The Summer of Driving – article

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 at 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.

On Father’s Day 2017, huge changes happened in Lauren’s heart. In church vernacular, she re-dedicated herself to Christ, and the results showed. About a week after this milestone, Lauren did something no one expected. She posted a heartfelt explanation on social media about the struggles she had with her addiction. This was momentous because she always feared people finding out. She would constantly ask us to not tell anyone. Yet there she was, proclaiming to the world: I am an addict and I need help.

In that post, LaLa reminded me of what I had forgotten about addiction: “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.” It was that very dichotomy that thwarted Lauren’s recovery.

Lauren’s anorexia was always an issue when she entered any residential treatment program. The facilities would tell us they would evaluate her and determine if she was a fit for them. None of them ever said they couldn’t help her. The A-lister program was no exception. They said Lauren could enter, as long as she reached certain weight goals each week. Although she had a rough start, she hit her stride and gained weight. Nevertheless, she was released early because she had been sick for a while and the staff felt her physical health was a concern. Lauren begged them to let her stay. I offered to sign a release of liability. I even mentioned the fact that she had gained the weight they wanted. In the end, nothing we said changed the decision. Lauren was asked to leave the addiction treatment facility with less than 12 days to completion.

On November 17, 2016, I picked up Lauren, brokenhearted, as I had been before, and would be again. I tried my best not to let her see that. Instead, I told Lauren how proud I was of her for trying hard. I encouraged her to build on the progress she had made. On that day, she was more than 25 days drug-free. After 25 days, much of the physical element of addiction has diminished. The body does not need the drug anymore, but the cravings are still screaming in the addict’s mind. They can go on for several years.

Lauren attended a Narcotics Anonymous meeting the night we got home. Eventually, I learned she bought heroin at that meeting. Lauren’s pained words still echo in my mind, “…repeating this cycle of saying, ‘I’m going to stop using’ and the very next day, or even hours later, doing that drug.”

In the last 355 days of LaLa’s life, she had been in two residential addiction programs, two IOPs, and worked with one private addiction therapist. She also overdosed on heroin six times. Three of those times my wife saved her life with Narcan. Two of those times LaLa told the EMTs in the ambulance, “Please help me stop. I don’t want to do this anymore. Please help me.”

July 6, 2017, was the last time Lauren used heroin. I wish I knew what led Lauren to use again. I wish she had told us she was struggling with cravings. I wish I could hold her one more time.

About five hours before being reminded of LaLa’s difficult entry into the world, I was driving home from work on a beautiful summer day with the car windows down. I received a call from my wife. I heard her frantic voice scream, “Lauren is dead!” In shock I screamed while slamming my fist against the outside of the car door, “Noooooo, how much more can we take?!” In a frenzy, I told my wife I would be right home, hung up, and called her right back to tell her to call the ambulance, and to administer CPR, but those things had already been done. It was too late.

So, there I stood, outside our home, numb, watching the door of the van close that would bring my little girl to a medical examiner’s table. In a weird way, the macabre processional from her bedroom to the coroner’s van gave me a hollow sense of accomplishment. It whispered through my pain that, although Lauren was only 22 years old, I had finished my job as her dad. Whatever I had done well, whatever mistakes I had made, did not really matter anymore. She was beyond my touch; it was over.

Today, I don’t drive as much as I did during the summer of 2016. All of the chaos that LaLa’s addiction created is gone. After the loss of someone so deeply loved, time seems to crawl. Things that once were important just don’t mean that much now.

What is important for LaLa’s mom and me is to help others as much as we can. Not to fill time, but to warn them and to comfort them as they travel the same chaotic road we did. Lauren’s mom leads 12-week grief recovery programs. I try to help families figure out the best plan for the treatment of their loved one and talk with kids in high school about how small things can build up in their lives and they might end up somewhere they don’t want to be. Most of the time, we remind ourselves that we need to draw close to one another, like we did the summer of 2016, driving back and forth to Massachusetts.