A PERSONAL STORY
A friend of mine has been clean and sober for almost 5 years. Old photos of him display a clear timeline of self-destruction. He transforms from a delinquent and smiling teenager to later stages of young adulthood where grinning has been replaced by stern or vacant eyes that communicate self-hatred. There is also one picture of him hooked up to medical equipment, lying in a hospital bed in a coma.
When I was writing this edition of the Parent Solutions Manual on drug testing, I asked my now sober and successful friend what his experience, if any, had been with drug testing. He related to me verbally the following story:
“I was living at home with my parents after leaving college due to my addiction. Looking back on this period of time, I believe it must have been one of the most challenging periods of time for my family. I was so manipulative, defensive, secretive, and exploitative. If I wasn’t stealing directly from my parents, I was sneaking around, creating elaborate stories and excuses for my behavior. I honestly remember thinking that I had found something really great when I had basically free access to as much OxyContin as I could ever want, and that no one was going to spoil this for me. Meanwhile, my vigilant mother’s radar was constantly going off all over the place and she became like the detective and I became the pursued criminal.
There was an enormous white elephant in the room. I knew that everyone knew that I had a problem. But we engaged in this constant game of they trying to find evidence, me using deflection and dishonesty at every turn, and nobody really able to call it like it was, :that there was a sick and deceptive addicted young man living in the house regardless of what he was saying or what technical evidence could be found. Finally I was caught…..my bad karma caught up with me. I had to face up to my father. Some kind of solution had to be struck. I negotiated to be regularly drug tested. This is exactly the type of negotiated deal that I wanted. I knew that beating drug tests would be a cinch, and it was. There were all types of products that I could purchase that allowed me to pass each weekly test. The last time I ever took a test I had let my guard down and I hadn’t made it to the store to get the adulterant in time. So, instead I consumed a great amount of water. The test results came back to my father that the sample given them was not at all urine. It was all water.
My father had found out that I had been tampering with the testing and he had begun to become frustrated with this approach of trying to monitor my behavior. I really sensed that he saw some of the insanity of this continuous game of cat and mouse. This was an almost judicial game. Success in legal proceedings has so much to do with the ability of hired legal counsel and the art of lawyering the case. Similarly, in this situation taking place in our home, the palpable truth of the situation was so clear yet dismissed in the face of this almost lawyering. That is……….. until then. After that time, my father began to take a more detached position, I believe. When I asked him to take another test the following week he dismissed the idea abruptly as though it reminded him of some folly of youth to which he had been subscribing to at the time. He began to talk of not being able to do this for me and perhaps having to let go and maybe even ask me to leave the house and find my way on my own. This was the beginning of real changes in all of our lives.
Please interpret and apply this story to your own life. We will not, however, draw conclusions for you. You must find the answers on your own. If you are considering a way to drug test your loved one, our hope is that this story may in some way lead you to go a little deeper with your thought processes. The point of the story is not to dissuade you from the action of drug testing but rather to have you consider things again, that maybe you will find the best way forward for you and your family.
PARENT SOLUTIONS MANUAL
“ Parent Solutions Manual: Drug Testing” is meant to be a quick and easy reference guide for parents who may be concerned about their loved one(s) and looking for information on specific drug tests, how/why/when to do drug testing, if drug testing is even appropriate, accuracy and tampering issues with testing, and to quickly find out the window of time different tests may detect different drugs. Parents may at times find themselves in the following situations below that may have led to the purchase of this eBook:
• You are concerned that your son or daughter may be using drugs based upon their unusual behavior and want to know how long to drug test them.