realized we had to do something that would prove our point. We said, "As long as you're not going to make the effort to stay clean, you can't stay home. We'll make sure that you are in an environment where we can guarantee that you're gonna be clean and that’s not in our home. It will provide you with your food, structure, housing, and it will provide with some values. You won't have a whole lot of choices, but you'll be clean."

There's been a big improvement, because he wants to be home. Previously he thought it was a right that he had and now he knows that he doesn't have that right. He thought just because he's our son, and we love him, we're gonna turn over and say, "Oh, gee, this is fine. You can live with us and stay dirty." He knows now that we're serious about when we say, "No drugs." And, that's the only reason he's doing this. He isn’t saying, "I know that recovery is for me, and that I'm gonna be clean." He knows that as a 15 year old he would like to be able to drive. He knows that he would like to be free. He likes having free time with his friends and he doesn't have any of those privileges unless he can be home. He knows that the only way he can stay home is if he's clean. So it's a matter of consequences and rewards. I wouldn't ever say that his light bulb is turned on or that he says that, "I think marijuana isn't good for you, and it ruins your life, and I'm not gonna have any future." He lives day to day and it's amazing that he's got eight months clean right now. But day to day, he has decided that, "Wow. This is a whole lot better than being in boarding school."

PARTS helps families to identify with people who've gone through the same pain and teaches things that are not in textbooks or that counselor offer. There are people who say, "This is a painful experience, and I'm able to get through it and survive, and actually even have a life of my own." And, you can, too. That's the real strength parents need. They need to know that they're going through this as well, and they've had certain expectations about what they want for their family and for their life and those have all been blown apart. They need to re-think about how they're parenting, and about how they're living their life. In order to re-think you have to be able to talk to people and listen to what others have gone through and pick up some of their ideas. Try them out. Parents have to have a place to cry and a place where somebody else can say, "I understand why you're crying. I know what it feels like."