HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO HELP AN ADDICT?

Helping one another in challenging situations is a human instinct. This may come in the form of volunteering our time at a food bank during the holidays or giving a friend a car ride.

However, there are certain situations, such as drug addiction, that we may not know how to help others. I, like many others, would have no idea where to start if I were to discover that a friend or a family member had a drug addiction. Nonetheless, it is not to say I would not step in and at least attempt to understand and google search, "How to help someone suffering from addiction?"

I have to admit that the lengths I would go to, in order to help a family member or friend recover from their drug addiction, is something I go back and forth on. Similarly, David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy: A Father's' Journey Through His Son's Addiction, acknowledges that he also battles with the lengths he will go, to help his son, Nic, recover from his meth addiction.

Throughout the book, Sheff reveals the extent to which a child's addiction consumes a family and, as Sheff admits, can make a parent obsessed with their child's addiction. Further, after reading Sheff’s and his family's experience with addiction, I will help my friend or family member recover from their addiction. Nevertheless, I think that there specific instances where I would have to stop and evaluate the situation before I decide to help them.

Drug addiction is not something that we can shrug a shoulder to and pray that it will not affect our family or community. Currently, in the United States, there is "an estimated 22 million Americans [who] are dependent on or abusing drugs or alcohol," according to research done by Jane Friedman, who is an author, journalist, and entrepreneur. To put this into perspective, it would suggest that approximately one in ten Americans will have a drug abuse problem
(“Addiction Is More Common Than Most Think”). Consequently, due to the volume of individuals and families affected by addiction, this leads to another disheartening statistic. In  2015 " The New York Times reported that...between 59,000 and 65,000 people died from drug overdoses last year" (Reed). Thus, because of these startling figures, it can be concluded that at one point another we may have to endure the experience that Sheff, his family, and Nic went through. This could mean seeing a loved one battling addiction, or it would mean that we,
ourselves, will become addicted. With that being said, it only makes the question, how far would you go to help someone, a more relevant topic to address.

Upon discovering, the magnitude to which drug addiction affects America, the most natural response, to me, is to do some research on addiction. Hence, I would read any studies, books, or blogs that correlated with my friend or family member’s addiction. As I have said earlier, I would probably begin by googling, perhaps the two most straightforward questions anyone could ask in terms of addiction. These questions are, how to help someone suffering from addiction and what does addiction mean? While these questions are simple, their answers are far from it. Due to the complex and bleak nature of addiction from a biological and psychological perspective, I would assume that researching in itself would test a family member’s or friend’s strength. Sheff dedicates the majority of his time to researching how much
worse meth is compared to other substances. In doing so, he discovers that yes, in fact, meth is considerably worse than most drugs and admits to the anxiety he feels, when he sees the data supporting it. For instance, when Sheff interviews Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA, her "research worries me [Sheff], because it, adding to other's research, shows how long it takes for the brain to return to normal- if it ever does" (Sheff 135).

Sheff's admittance of his distress illustrates that just by asking a straightforward question it can lead to answers that a loved one may not want to hear. However, I believe that researching would make the process for the family or friend a more manageable and digestible one. For these reasons, researching and reading articles about a loved one's addictions is a simple, yet sobering way of demonstrating one's love for the addicted.

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After googling the two questions mentioned above, I noticed that majority of the websites had a common denominator among them. This common denominator is the recommendation of taking the addicted to a rehab facility. In doing additional reading, the similarities generally tended to end within the first few sentences of the description of the treatment facility. What I mean by this is not all drug rehab facilities take the same course of action to treat their patients.

Each drug, such as marijuana, heroin, and meth, will have different biological and psychological effects on the patient. Therefore, each patient, even if they may be addicted to the same substance, will have a different course of treatment. Naturally, this is something that Sheff dealt with as he determines which facility to put Nic in. Subsequently, Sheff continues his research, in order to find what methods of treatment there are for drug addicts. It is not until Sheff discovers the Hazelden facility in New York, where Nic in his third attempt at the facility can go back to his usual self after the treatment. Even though it did take Nic multiple tries to get to a place where he was to some degree stable, it does not guarantee that he would continue along this path and most importantly that it does not take one attempt at rehab to cure addiction.

Conclusively, the road to finding a rehab facility by what will fit the addict best is a frustrating challenge. Nonetheless, in my opinion, this should not inhibit a loved one to continue to help and understand their friends or family member’s addiction. However, I do think that there may be another factor that may contribute a person,
including myself, to second guess our thoughts to send a loved one to rehab. Regardless of the rehab facility, Nic went to there was another significant commonality between all the facilities, which was the extraordinary amount of money it cost. When Nic is at St. Helena Hospital, Sheff reports, "Many families drain every penny, mortgaging their homes and bankrupting their college funds, and retirement accounts, trying successive drug-rehab programs...For twenty-eight days, they cost nearly twenty thousand dollars" (Sheff 147.) Fortunately, Sheff’s and his ex-wife’s and who is Nick's mom, Vicki, health insurance can cover if not all the expensive of the rehab facilities. I also have to confess that if I found myself in this situation or any of my immediate family members in this position our health insurance would be able to cover it. If there is an off chance that our health insurance did not cover all the expenses, I would gladly help my family member pay for rehab. Other the hand if a friend were in the situation, I would consider the amount of money I would give to them if any. My reasoning behind this is unlike family; friends do not take the same priority as my family does. Even though it may sound harsh to say, this is what I would do in this scenario.

Despite the comments above, I would not let my friend handle their addiction on their own. Just as I would with family I would offer them the emotional support in their recovery process. Before Nic attended Hazelden or St. Helena Hospital, he had been in various rehab facilities, that had not addressed the reasons as to why he had been using all this time; consequently, he would continue to relapse. Learning from Nic’s and Sheff’s journey, I think that Sheff’s flaw is that he never asked Nic as to why he had abused drugs and alcohol for the majority of his life. Admittedly, it is not all Sheff’s fault, none of the therapist or rehab facilities delve into this concept either. Eventually, in an interview on the morning show Today in 2018, Sheff sitting next to Nic, responded to the question of, "Did you do everything right back then?"

By stating that no he did everything wrong right back then. Most importantly, acknowledging the fact that he should have asked Nic, why was he abusing drugs and alcohol? I think that taking away the presumption that drug addiction is a source of just doing it for fun, will help us better understand and help our loved ones to recover and remain sober.

In any given circumstance, I do also realize what I believe in this current moment about helping my family members or friends with their addiction may change in the years to come. However, I hope that it does not change. Even though my way of handling addiction and the lengths I will go, to help a loved one may be completely different from yours, we all have the same goal. In order to ensure that our goal is met, we cannot continue to ignore the growing drug epidemic in American and around the world. Ultimately, our avoidance of the drug epidemic in the past and today will lead us to face the harsh reality that addiction will impact our lives. With all that begin said, if you or a loved one come face to face with addiction, I hope that you will have someone has loving and caring as David Sheff was and continues to be with his son Nic.

Work Cited

Jane Friedman. “Treating Addiction.” CQ Researcher by CQ Press , library.cqpress.com/
library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2014050200.

Reed, Anika. “Drug Abuse.” CQ Researcher by CQ Press , library.cqpress.com/
cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqr_ht_drug_abuse_2017.

Sheff, David. Beautiful Boy: a Fathers Journey through His Sons Meth Addiction . Simon & Schuster, 2009.

“What Percentage of the Population Struggles with Addiction? The Answer May SurpriseYou.” NorthPoint Washington Blog , 17 Feb. 2019, www.northpointwashington.com/blog
/percentage-population-struggles-addiction-answer-may-surprise/.