Pubdate: Thu, 27 Aug 2015
Source: Telegram, The (CN NF)
Copyright: 2015 The Telegram
Contact:  http://www.thetelegram.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/303
Author: Josh Pennell
Page: A1

'I'M NOT GETTING ANY HELP'

Desperate mom trying to get son, 15, into addiction rehab program

What do you argue with your 15-year-old about? Grades? Curfew? Dating?
Mary would love to have your problems. She spends nights wondering
where her 15-year-old is staying and how much cocaine, alcohol and
marijuana he has going through his system.

"I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what to do or who to call," she
says.

Mary - not her real name - says she's learning a hard lesson about
what it's like to have a teen addicted to drugs and hellbent on living
life whichever way he chooses. There may be help out there for a
teenager who is willing to accept it, but it's a different story when
you're trying to reel in one who is pulling further and further away,
it seems. Mary feels like she has no rights as a mother. Instead of
watching her boy grow up, she's watching him go down.

Not that long ago her son was a typical young fella. He went to
school. He played hockey. He had decent friends. About a year back, he
started to show signs of using alcohol and marijuana. Mary put him in
the Rowan Centre - a day treatment program for adolescents with
substance abuse or gambling problems. This summer it became evident
her son was starting to use something heavier.

"He was flipping out in the backyard," Mary says. "Beating the ground.
Beating his knuckles. Ripping his shirt off."

She's since learned he is using cocaine. Her son stopped going to the
Rowan Centre. Three weeks ago he robbed $5,000 from his parents.

"That's gone in a few days. Blew it up his nose," she says, adding
that she heard that from his friends.

Mary called the police about the theft.

"Basically, they were giving him a warning - telling him not to steal
from his parents anymore."

She wanted her son to be charged as a youth just to get him off the
streets and into some kind of program.

He hasn't been home since he discovered his parents knew about the
missing money. He's staying at friends' houses or at his girlfriend's
mother's.

While people may preach about what they would do if it was their
child, controlling a teenager resolute on drug use is no easy task and
one for which there seems to be little recourse.

"As a parent of a drug-addicted teen I'm not getting any help," says
Mary. "I don't understand how a 15-year-old can chose whether he's
going to rehab or not. That don't make any sense to me."

The question is, who can put him in there? Who can force him to go and
force him to stay? Mary says she has called every person and
department she can think of but there's no hope it seems for a
15-year-old who doesn't want to help himself. She can't even make him
come home.

"He's 15. He's underage. I'm legally responsible for him, but yet I'm
not allowed to bring him home."

Mary doesn't just want her son to just start coming home, though. She
wants him in a program for substance abuse and also recognizes there
will have to be a remediation process between child and parents. But
first he has to listen. "My issue is I want my 15-year-old back off
the streets and there's not one government department out there that
can help me."
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