This could have been anyone's son. Fate may hand our kids hurdles but often in spite of our best efforts, they stumble and fall.
By Susan Creamer Joy - Wednesday 02 Nov 2011
Until this moment I have purposely danced around an area of my life that in many ways is my life but for several reasons has remained deep in the soft, holding cell at the frayed and care-worn center of my heart. If you go there, you will find every filament, fiber and microcosmic tissue throbbing in a unifying thrust of unconditional love protecting the essence, image of and ultimate hope for my son, Griffin.
My son is a drug addict and has been so to one degree or another since he was nineteen years old. In late August he celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday under the same conditions in which he has celebrated all but one of his birthdays since 2005: as an inmate in a correctional facility.
Given that he is a young man of extremely high intelligence, he managed to fund his addiction by a cleverly executed scheme of prescription fraud. This is what he was sentenced for. Again.
The first time he was arrested he spent eighteen months at different facilities in two states and several counties satisfying the various infractions in each, but at no time in any facility did he receive any sort of rehabilitative counseling or aid. None. Do we wonder why recidivism is so high?
Two years ago in the predawn hours of Halloween he was released from the county jail, yet just over one year later he was arrested once again. This time he was sent to prison. For a few months after his initial Halloween release he was doing well, but over time as the same buttons were being pushed and still without recourse to viable coping skills, he slowly retreated to the only form of consolation and escape that he has known as an adult: prescription pain medication.
Griffin is a charming guy – a massive charming guy standing nearly six foot six and weighing well over three-hundred pounds. While this exaggerated stature has been standard for him since birth; it is, nevertheless, a size that has always exceeded his ability to handle the notice it brought him.
From a very early age people assumed he was always much older than he was. That did not always bode well. When people assume you are five or six and yet you behave as though you are three, they tend to draw some unflattering conclusions about your emotional maturity and mental capacity and unfortunately, many had no reservations about voicing their asinine opinions and observations right in front of him.
People can bring astoundingly damaging energy to the function of opinion.
If Griffin has one weakness of character, it would be his overriding need to be loved and admired. When he was very young his peers feared his size and exuberance and because of this, had a tendency to run from him. Godzilla faired better in Tokyo than Griffin did on the playground.
But as he grew older and they realized that he in no way regarded his physical presence as an advantage, they took the opposite position and he became the goat. He was a sweet, affable, sometimes gullible and gentle giant and nothing makes a small bully feel more empowered than by taking a larger kid down.
He played baseball and basketball in elementary and middle schools and excelled at both, especially baseball where he still holds the record for balls hit clean out of the ballpark and into the woods. However, because his size so greatly exceeded the height and weight requirements of the Pop Warner Football league, he was not able to participate in the one sport most suited to his monolithic frame.
That changed when he reached high school.
By this time, too, he was so eager to find peer acceptance that I do believe he would have taken up wing-walking or bull running if it would have earned him their regard. But he didn’t have to do anything that risky. All he had to do was be big, put on a helmet and knock people down on the football field – simple as that, and he did so readily.
Suddenly, he was a hero and with his bright mind, gregarious nature and quick humor he quickly became one of the most popular kids in school. Unfortunately, within his own mind absolution did not fully come and the reality of his earlier years kept him a prisoner of disbelief and insecurity. He felt as though he still needed to be continually vigilant in his quest to please or he might just as suddenly find himself again the target instead of the bullet.
For the time being, however, he was the largest bullet any high school coach in the history of the school had ever seen. Not only that, the kid was fast and scouts from colleges all across the country were coming with scholarships at the ready. He was a mammoth, treasured, testosterone-fueled commodity.
So, when he hurt his shoulder during fall practice in his senior year and the team doctor (who had formerly been so for a professional football team in another state) began prescribing him with injections of steroids and pain medications, the ramifications initially escaped our notice.
