On Pills and Needles

by Rick Van Warner

  Despite the fact that shortsighted lawmakers and regulators didn’t foresee the inadvertent consequences of clamping down on Oxy access, their first steps to require prescription monitoring and put pill mills out of business worked. Walgreens, CVS, and other reputable retailers did their part by moving some meds behind the counter and requiring proper ID for filling a single prescription of opioid-based drugs. The DEA continued to keep the pressure on pain clinic doctors and owners, which had been scooping up vacant strip center bays as fast as fly-by-night mortgage brokers—that is, until 2016 when the “patient access” act passed by Congress and approved by Obama largely neutered the agency.2 With DEA prosecution efforts undermined by the Big Pharma–engineered law, it was back to business as usual. Many of the same bad actors arrested during the pill-mill crackdown have since rebounded, indicates a recent Johns Hopkins study, which reports that a relatively small group is again accounting for a disproportionately large share of the opioid prescriptions being written.3

  Sadly, Big Pharma’s stranglehold on lawmakers continues unabated, and along with it any meaningful change attempts. Awareness certainly rose after President Obama, moviemaker Rob Reiner, state governors, senators, and many others finally dragged this long-neglected issue into the light beginning in 2016. However, the millions being spent by opioid profiteers to influence policy in their favor continue to ensure that aggressive doctors can overprescribe, that shady pain clinics and distributors receive ample warning before their licenses are stripped, and most of all, that the profitable pipeline feeding an epidemic of their own creation keeps flowing. Drug companies and their investors will continue to happily feast while their products find new users and inflict financial and psychological tolls on families and on those lucky enough to survive.

  11

  The Abduction

  I tossed everything I’d learned thus far about managing emotions and not being able to control an addict out the window as I raced toward the airport in my latest fit of stubborn desperation. My heart was racing, and all I could think about was not getting to New Jersey in time. Paul added to my stress by nearly missing our flight, booked late the previous night; he showed up with minutes to spare. Once on the airplane we caught our breath. Both of us saw this as a final desperate attempt to save Tommy’s life. We would stop at nothing to bring him back to Florida, even if it meant physically kidnapping him. Our thinking was unrealistic and foolish.

  “So what’s the plan, Dad?” Paul asked once we were airborne, a very reasonable question.

  “I have no idea,” I answered. “What do you think?”

  Having sprung back into crisis mode the prior evening when the call came that Tommy had checked himself out of rehab and was back with the older woman he’d been living with, I’d barely had enough time to rearrange my work schedule, book one-way flights, and throw a few things in a duffel bag before racing to the airport. Figuring out how we might convince or force Tommy to come back with us hadn’t yet entered my thoughts. Tattered and torn from the ongoing Tommy saga, I was extremely grateful to have Paul with me and not be going alone.

  As Paul and I devised what seemed like a reasonable plan, it occurred to me how much I now viewed him as a fellow adult and not just my oldest son. His impulsive and out-of-control behavior had given us fits during his challenging middle and high school years. The clean-cut, handsome guy sitting next to me still sometimes did stupid, impulsive things, but had matured into a smart and focused young man. He knew where he was going in life and was determined to get there.

  “How about this?” he said. “I spoke with Tommy this morning and told him I was coming up to visit him. He didn’t sound great on the phone, but seemed genuinely excited to see me.”

  “But he has no idea I’m coming?”

  “No. We need to figure out how to keep you out of sight so he doesn’t run.”

  Tommy said he and his girlfriend would pick Paul up. Paul suggested that when we arrived at the airport, I would lag behind. Once they’d driven off, I’d pick up a rental car and drive toward my brother’s town for a later rendezvous once Paul managed to get Tommy alone. Ron had warned us that Tommy seemed to be under the strong influence of the girlfriend, which was nothing new when it came to Tommy and females.

  Less than five minutes after turning our phones back on after touchdown, we had to scrap our plan. Tommy and his girlfriend had driven to the wrong airport! Instead of Newburgh, New York, they were at Newark, New Jersey, likely two hours away given traffic. Scrambling, we identified what looked like a reasonable meeting spot on a map, and Paul told Tommy he’d take a cab there. Speeding down the highway to drop Paul at a diner before Tommy got there, I began to realize what an ill-conceived game we were playing. My love and desperation had buried any rational thought. But it was too late to turn back. Nearly an hour later I watched from a hidden vantage point as Paul got into the car with his brother and the girl outside a New Jersey diner. Minutes later I learned that plan number two would also have to be scrapped.

  Texting me from the backseat of the girlfriend’s car, Paul informed me that they were heading into Manhattan for dinner. I implored him to get back to the girl’s house as soon as reasonably possible but knew I was in for another long and wasted night. Following a two-hour stint working on my laptop at a Borders with Wi-Fi, I sought a place to wait it out. At least there was a Yankees game on television at the comfortable bar I found, but the wait for them to return from the city seemed endless. Finally, a little after 10:00 p.m., Paul texted me to let me know they were driving back. Tapping my phone’s navigation app, I plotted a route to wait near the woman’s apartment building, where it turned out she was living not just with Tommy but also with her mother.

