This is topic Go big or go home in forum Member forum at The New Huntmastersbbs!.
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Posted by Cdog911 (Member # 7) on March 14, 2018, 05:57 PM:
Wish me luck, guys. As you know from my earlier posts, my son is addicted to meth (currently recovering in prison) and that puts me, my wife and our family ass-deep in the opiate crisis you read and hear about. It's been a tough row to hoe, but through the kindness of strangers in Nar-Anon, I'm slowly learning that there are things I can do, and things I can't. Things like, it's his choice, not mine. I can choose peace of mind over butting my head against a brick wall. I cannot control his behavior, nor can I cure him. That's all on him and I give him a LOT of credit right now. He's been clean and sober since Dec 12, due in large part to being locked up, sequestered from the bastards that got him into that shit.
Anyway, I've never been the sort to sit back and let the world kick my ass. So, I'm doing something about it. I'm taking everything I've seen and learned over the past 10 years, sorting out the shit that didn't work, the useless rehab programs, misspent dollars, and I'm shoving it all into the compressor that is my brain so I can shit out something that I think will do a better job.
Bounced the idea off my state Rep and his immediate reply was, "Get it on my desk yesterday!". He reeeeaaally like what he heard. That was a month ago.
I've spent the last month writing, rewriting, and rewriting again, each time incorporating input from research and comments from LEO's who've dealt with drugs in our community, community corrections officers, government admins and bean counters, parents of adult addicts who've fought this battle alongside of me, and state officials with drug work experience. What I finished tonight was an 11-page proposal consisting of in-jail (not prison, jail) rehabilitation, reintegration/ work release, reintroduction (sober-living homes) and ultimately release and expungement of drug-related felony charges if a program participant can go five years clean and sober. The whole program is based upon incentives, for the addicts, for local employers to put them to work, and for the state to spend and recover money. On one hand, it's fairly intricate and complex, but on the other, it's crazy simple. The goal is simple: Insert drug addict in one end, and at the other end, three years later, hopefully get a guy who is clean, sober, working, not a drain on the state, and being a positive part of his community. I've met guys and gals who have done this and I know it's possible if we just give them the opportunity.
The "critiques" I enlisted have summarized their impressions as, "Powerful!", "Common sense", and one even told me, "You need to send this to the President".
I have copies going to my state Rep tomorrow who said he would review it, get with me with any questions and personally take it to the Legislature and the Secretary of Corrections, and another copy to Dr. Ben Carson who is heading up the Opiate Crisis Response under the Trump Administration.
I consider this to be the singularly most important writing project I've ever undertaken. All those magazine article gave me the tools to draft a cover letter that the reviewers told me made reading the rest of the proposal a "must-read".
May go no where at all, but we have to try something. People are dying, and my son's life is on the line.
Aim high and go big, or go home.
Posted by Leonard (Member # 2) on March 14, 2018, 06:17 PM:
God luck, Lance
Posted by Kokopelli (Member # 633) on March 14, 2018, 06:21 PM:
I can't even imagine going thru what you have and still keeping my sanity.
Good luck to you and hopefully something good will come of all of this.
Posted by Cdog911 (Member # 7) on March 15, 2018, 04:58 PM:
Oh, K, this is just one person's issues in my house. Our daughter has OCD. Not them kind that makes you fret over a crooked picture on the wall. Her's is full-blown, you don't get out of the house OCD. It forced her to quit school halfway thru her 8th grade year. She's 19 now. We are trying to get her thru her GED, but the OCD gets in the way. Took us most of three years just to find a doctor who actually had a working knowledge of it. Before then, as is the case with much of the mental health care system, crickets and tumbleweeds. If you were to talk to her on the phone or see her on the rare occasions she ventures out, you'd think what a bright and sweet young lady she is. Hard part of OCD is that the OCD person knows how irrational their responses to their triggers are, but they can't help but succumb to the ritualistic behaviors. I had no idea what it was about until she presented with symptoms. You might ask, "where did it come from?" It has a genetic component, but in her case, the doctors think it might be a result of a condition called PANDAS - you can look that up on your own. Long story less long, she spent a week in the hospital when she was 12 with meningitis. We had been to Branson to see friends a few weeks prior and stayed at a hotel with a saltwater indoor pool. Their best guess is that she contracted a strep infection that went undiagnosed, either a sinus infection or a mild ear infections. Strep bacteria can actually cause an autoimmune disorder that impacts the way your brain functions and the result is PANDAS, which in lay terms is either OCD, tic disorder, or certain forms of autism.
To make her situation even more difficult this week, she has (since she left school) only two friends that have ever reached out to stay in touch with her through social media. Once she fell off the radar, the rest of her 140+ A classmates plain forgot she ever existed. No calls. No texts. Nothing. One of those two friends died in a fiery rollover crash Monday morning, so my daughter's entire circle of friends, beyond her doctors and immediate family, was violently cleaved in half. But, I give her credit. I spent yesterday afternoon with her talking about her friend, about death, about how it's normal to feel vulnerable when someone close to you dies, and all in all, she's doing pretty good with it. There is no easy way to make it thru this sort of thing and she's really quite practical and smart about how to stand up to challenges in life.
Basically, our lives suck. But, it's the lives we've been given and we make the best of it. We just stick together and stand up to it as a family. She knows I have her back, the same way I'll stand for her brother. I'm reminded daily how lucky we are to have what we have. It can always be worse.
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