Sadly, they didn’t escape Griffin’s. What these jock-cocktails provided most was a steady emotional lift with an undercurrent of invincibility and euphoria. He was happy and a part of the team, only now if anyone didn’t like him, he didn’t care – not consciously, anyway. What he gradually discovered was that as long as he was taking these substances, he felt good about himself.
In time the news of his bad shoulder leaked through the gossip mill to the colleges courting him and one by one they dropped their offers. As the offers stopped, so did the attention.
By graduation day his glory days had ended but not his dependency on the glory drugs.
In the years following high school I watched my son disappear. He had a few unsuccessful attempts at college, culinary school and a variety of fairly respectable jobs but all were undermined by his increasingly insatiable dependency on chasing happy.
It wasn’t happiness that he was after. Happiness is a state of being, a subjective emotion that wraps around our outlook like a sacred ribbon around our best day. Griffin was chasing some sort of safe boxed thing, a stagnant puddle of compartmentalized indifference, a chunk of calm ringed by bursts of artificial joy and a hollow parody of confidence. He had never fully known happiness and the congenial rush from trustworthy peer support, so how was he to know what to look for?
Of course, over time all the concomitant ills of addiction came into play as well: the nearly pathological lying, stealing, manipulating, irresponsibility and connivance. By the time he was 23 he was no longer recognizable by habit or attitude and after a couple of suicide attempts, neither were we.
Our lives had been voluntarily hijacked because we could not turn away, and all that we had emotionally, financially and prayerfully went into trying to help him find his way to a point of peace and a place where he could start over.
I’ve discovered that if a pattern continues long enough and you are able to fool yourself into believing that you are in control while in reality you are actually playing both sides of the game, eventually you will be buried by not only your addiction but by your deception, as well. Soon every single exhale becomes toxic until nothing whole and good can stand in your presence, and those who try become either victims of your declivitous game or they become casualties of your indifference to anything that does not facilitate your need to escape.
Griffin has been incarcerated this time since early December 2009; and while the deep sorrow attendant to his situation as a recidivist addict and offender and the purgatorial consequence of his actions never leaves me for one minute, I can honestly say that at this moment I am not only filled with hope for his recovery, but I am filled with pride as well. For the first time since this dark journey began, he has taken full ownership of all his misdeeds. This may not sound like much, but denial is a major part of addiction, and in the past I have heard him blame everyone but the Pope for his problems.
I still grapple with ragged grief over the situation in general and missing him in particular. On my visits I am not able to hug or hold him or come any closer then the bullet proof glass partition will accommodate and our conversation is over a phone receiver. We have come to greet and leave one another with the ritual of pressing our hands together and matching them up against the glass that separates us. Even as a man, his giant hand remains that of my child; and as it engulfs and extends well beyond the silhouette of my own, I am reminded only of the corresponding enormity of his great and loving heart.
His heart suffers physically now, too. As a result of his years of excessive abuse, he has developed cardiac arrhythmia and has already had two mild heart attacks, one before he was taken into custody and another, not long afterward. The concern for his health has driven me to my knees more than once and keeps me firmly grounded in prayer and awake deep into the night with predictable regularity as I barter with God and the angels and any celestial intercessor who will listen for the restored health of his body and his soul.
But I am committed to love and lift my magnificent son out of this wretched pit of abuse and self-sabotage just as he did for me. Thirty years ago I was spiraling out of control on a chemical vortex of drugs and supercharged apathy after leaving a grossly ill-conceived but blessedly brief, nine-month-long marriage of violent abuse and cruelty.
At twenty-five years old and in the aftermath of yet another one of my compendious failures, I felt devoid of hope, saw few options and had returned to the derelict risk-taking of my teens with little regard whether I lived or died. By the intervention of providence, I conceived a child and from the moment this reality became known to me, so did another lifesaving conception: purpose.
It was time to rededicate myself to seeking the transcendent in life, and I named him Griffin.
