welcome my name is natasha sherman and i am your host so recently couple of months ago there was a televised new jersey town hall about the opioid epidemic so there is an opioid epidemic nationwide and i think new jersey it was stated is three to five times higher than the rest of the country so there clearly is a problem and it clearly is serious so i decided to do some interviews just so we can educate ourselves and find out what there is that we can do my guest today is susan marco and she is one of the co founders of an organization called family addiction network welcome thank you for having me happy to have you here and so we're going to talk about family addiction network and what you do but first let's get into like how did you get involved how was your life impacted so  about three years i moved in with him and my soon to be stepson we got married in two thousand and eleven and were still happily married but shortly after the time that i moved in with them it became evident to me that my stepson was using drugs i knew he was getting high but for me the tosh i didn't heroin was never anything that i knew about so you know it wasn't in my purview i didn't think about it and i thought well he's just being a kid like other kids and it's become commonplace here you know he's experimenting is probably smoking a little pot maybe he's doing some other things i don't really know now i will mention that my husband at the time was the captain of the west long branch police department  so and obviously was a single dad did he know his son with experimenting with drugs you know he may have but there's this thing that happens that and it became evident to me you know living in the situation you know you use the word denial but i think it's you know you see your children and you want them to you want to see their potential you want them to be all that they can be in the best they can be so sometimes think it's easy when they veer off course it's easy to overlook it sure because you think it's a stage it's a word a yes and you know sometimes we think denial there's something right in your face and you're denying it but this was not right in your face it looked somewhat like the norm yes it was rather insidious actually and you know through that gradual process one day larry was at work and my  stepson showed up and told him that he was using heroin so he showed up at your house showed up at police headquarters and said i'm using heroin need to borrow some money that oh and by the way i have a big problem wow wow so you know that shifted things for us but still what do you do with that information how do you you know we both looked at each other like what do we do now and what does it actually mean what does it mean exactly and so shortly after that and i had my time i don't have all the dates but shortly after that there was an incident where he ended up in the emergency room at the hospital and he was he had used and so they gave us the name of ana they gave us maybe twenty treatment centers in new jersey at the time and so they treat him and then they say here yes they they go for  anything to treat him there was nothing to do for him at that time right ok so this was in probably two thousand and nine or two thousand and ten we've made great strides since then in harms of how what they do in  hospital when someone shows up in active use right you know there are recovery specialists who will come in and help get them into treatment help encourage them to go to treatment but in those days the only thing they had to offer us was a sheet of paper with no letterhead with a list of treatment centers this was a friday afternoon and so i thought well i got to call the insurance company and i got a call so i started making it larry and i both started making phone calls and we found a treatment center in north jersey that available so we you know i called my insurance company and they said yes we bring him up larry brings him up drops him off i mean he here's this eighteen or nineteen year old kid and he's just dropped them off at this place we had no idea if it was a good place bet but we just knew that they had a bed so we dropped him off there and shortly after it was a week or we going to have into his treatment maybe it was two weeks they called me from the treatment center and said that our insurance company was denying the residential part of his treatment because he did not fail at an intensive outpatient treatment first you first have to bail at an intensive outpatient treatment yes but fail what does that mean this is a drug that could kill you it only takes one time right to kill you so i got on the phone with my insurance company and i said my stepson is laying on the couch with needles hanging out of his arms how much how much more failure do you need i was infuriated really can't imagine but you know it was what it was we brought him home and we enrolled him and intensive outpatient treatment in freehold that was terrific and he did well for a short period of time and then he started using again which is typical i find out now through all the experience i have now anyway so  found a treatment center in florida and our insurance was it was one hundred percent for us gratefully lot of people are not that lucky but was so we sent him to florida for three months and he did really well and after that first three months treatment he was ready to get out he begged us to come home and i didn't really want to come home i love that kid but i did not want him to come home because i i feared that coming back into the same situation he would fall right back into his his usage and what did you want him to do i didn't know i wanted him to at least have the opportunity to be in a sober living  environment which i think he was for at that that particular time he was for a short time but it wasn't great and he was not happy there it was very hard for him and this is a kid who  you know when he when he went into high school he was bullied because he i think he didn't really know how to fit in he's a youth a full kid and he has great potential and i mean i look at him and i see this beautiful soul and i just love him but at that age he didn't know where to put himself and some heartbreaking thing about that just to get off topic but not probably ninety percent of kids feel that way only they have found some way to strategize get by do all the things they need to do but just i remember being in a training once there were probably a hundred of us and somebody said how many of you thought you were in the a group and nobody stood up now some of them were probably perceived as being in the a group but nobody experience themselves yeah so it's very troubling so again that's some place where intervention of some sort or education needs to take place yes so here he is he struggled and then so we had a conversation as a family and i said to my husband ok i will agree to him coming home but we're going to have to structure our lives like the treatment center like a sober living house he's going to have to follow certain rules and if he doesn't yeah but on the step parent and i didn't raise him i came into the situation a little later so ultimately the holding the rules was really up to my husband and it's it's difficult death it's really difficult because you don't want to