Parents of Drug Abusers Discover a Circle of Strength

With Christmas practically upon them, a Thousand Oaks couple was preparing to kick their son out of the house.

They had given the 19-year-old all the love and support they could muster, they said, and it wasn’t enough. Again and again, despite their repeated threats, he had turned to drugs.

And as terrible as the addiction has been for their son, who lost his athletic scholarship and dropped out of college, the emotional toll had been equally severe on them.

Last week, in a quiet room behind a Thousand Oaks church, the tearful mother and father shared their story for the first time. They couldn’t tell their friends, their neighbors or even their priest. But they opened up to a group of strangers called Families Anonymous.

“These people have been where we are now,” said the boy’s father, who, like the rest of the group, requested that he not be identified. “We came here because we want our son to know that we’re going to get educated about his problem, so we don’t make the mistakes that others have.”

At Families Anonymous, a nonprofit support group that has operated without fanfare or self-promotion for six years in Thousand Oaks, more than 120 local parents have found help dealing with their children’s bouts with drugs, crime and alcohol.

With the arrival of the holidays, many of those parents had returned to the circle to find help coping with the tense family reunions they faced.

“The holidays present a host of difficulties for families that are already in trouble,” said one of the group’s leaders. “Mostly, they are concerned about things not working out as they planned.”

For Jack, who had been a member of the group for 2 1/2 years, the holidays had already turned sour.

The Woodland Hills resident asked his son to take a drug test before coming home for Christmas, and his son refused.

“He will miss Christmas, and that’s difficult,” Jack said. “It tells me the drugs are more important to him than spending Christmas with his family.”

Like the newcomers, Jack’s tough stand with his son was a step Families Anonymous urges parents to take.

“Parents need to set their guidelines and stick to them,” a group leader said. “The children are incredibly skilled at manipulating a parent, breaking down their resolve. But that only makes things worse in the long run.”

Members of the group swear by the tough-love philosophy, which was handed down to them in booklets and pamphlets prepared at the Families Anonymous Culver City headquarters and sent around the country.

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A least one counseling expert outside the group agreed that confronting the problems head-on is often the best policy.

“Parents need a lot of support to set down clear boundaries and say a very firm no,” said Cheryl Heitmann, a Westlake Village family counselor.

“There’s always a certain amount of denial,” Heitmann said, the hope “that the problem will just go away on its own, but that never happens.”

For many of the parents who have attended sessions of Families Anonymous for years, experience has proved that denying the problem only worsens it.

At the recent meeting, all 14 participants told tales of abuse, each new account more startling than the last.

One father said he had suffered through his son’s crack cocaine habit for 15 years, watching the promising young man abandon his family and friends, sell his possessions and live on the street.

“It is the lunacy of it, the complete insanity of it that makes it so difficult to deal with,” the middle-aged father said. “You want to just grab them and shake them and make them quit, but they don’t.”

A father of three said he was helpless to keep one son from falling in with a bad crowd and becoming an addict.

“Our middle son has really dealt us grief,” the Thousand Oaks man said. “It’s not like he’s killed anyone or done anything terrible. It’s just seeing someone close to you make a 180-degree turn. We’re trying to deal with how disappointed we are.”

Another parent described her shame as she bailed her daughter out of Ventura County Jail. By ignoring the problem and trying to help with rent money and food, she was enabling her daughter to continue to use drugs, she said.

“Anybody who is abusing drugs and alcohol inevitably finds their life falling apart,” the mother said. “And like I did, inevitably you’re going to find your children in jail.”

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Although the stories were difficult for the parents to hear, they agreed that the sessions are therapeutic.

The chance to talk openly about problems and discover that others share similar experiences helps parents refocus their attention on their own lives and on the other members of their families.

For the new couple, who came to the meeting with fears about the future, the support helped solidify their decision to approach their 19-year-old son with renewed authority.

“When he admits with tears in his eyes that he screwed up, we know it’s Chapter 101 in how to fool your parents,” the father said.

“I hope by learning from these people that we can nip his problem in the bud. The last thing I want is to be back here years later telling the stories we heard tonight.”

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FYI

Families Anonymous meets every Thursday in Thousand Oaks. For the meeting location or further information, call Families Anonymous at 379-6862. The support group has a 24-hour hot line at (818) 785-7705.