My son is still serving time for his insouciance and for the toxic choices he made, but as anyone knows who has a loved one behind bars, he does not serve alone. Penitence and purpose have equal share in love, and it helps to remember that often the most magnificent resurrections are composed of shame and ash. I have no doubt that this Griffin will rise again, and when he does, I will still be holding the fort and cheering him on. Faith and commitment share the rent in this place and this house is big enough for all kinds of miracles. Bring ‘em on.
My son is a drug addict and has been so to one degree or another since he was nineteen years old. In late August he celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday under the same conditions in which he has celebrated all but one of his birthdays since 2005: as an inmate in a correctional facility.
Given that he is a young man of extremely high intelligence, he managed to fund his addiction by a cleverly executed scheme of prescription fraud. This is what he was sentenced for. Again.
The first time he was arrested he spent eighteen months at different facilities in two states and several counties satisfying the various infractions in each, but at no time in any facility did he receive any sort of rehabilitative counseling or aid. None. Do we wonder why recidivism is so high?
Two years ago in the predawn hours of Halloween he was released from the county jail, yet just over one year later he was arrested once again. This time he was sent to prison. For a few months after his initial Halloween release he was doing well, but over time as the same buttons were being pushed and still without recourse to viable coping skills, he slowly retreated to the only form of consolation and escape that he has known as an adult: prescription pain medication.
Griffin is a charming guy – a massive charming guy standing nearly six foot six and weighing well over three-hundred pounds. While this exaggerated stature has been standard for him since birth; it is, nevertheless, a size that has always exceeded his ability to handle the notice it brought him.
From a very early age people assumed he was always much older than he was. That did not always bode well. When people assume you are five or six and yet you behave as though you are three, they tend to draw some unflattering conclusions about your emotional maturity and mental capacity and unfortunately, many had no reservations about voicing their asinine opinions and observations right in front of him.
People can bring astoundingly damaging energy to the function of opinion.
If Griffin has one weakness of character, it would be his overriding need to be loved and admired. When he was very young his peers feared his size and exuberance and because of this, had a tendency to run from him. Godzilla faired better in Tokyo than Griffin did on the playground.
But as he grew older and they realized that he in no way regarded his physical presence as an advantage, they took the opposite position and he became the goat. He was a sweet, affable, sometimes gullible and gentle giant and nothing makes a small bully feel more empowered than by taking a larger kid down.
He played baseball and basketball in elementary and middle schools and excelled at both, especially baseball where he still holds the record for balls hit clean out of the ballpark and into the woods. However, because his size so greatly exceeded the height and weight requirements of the Pop Warner Football league, he was not able to participate in the one sport most suited to his monolithic frame.
That changed when he reached high school.
By this time, too, he was so eager to find peer acceptance that I do believe he would have taken up wing-walking or bull running if it would have earned him their regard. But he didn’t have to do anything that risky. All he had to do was be big, put on a helmet and knock people down on the football field – simple as that, and he did so readily.
Suddenly, he was a hero and with his bright mind, gregarious nature and quick humor he quickly became one of the most popular kids in school. Unfortunately, within his own mind absolution did not fully come and the reality of his earlier years kept him a prisoner of disbelief and insecurity. He felt as though he still needed to be continually vigilant in his quest to please or he might just as suddenly find himself again the target instead of the bullet.
For the time being, however, he was the largest bullet any high school coach in the history of the school had ever seen. Not only that, the kid was fast and scouts from colleges all across the country were coming with scholarships at the ready. He was a mammoth, treasured, testosterone-fueled commodity.
So, when he hurt his shoulder during fall practice in his senior year and the team doctor (who had formerly been so for a professional football team in another state) began prescribing him with injections of steroids and pain medications, the ramifications initially escaped our notice.
Sadly, they didn’t escape Griffin’s. What these jock-cocktails provided most was a steady emotional lift with an undercurrent of invincibility and euphoria. He was happy and a part of the team, only now if anyone didn’t like him, he didn’t care – not consciously, anyway. What he gradually discovered was that as long as he was taking these substances, he felt good about himself.
