My son is alive and well thanks to the addiction recovery program.
My son had been on drugs for two years before I discovered it. He was a teenager and went out with friends a lot, so it took me a while to get along. The first sign that something was wrong was that he was starting to get messy. Then I discovered that he was smoking weed in his room. But what I didn’t know was that he had already tried LSD and was taking all kinds of drugs that he got from school. He was my son and lived at my home, but I didn’t know that much about him.
I knew he was getting high, but I didn’t know how bad it got or how bad it was going to get. When heroin crossed his path, it was that – heroin was the drug that wiped out my son.
Heroin use caused a massive change in my son, he looked exhausted, slept all day and lost his job. I found strange utensils in his bathroom. I knew it wasn’t working, but I couldn’t see the problem directly. I didn’t want to face the reality of heroin abuse.
Eventually I enrolled him in a wilderness program. It didn’t take long before I realized this wasn’t going to work. We tried three different drug rehab programs, but he left each of them because the cravings were too great.
My son looked so bad that I thought he was going to die in front of my eyes. He had lost weight and was in constant pain. He would try to get off the heroin on his own, but he couldn’t. It was awful and I didn’t know what to do.
I wasn’t feeling well either. I was constantly worried, lost sleep, and unable to complete tasks in my own life.
Luckily we found an addiction recovery program. I immediately found the staff to be more helpful than other places I’d taken my son. They seemed to understand how bad my son’s addiction had gotten and they knew what it took to deal with it. They knew what I had been through and seemed to genuinely care for me, just as they did for my son. I felt like I had a whole team by my side, and in the end, that’s what it took to get my son clean.
It was not easy to get my son into another rehab, especially after three failed attempts. There have been many ups and downs, but there was always a representative to ask for advice. One day I looked at my son and knew I had to take him to rehab. It was life or death. That day someone from the facility called me every 15 minutes until we got in the car and were way down the street. My son fought me at every turn because he feared withdrawal. The recovery staff helped me find the strength to overcome his protest. Of course, he wanted to live deep inside himself – but he struggled with his addiction. We all were.
The program is unique and comprehensive. The drug detoxification professionals all addressed food cravings and the courses teach life skills and ethics. I saw my son change throughout the program. He gained weight, he was handsome, and his communication skills improved significantly. But the most important achievement for me was that he finally took responsibility for his condition.
Not only did my son get his life back, I got my life back too. I would have no hesitation in recommending a good addiction treatment program to anyone.
