Suitcases are rolling. Backpacks strain at the seams. Laundry bags scream for air. Watching students check in at a nearby college, I recall another check-in day, years ago. The night before taking off for college, don’t most kids pack? They decide what goes into the suitcase, what can wait for Christmas break, what goes to …
Recently, a friend shared that she was funding her daughter’s post-graduate education. She sounded apologetic. It’s funny how sometimes parents think there must be some clear demarcation line – some age or achievement or victory level – where we STOP giving our kids money. Add addiction, it gets even more complicated. Jacob worked as a …
An administrator at our local treatment center recently stepped aside for several months following surgery. His absence reminds me how important such people are to our loved ones with addiction. Like all professions, addiction treatment attracts the good and the bad. Sometimes the good ones are hard to find. They were for me. Even though …
Name a fear, and there’s probably a word for it. Fears have names. And sometimes the names are more frightening than the fear itself. Consider these (just for fun?): Nomophobia is the irrational fear of being without a mobile phone or internet access. Athazagoraphobia is an intense fear of being forgotten or forgetting someone or …
I am seated at an outdoor café lunching with a friend after several months’ absence. We barely scan the menu before the talk turns to our children, and then their peers. These are the now grown kids we both watched in the high school marching band, on the outdoor track, in the auditorium at back-to-school …
July 4th makes me think about taxes. It’s not what you think. It’s not about “taxation without representation” or the tax on tea that helped spark a war with a king. It’s about the ties to April 15 – and something my son once said. When Jacob was in high school, and slowly numbing himself …
He had been sober for 6 months. The moment felt so fragile, like a porcelain teacup teetering on the table’s edge. One tiny shake of the house – a truck rumbling outside or a jet flying too low overhead- might send it crashing to the floor. If it shatters into a dozen pieces, can it …
According to both online and published reports, credit card scams are up. But what’s that got to do with addiction? Just ask any parent of a teenager or young adult. It’s bad enough when your card is hacked from someone “outside.” But when it happens inside your household, it is even more painful. Today it’s …
Somewhere between spring and summer is another season: graduation. It’s a season when expectations run high. Not just for the graduate, expecting that one shining moment on stage…. But even more so for the parents. What mom or dad hasn’t sat on a folding chair or a hardwood bleacher and watched their child among hundreds …
Twelve men and women sit around a table agreeing on what should come next. The subject of their discussion lays sprawled out on the floor, big, brown and unflappable. A loud gnawing emanates from his corner. He’s chewing on a bone, oblivious to the decision that will bring in others of his species. The all-volunteer …