In time the news of his bad shoulder leaked through the gossip mill to the colleges courting him and one by one they dropped their offers. As the offers stopped, so did the attention.
By graduation day his glory days had ended but not his dependency on the glory drugs.
In the years following high school I watched my son disappear. He had a few unsuccessful attempts at college, culinary school and a variety of fairly respectable jobs but all were undermined by his increasingly insatiable dependency on chasing happy.
It wasn’t happiness that he was after. Happiness is a state of being, a subjective emotion that wraps around our outlook like a sacred ribbon around our best day. Griffin was chasing some sort of safe boxed thing, a stagnant puddle of compartmentalized indifference, a chunk of calm ringed by bursts of artificial joy and a hollow parody of confidence. He had never fully known happiness and the congenial rush from trustworthy peer support, so how was he to know what to look for?
Of course, over time all the concomitant ills of addiction came into play as well: the nearly pathological lying, stealing, manipulating, irresponsibility and connivance. By the time he was 23 he was no longer recognizable by habit or attitude and after a couple of suicide attempts, neither were we.
Our lives had been voluntarily hijacked because we could not turn away, and all that we had emotionally, financially and prayerfully went into trying to help him find his way to a point of peace and a place where he could start over.
I’ve discovered that if a pattern continues long enough and you are able to fool yourself into believing that you are in control while in reality you are actually playing both sides of the game, eventually you will be buried by not only your addiction but by your deception, as well. Soon every single exhale becomes toxic until nothing whole and good can stand in your presence, and those who try become either victims of your declivitous game or they become casualties of your indifference to anything that does not facilitate your need to escape.
Griffin has been incarcerated this time since early December 2009; and while the deep sorrow attendant to his situation as a recidivist addict and offender and the purgatorial consequence of his actions never leaves me for one minute, I can honestly say that at this moment I am not only filled with hope for his recovery, but I am filled with pride as well. For the first time since this dark journey began, he has taken full ownership of all his misdeeds. This may not sound like much, but denial is a major part of addiction, and in the past I have heard him blame everyone but the Pope for his problems.
I still grapple with ragged grief over the situation in general and missing him in particular. On my visits I am not able to hug or hold him or come any closer then the bullet proof glass partition will accommodate and our conversation is over a phone receiver. We have come to greet and leave one another with the ritual of pressing our hands together and matching them up against the glass that separates us. Even as a man, his giant hand remains that of my child; and as it engulfs and extends well beyond the silhouette of my own, I am reminded only of the corresponding enormity of his great and loving heart.
His heart suffers physically now, too. As a result of his years of excessive abuse, he has developed cardiac arrhythmia and has already had two mild heart attacks, one before he was taken into custody and another, not long afterward. The concern for his health has driven me to my knees more than once and keeps me firmly grounded in prayer and awake deep into the night with predictable regularity as I barter with God and the angels and any celestial intercessor who will listen for the restored health of his body and his soul.
But I am committed to love and lift my magnificent son out of this wretched pit of abuse and self-sabotage just as he did for me. Thirty years ago I was spiraling out of control on a chemical vortex of drugs and supercharged apathy after leaving a grossly ill-conceived but blessedly brief, nine-month-long marriage of violent abuse and cruelty.
At twenty-five years old and in the aftermath of yet another one of my compendious failures, I felt devoid of hope, saw few options and had returned to the derelict risk-taking of my teens with little regard whether I lived or died. By the intervention of providence, I conceived a child and from the moment this reality became known to me, so did another lifesaving conception: purpose.
It was time to rededicate myself to seeking the transcendent in life, and I named him Griffin.
My son is still serving time for his insouciance and for the toxic choices he made, but as anyone knows who has a loved one behind bars, he does not serve alone. Penitence and purpose have equal share in love, and it helps to remember that often the most magnificent resurrections are composed of shame and ash. I have no doubt that this Griffin will rise again, and when he does, I will still be holding the fort and cheering him on. Faith and commitment share the rent in this place and this house is big enough for all kinds of miracles. Bring ‘em on.