  As I drove into the dark corner of the convenience store parking lot near the apartment, I again felt foolish for thinking this had any chance of working. Perhaps I’d watched one too many action films or TV dramas. As if in some Hollywood-made stakeout, I patiently waited. Paul texted that he had convinced Tommy to take a walk, the first time he was away from the girl in the seven hours they’d been together. After what seemed like an eternity, I saw the familiar shapes of my two eldest sons ambling up the dark, quiet street. It wouldn’t be quiet for long.

  As shocked as I was by Tommy’s rough appearance, a new tattoo joining the earrings he now wore in both ears, he was far more stunned to see me. His reaction was rage.

  “You set me up!” he yelled at Paul. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  The tension on both sides immediately skyrocketed, as I said, “We’re here to take you home.”

  After a brief and heated exchange of words, Tommy sprinted into the shadows with me in futile pursuit on a bad ankle. I shouted for Paul to cut him off, but it was no use. He vanished.

  Anger turned to rage before rage turned to despair.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” I screamed at a couple onlookers who were staring at me in the parking lot as I walked back to my car, feeling the tears well up in my eyes and dread ball up in my heart. “Mind your own business!”

  Paul showed me where Tommy had been staying. There was absolutely no way I was leaving now. My emotions more controlled, but not by much, I banged on the door of the apartment and could easily have soon found myself under arrest. The girl’s mother began shrieking at Paul and me to get off her stoop.

  “Get the hell out of here or I’ll call the cops!”

  “Go ahead, call them. It will be fun watching you explain to them how your twenty-eight-year-old daughter committed statutory rape with a minor under your supervision,” I said, forgetting in the heat of the moment that Tommy had just turned eighteen. “How about a local TV station showing up with their cameras; would you like that?”

  I’d managed to direct all my anger about my son’s situation at this woman whose only crime was having enough pity on a lost, otherwise homeless teenager to let him sleep on her couch. Blame based in wrong righteousness is the worst kind.

  Than
kfully the woman’s boyfriend stepped outside and immediately diffused things.

  “Go inside, honey,” he said, taking a big drag from his cigarette. “He’s just worried about his son. I’ve got this.”

  When Paul and I shared our story, he listened intently. He then shared with us how deadly the batch of drugs was that had briefly killed Tommy a few days before. As later confirmed through internet searches and my brother’s network, several kids in the area had already died from the “black tar,” the man told me. After he and I spoke a little more, everyone was calm for the moment. Paul was able to get Tommy to answer his call and convinced him to speak with us in a parking lot about a block away that was surrounded by woods on two sides and would afford Tommy easy escape paths if necessary.

  Like a tense hostage negotiation, Paul led the discussion. Still determined to bring him back home, I wasn’t particularly open-minded to alternatives.

  Tommy seemed dumbfounded that we were even there, still feeling angry and betrayed by Paul’s actions.

  Paul and I pleaded with him to return with us, and he refused. All three men shed many tears as we discussed his situation and relentlessly tried to change his mind. Around and around in circles we went for about an hour, Paul and I pulling every lever we could think of and Tommy, his mind clearly fogged by drugs, coming up with one illogical excuse after another for staying in New Jersey. Exhausted and under extreme pressure, Tommy finally agreed he would come home a week later once he’d had a chance to say goodbye to his friends in New Jersey.

  The next morning Paul and I drove to the airport in relative silence, dejected by what we both perceived as complete mission failure. The next day I purchased a one-way ticket from Newark to Orlando for six days later. Neither of us expected Tommy to get on that flight, and it wasn’t until I saw him walk down the airport hallway in Orlando that I actually believed he did.

  12

  Pill Mills, Police, and Pain

  Sages of the recovery industry warn that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It took us years to understand this. It’s our son, we rationalized repeatedly—and periodically still do today—and we love and can save him.

  It didn’t take long for our household to descend back into a state of dysfunction when our son once again became ensconced in our lives after his return from New Jersey. At first there was a sense of relief; at least he was alive and back with a family who dearly loves him. The hugs were many as we began a futile attempt to return to family life as normal with Tommy back in our home. As was his habit, Tommy soon latched on to another girlfriend, one he met through attending the Narcotics Anonymous meetings we required as a condition of his living with us.

  For a few weeks he did a good job complying with our curfews and rules, all part of the agreed-upon contract that he’d signed to live with us again. But his efforts to find a job were pathetic and unproductive. Like a vampire, he wanted to sleep late, lie around all day watching television, and then come alive to go out at night. We berated him about getting a job, since he had promised this, and he’d give the same lame answer every time: “I submitted applications online.” There was a complete lack of motivation tied to his underlying problem.

  It didn’t take long for Mary and me to begin snapping at each other again and disagreeing about what to do next. Meanwhile, sketchy characters began showing up at our home, creating an embarrassment for our youngest son and potential threat for our young daughter. Barry, imposing at six feet tall with a lean, muscular build, began confronting such kids with regularity. He’d walk toward them in a menacing way and shout at them to leave our property, sometimes when they were just a few steps down our driveway.