see your children suffer yeah so he came home and he did really well for about a year he was you know following the rules we had a few rough patches but and then frankly he had been arrested several years before that and his court case came up and he was issued probation for two years and he went to his first appearance at probation and then he relapsed again but this time  this is a hard story for me to tell he was with some friends and he came home and he was down in our t v room larry and i were sleeping and somewhere in the course of the over night he overdosed lying on the floor in front of the t v like he did a million times lying on the floor he was lying on the floor he's playing video games and he had his head set sure and i got up in the morning i had work that morning and i came downstairs and i saw him on the floor and he did it again you know he passed out you know to the t v and he was making a sound that i had never heard before but i assumed that it was snoring or some kind of sleep sound and  i did a couple things and i went upstairs and thank goodness to this day i'm grateful that larry actually woke up and i said you should check on him because he passed out on the floor again and he went downstairs and two seconds later yelled up and said he's got breathing call nine one one it was horrifying so i got on the phone and i called the paramedics and by this time i believe my husband was the chief or he was soon to be the chief and a little side story he went out to his car to get his oxygen tank you know he he was working on my stepson to try to revive him and he went to get the oxygen tank and it was empty because he was an administrator he wasn't in his car he never had a need for those things in the trunk that he did when he was on the road so but long story short the paramedics came in they were able to revive my stepson they gave him an r can but at the time was not available to the general public the best event in that ever was when they first administered the shot he sat bolt up in the ambulance and he said i got to quit and a shot of relief went through me that he could formulate a sentence yes that you know he had what had happened was he aspirated because he was lying on his back when he passed out he had vomit anywhere you vomited any aspirated and we got to the hospital and they gave him another shot when he got to the hospital he became very belligerent and they decided the best course for him was to induce a coma so they put him in a coma for five days to allow his heart and lungs to heal from the aspiration needless to say it was a very long five days but when he came to  he looked at his father and i and he said don't even say anything i'm ready to go back to treatment so i think it was we hoped it was bottom for him you know they say you have to have that qualifying moment you know where right you realize oh my god this is really so we found a different treatment center that a friend of ours had been to the actually one of my co founders her daughter had been there and it was a great treatment center and we put him there again for another three months treatment he went in he met a girl there and they connected with each other she's from colorado and when they got out of treatment at the same time when suddenly they ended up moving to colorado where he's been ever since right so excuse me you know it when when we were going through this we really were left to our own devices  i didn't know who to call i didn't know where to go to get support the the twelve step program i have great respect for but it didn't feel to me like where i needed to put myself right and i met these two other women one of whom was the woman whose daughter had been in the treatment center and she had a very dear friend who they were in business together for many years their families her ones brother and one's husband have an iconic business in our town and unbeknownst to each other they both had a family member who was struggling and when they discovered that they both were kind of like what do we do you know they write also were not met they went to an al anon meeting and they did not feel a whole they didn't feel a draw there and i know you know many people in the twelve step world will say you have to keep going to different meetings to find one that fits for you but i don't know that everyone is inclined to do that and i so feel that you know as a family member yes it's a family disease but you know not everyone is at a in a place where they're ready to step into that kind of work right so i kind of see us as an alternative but not in any kind of way negative about the twelve step program but just somewhere else that people who don't feel a draw there can at least come and be met by people who are going through the same thing that they are so currently from what i saw on the website is you have meetings once a month we have it's open to family members who are having issues with addiction and what and one of the things that i read that resonated but i would like you to say a little bit more about it is it's not a place for giving advice it's a place for creating the space of safety where people can just be heard so say a little bit about that ok so well i want to just backtrack a little bit and tell you that we have to fold what we do so i bring in every month a speaker  for about forty minutes someone will come in and talk on various topics choices sometimes it could be about the treatment industry it could be about what to do with your loved one when they come home from treatment i had a fellow come in from a local treatment center who did a whole piece on mindfulness and gave some suggestions for what do you do when you're in the midst of it yeah and you just want to rip your someone's face off were there your own hair out how do you cope with that and i mean people can go on the website and look back and see the different topics that we've had but the other part of it i think is having a place where you can come and sit face to face and if you need to speak that you have the floor and can speak about whatever your issue is and it's a it's accel front kind of health group so you know we like to give people the opportunity to say what they need to say and sometimes what happens is someone else in the room will have been through the same thing and have a piece of information that might be helpful to them right and so it has kind of evolved into resource sharing a resource sharing and you know it's the hardest thing about having a family member in my opinion is the feeling that you're alone you know that you're out there in a canoe without a paddle and there's no one there's no way to reach out yeah you know i think that right now because it is an epidemic it's not so much a question of god this is really unusual like the freak in this you know it's like almost mainstream until it hits you then it's not quite so mainstream it's you know  impacting your entire life but i think that what happens is that people feel shame yes people feel like and it's not like they're faults but as human beings that's where we go i did something wrong and i think that's where people need support but also i think again people look to feel like they're not alone and even if they have the resources there's this sense of needing to be in a community of people