A Family’s Success: Narconon Gave us Our Son Back
On August 14, 1981 our beautiful baby boy was born. We had hopes and dreams of his future, what he would become and where he would go. We gave him the best childhood possible. Of course there were ups and downs and no parents are perfect. Unfortunately, there’s no book on how to perfectly raise a child. Early in life our son had some trouble fitting in and making friends and struggled with low self-confidence. As he grew up, he grew out of this phase, made friends, became popular and really started to find himself. We knew he had experimented with pot and alcohol, but we thought “hey, what high school kid doesn’t?” and didn’t pay too much attention to it. He graduated high school near the top of his class and the world was his oyster.
We were so proud of him the day he was accepted to college. Our son aspired to be a Marine Biologist and we were behind him 100%. When he returned home for Thanksgiving during his freshman year of college we noticed a difference about him. He looked tired, he had dropped one of his classes and seemed to be struggling a bit. When we confronted him about it he said:
“Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
And we believed him. He finished out the year struggling his way through class but managed to get passing grades. He was no longer the A and B student we had once known.
During his Sophomore year of college, he did very well, got A’s and B’s and everything seemed fine, that was until his Junior year. During his Junior year of college, we knew something was drastically wrong. He wasn’t calling home anymore unless he needed something or had some crisis situation where he needed money. He didn’t seem to care too much about seeing his family that lived nearby and he became very isolated.
We received a phone call from his landlord one day that our son’s roommate found him passed out on his bed with baggies with white powder strewn all over the room. We knew it was cocaine and we confronted him, letting him know that he was being evicted from his apartment for drug use. Again, he downplayed everything, said he was just experimenting and we let it go, once again.
Things finally got completely out of control and he had to withdraw from college during his senior year and come back home and finish his degree locally. Once he lived at home with us we quickly realized how severe his addiction was. He was constantly lying to us, manipulating us and would steal money out of our wallets. There were daily screaming matches and trips to the ER when we would inadvertently “hurt” himself. He would actually self-inflict injuries so he could go to the hospital and get painkillers.
It was embarrassing. While our friend’s children were doing well, succeeding and moving forward with their lives, we had to live with the embarrassment that our son was a junkie. He lost job after job and was stealing items from the house and selling them to pawn shops. When we found our new digital camera was “missing” we finally had enough and knew it was time to get him help.
Our son’s addiction was severe. He was using cocaine, painkillers and heroin and he couldn’t stop. We blamed ourselves for being bad parents, wracking our brains to try and figure out what we did wrong.
From this point our son bounced around from rehab to rehab, all of which used the 12-steps. He would go into a treatment center, we would have hope that he would be okay, only for him to be discharged, go to a halfway house and relapse a few days later.
We, as parents, were broken and tired. We had no hope left and had spent thousands upon thousands of dollars desperately trying to help our son. After the 5th rehab attempt he relapsed and was almost murdered by a group of drug dealers. While this was happening we found Narconon. Narconon was different than anything else he had ever done. It wasn’t the 12-steps that he had failed time and time again. It was a program that would actually handle his cravings, get all the drugs out of his body and teach him to be an adult and deal with life.
We managed to get him out of that precarious situation with the drug dealers and get him on a plane. He only had the clothes he was wearing as he had literally lost everything. We had hope again, but the proof was in the pudding.
He went through the program and we did not speak with him until he had successfully completed it. We can still remember the first time we spoke to him after graduating the program. We could hear a difference in his voice. It was as though we were actually speaking to our son again. Our real son. Not the drug addict. The first time we saw him after completing the Narconon program, we couldn’t believe it. He looked like himself again, happy, healthy and full of life. We couldn’t believe it.
Years later our son is still sober, happy, doing well and helping other’s out of the cycle of addiction. We got our son back and, better yet, we got our family finally glued back together. There’s no longer that “pink elephant” in the room.
The Narconon program gave us our son back when no other programs could. If we could give a word of advice to any parents of addicts out there it would be to not keep sending your kids back to the same programs over and over again that don’t work. If the Narconon program could work for our son, it can work for anyone.
We love Narconon for all it’s done for our family.
Pam and Jeff G.
