The Dangers of Being Alone

One of the hardest things to understand about someone that is addicted is that amidst all the hurt and pain, they really do, desperately, need you.

The journey of grief is different for all of us. It is something that literally changes from day to day. One thing you are faced with is what to do with all of your loved one’s stuff. Shortly after Lauren’s death we asked many of her friends if they wanted a piece of jewelry, clothes they remembered her wearing, or some of her drawings as a memento. Then we worked through the process of giving her clothes to charities, women’s groups that worked with girls trying to rebuild their lives and so on. There are still several things we still must pass on and from time to time we run into items we didn’t expect. My wife did that the other day.

My son’s girlfriend turned Twenty-One this week. That’s exciting! While we were trying to figure out what we might give her, Nereida stumbled on a bracelet we bought for Lauren on her Twenty-First birthday from Pandora.

We thought it would be the perfect gift for Alicia (Evan’s girlfriend) since she was turning Twenty-One and Lauren liked her very much. In fact, Alicia was the only girlfriend Evan ever had that Lauren approved of, lol. She was very protective of Evan and she always told him when she thought he was being taken advantage of, or she felt people did not have the best motives. She was very good at sensing where people were coming from, a gift, inherited by my father I believe.

The bracelet had several charms on it. One was one of those hearts that is divided in two. People often share each half with one another. When Nereida and I gave the bracelet to Lauren in February of 2016, Lauren quietly went to her mom and told her she wanted to give Nereida (Laurens Mom) the other heart because their hearts were so deeply connected.

At the time Lauren gave the half a heart to her mom, we did not know she was trapped in a deepening spiral of addiction, and yet Lauren knew, despite her pain, she needed to be connected to someone that really cared. That someone for Lauren, was always her mom.

The worst day of my life was the day I heard my wife’s frantic voice scream into the phone that our daughter was dead. There is nothing I can say to describe what that feels like.

There was another challenging day less than 40 days before Laurens death.

On that day we were in the ER. We had been there for many long, stressful and draining hours as a result of Lauren overdosing, two days in a row.

By Five-Thirty PM, the hospital informed us that Lauren would be released. I was dumfounded, disbelief flooded my mind and fear gripped me. I explained to the hospital that although Lauren was not suicidal, it was obvious that she was at risk of making a very poor choice that could cause her to lose her life. This of course, sounds insane to the average mind, anyone would want to stop after overdosing two days in a row. In “Brighter Days” you can read how drugs can literally alter the brain to hinder a young person’s ability to make rational decisions, especially if they started using drugs in their early teens. I begged the hospital to please keep her, detox her, save her, do anything except let her back out on the street. This led to several more hours worth of behind the scenes conversations among hospital officials as we waited – numb – in a tiny, dark (by Laurens choice) room. We spent nearly all the time trying to help Lauren see why it was so important she stay. Our attempts were not being met with much success. Lauren was angry, suffering the pain of withdrawal and very, very, afraid.

Lauren had a very bad experience at a psych ward in another hospital. It was frightening for all of us but for Lauren it was a real eye-opener that seemed to initiate a period of her doing well with her eating. This was shortly before Lauren went to an eating disorder facility. We still did not know Lauren was addicted. We prayed desperately it would be a turning point for her, but it did not last. Lauren once said in a Facebook post “many people with addiction, including myself, have said at least once (for me at least, I said this hundreds of times) I don’t want to do this anymore’ and may very well be tired of and disgusted of doing the drug but physically and mentally cannot stop. repeating this cycle of saying ‘I’m going to stop using’ and the very next day or even hours later doing that drug.”

Sometime past 8PM someone from the Psych Department entered the room to tell us that they were going to admit Lauren for detox on the condition that she could not leave until she completed the detox and had verification that she had been approved for admittance to a residential treatment program that she would go to, under our supervision, the moment she left the hospital. We agreed!

In that moment all of Laurens anger, fear, and pain came to the surface. She was extremely upset and afraid. I am sure she felt cornered and trapped. We argued, and we both said things we wished we had not.

Finally, at 10:20PM they came to bring us to the ward where Lauren would be. The walk to the psych ward seemed very surreal, the only voice was that of the social worker which at that moment sounded like the constant drone of a TV left on in another room. Eventually we ended up in some far corner of the hospital, the kind of area they always seem to put psych wards (within the ward its was actually nicely decorated, but it didn’t feel that way at 10:30 PM, after a grueling day). By this point Lauren had pulled her hootie up over her head so she could not be seen. It was like she wished she could disappear. Her body posture and demeaner was one of complete disheartenment. I looked at her and felt more sadness than I ever have. I wanted to do something, anything to help her, but there was nothing I could do.

Eight days later Lauren did leave the detox. We drove her to a residential treatment center in Northern Connecticut. On our way Lauren begged and pleaded with us to not make her go. As a last attempt to stay the inevitable, she said she would rather go to a year long program in New York we recommended, but we knew it was just empty words driven by fear.

As we all sat in the admissions office there were very few words, Lauren sat in her chair completely despondent. She talked in a strained whisper and would not look up. I remember the polaroid picture they took of her for her paperwork, she looked broken. The few times I have run across that image since LaLa (Lauren) died I cried.

I was the last one to say goodbye to her that night. As I took her into my arms drawing her as close as I could, I began to weep uncontrollably, my body heaved in the way people suffering extreme sadness do. Lauren cried too, as hard I as I had ever seen her cry. We held each other and would not let go. A long time passed, everything in me wanted to take her home and find any other way to help her, but I knew that wouldn’t work.

Amidst the hysteria addiction brings to families and people in crisis that still love each other, It doesn’t always seem that addicts really want that connection, but most of them do, even when they pretend, they don’t.

This weeks featured image is by Brooke Shaden, it’s called “The Dangers of Being Alone”.