that understand you know the other part of that is to i think and i mean i what i want to say is you know in suburbia you know everybody's hustling and bustling and the kids are going to this event and that activity and you know life keeps rolling along and easy to overlook or to turn away from the possibility of addiction because it's so it's hard to find it is horrific hard to see and it's hard to admit and you know the at a certain point i'm very like being thrown out of your home i'm very fortunate because i have friends who are artists and hers and you know when we were going through this i could pick up the phone and call any number of people who would sit and hold time for me and listen and be an ear for me but not everybody has that  and so you know being able to sit in a room with someone who is willing to feel what you feel is very powerful and i think again you know there there's the whole issue of addiction itself and what the addict is dealing with and you and i had this conversation before the show this idea of it's hard for some people to understand addiction as a disease  and as you said somebody you overheard somebody say well they made the choice and as we talked about you made the choice to try a drug or to try a substance or you're out with your friends it's not like you made this choice where oh i think i'm going to become an addict or a drug addict or whatever i mean people make choices to go out and drink with dinner you know it's not considered this huge life altering choice however when it crosses over and nobody goes there thinking that's going to happen to me when it crosses over sure the first choice might have been a bad choice but we make bad choices all the time for eating things we don't know which shouldn't eat you know over drinking whatever it is the idea though that once it captures your body and your psyche it is now a disease it is not something i mean there is a huge physical impact withdrawal is a huge physical impact and you kind of have been overtaken by something now you've got a disease and i think that's one of the things that it's important for people to recognise because it's very easy to sit there and be kind of you know holier than thou like i would never but it was say look at your own life there's places you're addicted to your behavior your food whatever it is it's the same issue except it hasn't gotten out of control and whatever it is that you're doing hasn't overtaken you physically and emotionally exactly and heroin particularly you don't you don't just dabble with heroin right once you you know once you're married to a man chemistry shifts and you know i'm not an expert and i'm not a you know obviously not a doctor and i don't but it seems to me you know when especially a young person goes out and whether they've tried something in the medicine cabinet or whether they've just socially somebody offered them something and they say oh sure the amounts that they do are not it's not like you're taking one pill so right you know people say well i was in the hospital and i took opiates and i didn't become addicted so it's a complex issue yeah i think there are many reasons for addiction and there are people who are predisposed to let me have a brain chemistry issue and you know i met a young man who said he never felt normal in his entire life in the first time he smoked a joint he felt normal and that just progressed and you know his belief is that he was born that way he was born with a chemical a chemical fission yeah issue and you know the drug filled a void yes yeah so you know the other thing is not my kid until it is yeah nobody wants it to be their kid you know what i say about that now having been through this is if you see something that looks funny to you don't disregard it also what would you have done differently i would have  insisted on finding some kind of therapist or some kind of to when you first noticed that he was probably experimenting would have you have intervened there or where is it that people parent should that's a tough enough question because when i was young i was very insecure and low self esteem and i experimented with things and in the seventy's yeah most everybody did and we didn't have the whole heroin opioid epidemic so that also came in with the you know the the pills and the prescriptions and the easy accessibility and i think again people think trying once is not a big deal except with heroin trying once is the beginning of the end absolutely although i have known people who have gotten their family members into treatment very early and sometimes if they're young enough and you get them into treatment early enough it is possible to climb out right of that so i have a question to ask you we've only got a few minutes left it seems to me that i mean there are gaps everywhere and you and i sitting here are not going to resolve this but i wanted to spark some thought and  so there are gaps everywhere but it occurs to me that people go into recovery they come out and they do ok for a while what should be happening in between that's not happening yeah it's a very good question and i don't know that anyone really has the answer to that i know there are people working on that you know what in terms of even brain chemistry you have what's the link between how come they so easily fall back you know once they've gotten clean and i mean it could be four years eight years i know twelve years you know so i don't really know the answer to that i will speak on a very personal level  and you and i have talked a little bit about this that i feel that there's something missing in our general tool box as human beings as people and a lot of kids now i think don't have coping mechanisms for the insanity that is the world right now i mean obviously our world is upside down and we larry and i laugh a lot because we watched a television show and i can't remember the name of the show but it was it was in the up there was part where the upside down which is the one that the dark right forces were in the upside down and we looked at each other and you know all the time we say we're living in the upside down right now right  but you know the sensitive people the unique people who i used to refer to as the misfits which is how i see myself because i never felt like i fit in anywhere grateful about that now as an adult but well there's  expression that a friend of mine who was a recovering addict fed being terminally unique it's great right we have a minute yes so yes so i feel like we need to figure out ways to help our children grow up with better tools and i'm a proponent of mindfulness and meditation and i feel like that's a very important piece that's missing yeah radical self care yeah yeah that's to me in the recovery world even after they get out and they've done the sober living thing how do you live for the rest of your loved ones who i've met in recovery who are doing well after ten fifteen years they radical south care whether it's  whatever it is or any combination unfortunately we are at the end of our time but thank you so much for being willing to come on the show to talk about something really personal because i think it's a contribution we hope to talk about it from every aspect so thank you thank you so much my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining