Whenever I hear a Jimi Hendrix song, I think of Donna’s son Joe (birth name “Hey Joe”) and wonder if he’ll ever realize what his drug addiction has done to him and his mother.
Joe is my friend Donna's only child, and even though he’s put her through the emotional wringer, she loves and adores him. He’s twenty-five now and not much to brag about, but when he was little, he was something else. One of those precocious kids who kept busy with projects. By age ten, Joe knew how to repair a dishwasher, plant a vegetable garden, play chess, and would often respond to my questions with a quote from Carl Sagan: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
Life was good until Joe turned fourteen and, almost overnight, transformed from a happy-go-lucky boy into a dark, gloomy adolescent. Donna struggled to cope, and we both hoped it was nothing more than a teenage phase. It wasn’t.
When Joe showed up at Donna’s 45th birthday party and handed her an empty bottle of Jack Daniel's and a card he’d made from a cigarette pack and signed with blood and snot, I made him leave. After he’d gone, a few of Donna’s friends suggested a mental health assessment for Joe. She disagreed. “It’s my fault. What kind of mother names her baby after a Jimi Hendrix song? ‘Hey Joe’ is a curse song,” Donna yelled out as she gathered her things and left her party to find her son.
I understood what she’d meant; it probably wasn’t a good idea to name a baby after a song about a guy with a gun who shoots his girlfriend, but that excuse was just one of the many Donna had for Joe’s destructive behavior.
It didn't surprise me that Joe wasn’t interested in getting help, but Donna's refusal to seek professional advice did. After all, Donna knew just as much as I did about addiction, enabling and co-dependence. These were hot topics in the recovery support meetings we began attending together after we both sobered up in 1985. Meetings that Donna stopped attending after she met and moved in with a guy who told her she didn’t need them any longer.
It was almost two years later when Donna phoned to let me know that she was single with a newborn baby. I was happy to hear from my old friend, and I moved Donna and baby Joe into my spare bedroom the day after she called. They lived with me until Joe started school; when Donna inherited her grandmother's house on the other side of town. Even though we no longer saw each daily, we did our best to stay close; supporting each other through the good times and the bad.
It wasn't until Joe turned eighteen that our friendship soured. All because I lost my temper with Donna one night after several hours of driving around town looking for Joe. When we found him, just after 2 am in a vacant warehouse parking lot smoking from a glass pipe with a group of scruffy-looking men, Donna insisted that I get out of the car with her to confront Joe and convince him to come with us. I was scared, but I went along because I didn’t want Donna to go alone. Joe went berserk when he saw us. He took a swing at Donna (missed) and spat on me. I ran back to the car, but she kept at him until he pushed her down.
When she finally got back into the car, she acted like nothing had happened, “Oh, well, I guess he’d rather be with his friends than go home with me,” she'd said. I was shaking with anger and couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You’re so stupid sometimes. You enable him and his addiction, and it's making you crazy.”
I thought she’d agree with me and apologize. Instead, she looked right at me, grinned with half teeth and said, “Stop calling him an addict, cause he's not. He’s bi-polar!”
Six years had passed when I heard from Donna again. She called to ask me if I'd go with her to check out a new drug rehab center for Joe. I was so excited to hear from her that I could barely stop myself from yelling out, "Yes, yes and yes!"
The next evening, I drove Donna to the rehab center. We arrived twenty minutes early and helped ourselves to coffee and cookies before finding seats in the back of the center’s conference room, all the while hoping more people would show up so that we weren't the entire audience.
Two cups of coffee later, when the director of the treatment center walked into the room and introduced himself, there were twenty people seated in the overly air-conditioned room, mostly frantic parents seeking help for their children.
For an hour, we listened to a compelling lecture presented by the center’s medical director, a charismatic Dr. Drew type. He spoke about the symptoms of addiction and was adamant that family members cannot help their addicted loved ones. He also let us know about their in-house medical detox unit, the healthy food available from their organic cafeteria and rambled off a few impressive statistics regarding the success rates of previous clients. As he wrapped up his presentation, and before he asked for questions, he said something like: “My unique treatment method works on all alcoholics and addicts; even those who don’t want to quit.”
Donna's facial expression went from sad to glad when she heard that. She was clearly impressed with the doctor and whispered in my ear that he could fix Joe. I had my doubts, especially about his claim to make addicts and alcoholics quit even if they weren't interested.
I was going to ask the doctor to elaborate, but after seeing the relief on the faces of the other attendees, I decided not to. Who was I to rain on their hope parade?
Thirty minutes of questions and answers ensued, followed by mostly everyone, including Donna, signing up and paying a deposit for a professionally facilitated intervention. On the drive home, Donna told me she was sure Joe would admit himself to rehab after an intervention. "And I'll probably give him the money he wants to get his teeth fixed too," she added.
It was hard for me to keep my voice calm when I brought up the cost of the place, which I thought was outrageous; more per night than a five star NYC hotel room. She said she didn't care about the cost. “Four weeks in that place will save my boy’s life.”
I hung out at Donna's place for the next few days helping her to prepare for Joe’s intervention and offering whatever support I could. We were careful not to talk too loud as Joe was recuperating from a sprained ankle and a bruised hip and had taken up residence on Donna’s living room couch. From there, he barked orders at Donna throughout the day for food, beer, and painkillers. She jumped to his aid each time without hesitation.
Watching an addict and his enabler in action was an eye-opening experience. It made me think about the rehab medical director's guarantee, as I couldn't imagine anyone being able to get Joe to do anything he didn't want to do. It also made me wonder if the medical establishment had come up with a new method of treating addiction and I just hadn’t heard about it. Perhaps the doctor’s guaranteed method would have worked on me?
There was a time when I loved being stoned so much that I couldn't stop using drugs and alcohol no matter what. I thought being high was the only way I could cope with life, and never considered my drug use to a problem until I lost my job, my boyfriend and my desire to live. It was only then that I agreed to go into a drug rehab. My treatment center was a not-for-profit rehab, and it wasn’t costly or fancy, nor did it have a medical detox unit, a nice cafeteria or comfortable beds. What it did have were seven ex-addict staff members who knew how to help someone like me.
I stayed in rehab for forty days because it took that long for me to understand that I was responsible for my addiction and that I needed to stop blaming everyone and everything for my messed-up life.
When I got out, I began attending recovery support meetings. There, I met other recovering alcoholics and addicts who were living productive and peaceful lives and not hanging out for a drink all day. They all spoke of being able to change their ways only after they'd made the decision to stop using.
I dreaded the idea of never being able to take a pill or drink a beer again. But my life was crap, and I was desperate for something to change, so I began writing myself a note each morning promising not to use drugs or alcohol no matter what happened that day. After that, I started to feel better in almost every way.
Two weeks after Donna and I attended the rehab’s information evening and one week after Joe checked himself in, he checked himself out. He told the rehab’s medical director that he wanted to get high more than he wanted to make his mom happy.
I encouraged Donna to take the advice of the rehab’s family support manager, which included locking Joe out of the house. She didn’t like the advice. She thought Joe had left rehab because he was lonely and missed her.
The last time I went to see Donna, Joe was passed out on her living room floor, looking like a poster boy for an anti-meth campaign. Donna was in the kitchen cleaning his shoes.
