it hurts too much to laugh

We don’t joke about drug abuse at our house.
We know its pain, disappointment and cost too much to laugh about it.
We see, all too clearly, how much our loved one has paid – not just financially – but physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.
It’s sad to look at him and remember his joyful grin as he helped me wash windows as a 4-year-old; his eagerness to get on with his paper route after school and his glow of adventure when he and his brother built an igloo after the blizzard in Indiana.
Sometime in high school his joie de vivre fell by the way as he experimented with street drugs. In time drugs dominated him so much that even drug dealers told him, “Slow down, you will blow up.”
He barely noticed the warning or the loss of family, friends and finances until 18 months ago, when – with no other option – he came to live with us. He said he wanted to change – he took drugs the night before he moved in.
He arrived with black garbage bags stuffed full of his clothes, a handful of unpaid utility bills, bank overdraft notices, unpaid traffic citations and a suspended driver’s license.
His blood pressure registered twice that of his father’s. His father took him to the doctor for medication.
We took him to Narcotics Anonymous until he found rides with other attendees.
We encouraged him to pay off his traffic fines until he finally regained his license.
We insisted he work – at home, as a volunteer or at a job. He did all three.
He said he loved to mow our lawn – but begged off from doing it time and again. He said the factory line moved too quickly for him to keep up. Fellow volunteers raised eyebrows at his inability to do the simplest job without close supervision.
He received his six-months tag from NA for being drug free.
We cheered for him and thought he had begun to tentatively turn things around.
He hadn’t. With a large check in hand he shoved everything and everybody else aside for a 24-hour drug spree.
We gave him another chance. For seven months, he went to work, said he was paying bills and saving money.
Then one morning he left the house to get his daughter to celebrate her birthday and never arrived. Her wrapped birthday present sat un-opened on his dresser.
Party food wilted on the platter.
A specially prepared dessert shriveled as the clock ticked off the hours without his appearance or phone call.
It didn’t happen once. It happened twice – two weekends in a row he shrugged and left the birthday girl and her sisters tearfully waiting in vain.
The first weekend we listened warily to a story about deciding to go fishing instead of going to celebrate a child’s birthday.
The next weekend he loaned his car for a couple hits of crack to guys who took it for a joy ride, wrecked it beyond repair and then ran away. He called the next day and asked us to bring him his clothes.
On our way to an activity, we dropped off his clothes and told him he was welcome back … after at least a year in a spiritually oriented drug abuse program. He stared at us – silently defiant.
Drugs cost him two marriages, his children’s confidence in him, thousands upon thousands of dollars, dozens of jobs, his car, driver’s license, health, home and self-respect.
He found a place to sleep – for a while – but friends who had once invited him to share quarters quickly changed their minds.
When he ran out of options, he signed-up for a short-term drug-rehab program. Before he left, he had a few more hits of crack. Two weeks later, unable to cope with life in re-hab, he landed in the hospital. After six weeks, the doctors concluded he needed long term care.
Before he transferred from the hospital to the unit, a social worker told me, “this is how he will probably be until they come up with newer medications. We do not recommend that he drive. You should consider this a permanent placement. It is the closest unit to your home that we could find.”
I hung up the phone in shock at hearing my hopes for his future crushed under the heel of $20 hits of crack-cocaine.
We pray the bleak prognosis will be wrong. For now – because he has less than a dollar a day to spend – he’s ‘drug free.’ During our first visit to the unit, his case manager recognized his financial limitations but cheerfully pointed out, “If he participates with the program, he can earn points and get things like a PopTart or cigarettes.”
Hearing him reduced to that level, left me hurting too much to laugh at drug abuse.


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