  “He’s not here, this is his parents’ home, get the hell out of here!” I heard him yell one day to a completely stoned-out kid with long hair who was beginning to amble toward the front walk. By now Tommy’s siblings had had enough.

  “He’s an idiot,” Barry said. “Why do you keep letting him come back here? He just eats your food and steals our stuff.”

  One night our dog started barking crazily. Tommy’s girlfriend stepped outside to talk to an unknown visitor. As I got up to see what was going on, Tommy went racing past me to the door, baseball bat at his side. Thankfully my youngest and eldest sons were not home, and my daughter was asleep in her room. I stepped into the madness to intervene when I saw Tommy’s girlfriend getting into the face of the young man, whom I recognized as an old friend of my son’s, now fully grown.

  “Get in the house,” I ordered the girlfriend, in no mood to have another mouthy agitator in the mix. Disgusted with the chaos that my addict son had brought to our front doorstep, I snatched the bat from Tommy’s hands and got between him and his ex-friend.

  “Tommy owes me money,” he said.

  “Get out of here,” Tommy shouted.

  The anger in Tommy’s face frightened me. Only once before had I seen my mellow son exhibit such rage—in the convenience store parking lot when I’d surprised him in New Jersey. I sensed he had returned to using.

  After calming both of them down, I asked the boy to leave my property with no resolution in what was clearly a drug debt dispute. It wasn’t the first time someone had come searching for money they were owed due to our son’s addiction, and it certainly wasn’t the last. But it was the final straw.

  The next day we asked our son to leave, and he gladly complied. After sleeping on various friends’ couches or park benches, he eventually squatted in an empty home of a friend and fellow drug abuser whose parents had recently moved away and put their house on the market. Breaking into the now-empty house he had been raised in, Tommy’s friend invited him and another drug-addled teenager who had also been sleeping outside on benches to join him. For several nights the delusional trio had the place they’d dreamed about, where no parents could interfere with their desires to use the drugs they craved and sleep as late as they wished. However it wasn’t long before neighbors caught on to the situation and alerted police. Tommy’s friend who had grown up there was arrested for assaulting one of the officers that evicted them and was thrown in jail.

  Our son the master manipulator soon contacted us to apologize and pledge his commitment to staying clean. We reluctantly let Tommy return and for a few weeks things went fairly well. With my assistance, Tommy got a job working at a local restaurant. But just a few days later the restaurant’s general manager, whom I knew, warned me that he was pretty sure Tommy was using pills. He’d seen it before and saw the same symptoms in our son. Less than two weeks after starting the job, Tommy was fired for not showing up or bothering to call. It would be the last job he worked at for nearly two years.

  Despite Tommy’s obvious inability to function in any normal capacity, Mary remained insistent that attending college as a full-time student was the change he needed. I reluctantly agreed that it was worth a shot, even though I knew down deep that the chance he’d be able to handle this was remote. Tommy, of course, had other ideas. His desire remained to “get a job, get an apartment, and go to community college.” Completely out of touch with reality, he clung to the notion of independence without the first clue of what type of consistent commitment and amount of money this would require.

  Mary was insistent, and she wore both of us down. I finally went along, both to keep what little peace remained between my wife and me and to get him out of our house. The final decision was made following an emotional, irrational discussion.

  “You’re going to college, that’s it!” Mary shouted at him. “You took a spot from someone else, and you’re going to honor that commitment!”

  Reluctantly Tommy agreed, and once again we resumed the charade of normalcy and proceeded to make plans to get him off to college. Mary went into her mommy mode of shopping, leaving no detail unaccounted for in getting him ready to move into his dorm at a college 150 miles away. Less than a week before he was to leave, the phone rang at about 2:00 a.m. Tommy and his
best friend had been arrested for painting graffiti on a local parking garage. Their immature excuse demonstrated the stupidity in their judgment. In their hazy minds they had decided to do something to commemorate their friendship on the eve of them going their separate ways to pursue higher education. Again we rescued him, with the punishment consisting of the two young teenagers painting the garage wall they had defaced and the owner luckily not pressing charges.

  Hope takes many shapes when you find yourself in despair, and it became hard to distinguish between reality and illusion. In looking back upon the lengths we went to get Tommy to complete high school online, get accepted to a decent college, and actually move onto that campus, it’s hard to fathom how much denial we were actually in about our son’s condition. As my brother puts it, “Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.” A person who cannot function at a high enough level to hold an entry-level job is certainly not ready to successfully manage a full course load amid the distractions of the college experience.

  Tommy lasted about one month. It was clear from our early phone conversations that things weren’t going well. We’d asked him to email us progress reports and none came. We learned he’d already been disciplined for cursing at a resident assistant. I drove up to visit him on a Sunday, planning to go kayaking or spend the day at the beach. When he got in the car, I could sense it was already over.

  “Son, you’re not going to classes, are you?”

  “No,” he said, his voice cracking and the tears beginning to flow. “I can’t do this, I’m just not ready.”

  After a quick lunch, I drove him back to the dorm and began the two-hour drive home. The next day we withdrew him, and I drove back up to gather my son and his belongings. For the fourth time that year, Tommy returned home.