A Mountain Top

How tragedy made me question my biases

When mothers go into our protective mode, we will do just about anything to help our children.  You read in the last part of my story about how I went to other countries to try to find help for my daughter… and to find my daughter. 

I think there comes a time when almost all mothers in my position want to put our kid on an island, taking them away from everything.  We’ve been told by 12 Step programs that people struggling with addictions must avoid “people, places and things,” so we might go to great lengths to try to remove our child from the environment where they were using substances.  

That’s what I did.  I moved my family to a mountain top in Montana.  With the nearest city an hour away, I thought that my daughter would not have access to drugs and that was going to “cure” her.  

Of course I was wrong.  Within about two weeks, she had discovered the biggest dealer in the major city an hour away, and he delivered!   This furthered my journey on the path to realizing that if my daughter wanted to drink or use drugs, she would find a way. 

 It was here on that mountain top that we also experienced a great loss.  We had invited my husband’s best friend’s son, who was about a year into recovery from a heroin addiction, to come to the mountain top and live with us and work.  He did very well at work and was well liked.  He and my daughter fell in love.  They had grown up together, and now as adults both struggling and trying to find purpose, they found each other.  

They were both doing okay, or at least what I thought was okay, when they said they wanted to go out to a Fourth of July party that the staff was having.  We agreed and made an arrangement about what time they would be home.  I stayed up and heard them come home laughing and giggling and so I went to sleep.  The next morning, only one of them woke up.  

That was a really horrific experience for us.  We had to bring my husband’s best friend’s son home to his parents in a box.  My daughter had some associated guilt, which made things even harder for her.  I decided I had to do something differently.  

It was in Montana that I finally decided to look into medications for Opioid Use Disorder.  I had an ingrained bias against these medications because of what I was reading online and the advice I was getting from other parents.   There is this whole notion that using methadone or Suboxone is “trading one addiction for another,” and that’s just not true.  The treatment industry has so inundated us with abstinence only messages that we are sometimes unable to recognize a truly effective medication when we see one.

After my daughter found the dealer who delivered, we decided it was time to find a clinic and get her on Suboxone.  I didn’t realize at the time they gave her too small a dose of the medication, but she knew it.  They started her off at 16 mg and then reduced her down to 8 mg.  She was complaining about cravings and said she thought she ought to be on methadone, but I wasn’t listening to her because I was still in this head space that “This is a temporary fix, get her off the illicit drug and taper her down.” 

Unfortunately the beautiful young man who overdosed had lost his tolerance to opioids after a year off of heroin.  They were partying and I’m just assuming that they were both taking substances which included an opioid.  I suspect that my daughter being on Suboxone played a factor in her not overdosing.  

The experience, as horrible as it was, bolstered me into beginning to learn about medications.  It was a shift in perspective for me, as I tried to understand what the purposes of the medications really were.  I began to realize that my daughter had been under-medicated, and to understand the difference between a partial agonist and a full agonist.  Suboxone is a partial agonist, which means it binds to the opioid receptors in the brain, but not fully.  Methadone is a full agonist, which binds completely. Both medications are good for treating OUD- but research has been discussing in this age of “Fentanyl” a full agonist might be more effective. 

Probably the largest misperception for both buprenorphine and methadone is that you're just substituting one drug for another. That's just stigmatizing and demonstrates a lack of understanding of addiction as a brain disorder. We wouldn't say to somebody who's diabetic, who we are prescribing medication for, that if they could just stop eating and lose weight and exercise, they wouldn’t need medication. You also frequently hear people say, “I don't believe in methadone or buprenorphine.” If someone goes to a 12 Step meeting, participants might say, “You're not in recovery if you're on medication.” That's really unfortunate. 

While my daughter knew she needed methadone, I was convinced by the chitter chatter online about “trading one drug for another” that methadone was just the same as heroin.  “There’s no way I’m giving her that,” I thought.  Again, I should have listened to my daughter. 

This chapter in my family’s story was extremely traumatic for us.  We ended up leaving the mountain top, which seemed haunted by tragedy, and returning to California where I got a job near my family.

What I want other mothers to take from this is that when your child is sick with a SUD (substance use disorder) and needs medication, you want to get them the best medicine you can.   I let my biases, learned from the dominant culture, what I had heard from the twenty rehabs I sent my daughter to over ten years, and what I was reading on support groups, prevent me from getting the right medication for my child.  

I hope other moms will ask themselves, “Why do I think what I think?  Where did I get that information from?  Let me get the truth about it.  Let me look at science and evidence instead of the internet or treatment industry propaganda.”  I got all my “information” in the wrong places.  At Moms for All Paths, we try to provide real, evidence-based information so that other moms don’t have to go through what I went through.  

As I’ve shared my story, you may have picked up on a common theme: I wish I had listened to my daughter.  I wish I had turned to science instead of 12 Step myths.  This is not to dismiss 12 Step programs, which have helped many people, but they are not medical professionals.  It is my goal to give you the information I didn’t have, so that you can make the best decisions to help your child.

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