Our Journey from Chaos to Comfort – Part 1

On July 6, 2017, as I walked beside my daughter for the final time, the strangest thought hit my mind. I stood with her as she entered the world, breach and in crisis. Her doctor had once said, “That’s my miracle baby,” and so she was to my wife and me.

Since about the age of 15, her preferred name was “LaLa.” At 92 pounds, with blonde hair, she was beautiful, smart, full of life, and like many of us, in emotional pain. I always made a point of calling her by her birth name, Lauren, even when it upset her. I had my reasons, but today the reasons don’t matter. I wish I called her “LaLa” as much as she wanted me to, because it made her happy.

One year and 34 days earlier, I stood in a parking lot as a dozen patients walked from one building to another for a family group session at a residential eating disorder program. I looked on in fear as my daughter ran away from us across the parking lot screaming, “I don’t belong here!” At that moment, I realized something was deeply hurting LaLa, something I did not understand and which I was powerless to stop. For me that summer of 2016 will always be remembered as “The Summer of Driving.” The four weeks Lala was in treatment for anorexia were an endless stream of trips every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday driving back and forth to Massachusetts from our home in southern Connecticut to be with our daughter in what I thought was the lowest point of her life. I was wrong. Each new turn in her story brought us deeper into a dark and frightening abyss we could not seem to escape.

LaLa completed that eating disorder program in 26 days, having reached the required BMI of 18. We were so proud of her, like we would be many times afterward. In my mind, I believed—wished—she was fixed. Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way.

Lauren entered that program with a DUI charge hanging over her head. It was that arrest which caused her anxiety to escalate so much that she could not decide whether to do treatment locally, so she could live home, or go away to a residential program. She begged me to make the choice for her. It is not uncommon for anorexics to experience increased anxiety; having that knowledge greatly influenced our decision to send her to a program in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Having completed the program in Waltham successfully, LaLa’s next step in treatment was immediately to start partial care at a local Intense Outpatient Facility (IOP) thirty-five minutes from our home; this meant more driving. “Partial” means it was a full-day, five-days-a-week program that was just as intense as residential treatment, but patients did not sleep there. Lauren hated the new program and couldn’t adjust to it. My wife and I now know why she felt that way, but we did not understand in the moment: We were in the dark. We were fearful she would lose ground in the progress she had made while at the residential facility for anorexia, so we made the choice to build a team of private doctors and counselors who would provide a full array of care for Lauren equivalent to what she would receive at the Intense Outpatient Program. The team was led by a psychiatrist who practiced the Maudsley treatment, which integrates family members into the process of an individual’s recovery from an eating disorder. The treatment was initially developed for the care of drug addiction, but that didn’t matter for us, we thought. In a short while, Lauren, for the first time in her life, was over 100 pounds. I wept tears of joy with her mom the day of Lauren’s weigh-in. She later confessed to me that she was not sure she really weighed over 100 pounds. Anorexics are masters at loading up for weigh-ins and even inventing ways to carry extra weight. I told her I chose to believe she was a legitimate 111 pounds.

Less than two weeks after our custom plan began, the world went completely dark for us and our son, LaLa’s twin brother. The events of Sunday, July 16, 2016, revealed we had no idea how overwhelming life had become for LaLa. That weekend was one of the rare times in Lauren’s life when she spent the previous night over at a friend’s house. At about 10:30 a.m. that day, just as our church service was winding down, my wife received a call that would permanently change our lives. By the end of that day, we learned Lauren had been left for dead on a bench outside a Dunkin Donuts. Thankfully, two off-duty EMS workers saved her life with Narcan. We were devastated to learn that our beautiful girl was plagued not only by anxiety and anorexia but also by addiction. That realization helped us understand why Lauren couldn’t adjust to the Intense Outpatient Program. From that moment forward, I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, caught up in the twister, but heroin was the Wicked Witch, and there would be no ruby red shoes.

By October 2016, Lauren enrolled in her first residential treatment program for heroin addiction. In what I consider to be nothing short of a miracle, Lauren had been accepted to a highly regarded facility that often hosts world-renowned A-listers. She was excited, upbeat, and motivated, and my wife and I were happy for her. Once again, we believed our daughter was going to be all right. I remember saying to the young lady assigned to us, “She is different this time. She is really happy to be here, and she really wants to get better.” As we hugged good-bye, Lauren whispered in my ear, “Dad, is it okay if I buy cigarettes with my spending card? Giving up heroin is so hard, and cigarettes help calm me down.” As a Pentecostal pastor, cigarettes are frowned upon in our denomination, but I understood exactly what Lauren was talking about because, thirty-three years earlier, I had kicked the cocaine habit. I answered, “Of course, honey.” However, there was something I had forgotten from my own addiction days that all addicts know.

Please stop in next week for Part 2 of Our Journey from Chaos to Comfort

This week’s featured image is by Brooke Shaden entitled “A Storm to Move Mountains”