The Role of Parents - An Interview with Cheryl

For years Cheryl struggled to find help for son with a substance abuse problem but wasn't able to find proper treatment until she discovered he had a co-occurring mental illness.

Cheryl suspected something was wrong when her son's grades started dropping and he began hanging out with a different crowd at school. But her suspicions were not confirmed until she overheard him talking to friends about using drugs on the phone. Although he denied any involvement with drugs when confronted, she wasted no time in getting him help, beginning a long journey that would last for more than six turbulent years before Mark* was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the road to recovery could truly begin.

At first, Cheryl attempted to send her son to therapy in order to treat his drug abuse, but it proved unsuccessful. She recalls, "Mark was very uncooperative. He wouldn't go to therapy or do what the therapist asked him to do. He wouldn't get drug tested. We'd ground him, but then he would run away."

Her relationship with Mark became increasingly combative as she constantly fought to end his drug use. "When he was home, I would say he wasn't to have drugs in the house. I would check his room. I would go through his stuff. We tried everything we could think of but he wouldn't get off the drugs." Cheryl even begged the police to put her son in jail when he got into trouble with the law, but they refused.

Slowly, she started to reach the end of her rope. She says, "I was desperate. I couldn't handle him. Then I began to look forward to when he was gone. I was nervous while he was (gone), but I didn't know how to deal with him (when he was home). It was constant stress and turmoil. I would cry as I drove down to the gym. I would workout for an hour and then be okay until the next day."

Mark's drug problem also created an atmosphere of discord in the house, adversely affecting her marriage and her other son. Cheryl remarks, "My relationship with my husband was very stressful, because neither of us could agree on what to do for Mark. He tended to ignore it until I would scream and (then) he'd have to deal with it. My younger son had to listen to a lot of yelling and screaming to the point where he became anxious to leave the house and move away because he didn't want to hear it anymore."

It wasn't until Mark was 20 years old that they realized something else was wrong other than his substance use. During a ski trip with his father and grandmother, Mark experienced his first psychotic break. "He just became incoherent, rattling on about stuff that didn't make sense," Cheryl says. They came home early from their trip and that first night home Mark slit his wrists. After being hospitalized for a week, Mark was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Cheryl spent a year taking care of Mark after that frightening episode. Because he was in such a fragile state during that time and was completely dependent on his mother, he discontinued his drug use. But once he started getting better, he began abusing crack cocaine." Cheryl says, "That was very difficult because it just takes over everything. The more he took, the more he wanted. Same thing when he was prescribed Ritalin. He'd take 20 pills at a time and then would be in my bedroom at 3 o'clock in the morning on his hands and knees with a flashlight trying to find (more)."

Mark's crack cocaine habit escalated quickly and he began to steal from his parents. Cheryl recalls, "He would go down to the gas station and offer to fill up people's cars with our gas card and they would give him $25. He would do that 20 times a day, so our gas bill was thousands and thousands of dollars before we caught it. We caught it the last time within 3 days, but even then, he had already spent a couple of thousand dollars. At one time, we kicked him out of the house because he tried to use our credit card to get $15,000 in cash to buy crack cocaine."

Although Mark claimed the drugs helped make the voices he heard disappear, Cheryl says the drug use made his problems worse. "We (had to) hospitalize him for both the drugs and schizophrenia because he would have a psychotic breakdown while he was on the drugs, (or) when he was coming down off of them. (Then) he would be much worse off than he was before he started."

Unfortunately, five years ago, treatment centers that specialize in helping patients with dual diagnoses were extremely rare. Cheryl found that hospitals that treated her son's mental illness often completely ignored his substance abuse problem, while many of the substance abuse clinics and support groups were not prepared to deal with patients who had co-occurring mental health disorders. This created a frustrating cycle of misunderstanding and ineffective treatment. Cheryl explains, "When Mark was in the outpatient clinic, they would try to treat him for the drug abuse but yet the voice (caused by his schizophrenia) would tell him not to go and that they were trying to brainwash him. (The people at the clinic) couldn't understand why he wasn't being cooperative."

Since then, there has been an active movement to deal with the issue of dual diagnoses in both the substance abuse and mental health community. Treatment today for patients with co-occurring disorders is not only more readily available, but those who work in the substance abuse and mental health fields also have a greater understanding of the problem and its complexities.

Ultimately, Cheryl feels Mark's mental illness was partly responsible for his substance abuse and that getting him proper treatment for his schizophrenia was a vital step in ending his drug use. She says, "Until we got the right medication and got him to a point where he wasn't psychotic and the voices weren't bombarding him, (we knew) he would continue (to use) street drugs to self-medicate himself."

When asked if she has any words of advice for parents facing similar problems, Cheryl says, "If you suspect something is wrong then something is wrong, because no parent will just imagine it. If you have any doubts, go with it. Seek help and don't give up. Try to find answers and the earlier you can do it, the better. Unfortunately, no one is going to come to you with the information. You have to be persistent and go after it and hunt for it."

Finding a right match between treatment and child is also extremely important, she emphasizes, and parents must realize there isn't always a quick fix. Cheryl adds, "Just one pill doesn't work. It takes numerous attempts to find the right combination." She goes on to say, "Just because one program wasn't a good match for your child, doesn't mean another might not be. Same thing with a psychologist or a psychiatrist. You probably won't find someone your child will relate to the first time around."

As far as prevention goes, Cheryl states, "My belief is that if you're experiencing any problems with your child at age 12 or 13 and you don't know what those problems are, you need to find out what's bothering them and treat it today-even if it isn't a drug problem-because maybe next year it will be a drug problem. If something is going on, you need to seek help, because kids don't go to parents with the information. Mark says he felt different at 10 or 11, that he could tell something was wrong, but he didn't know what and he never spoke about it to anyone."

For more information about the interaction between mental health disorders and substance abuse, click here.