81 If we would have forced Kyle to go to a full drug treatment program, would it have changed anything?

    
   After Kyle was off heroin for about a year, he walked into our bedroom while I was folding laundry, leaned down and petted our Westie, then nonchalantly said, "I need help." The statement sounded as if he needed assistance with his homework, but I knew that's not what he meant. He placed his foot on our Victorian stuffed chair and showed me the needle holes between his big toe and the next one. I  waited for an avalanche to catch my breath, but I guess my body finally accepted that he was on his own path and there wasn't much I could do about it. I looked into those disappointed blue eyes.
   "Mom, I'm sorry. I know I can kick this."
    "I know you can too." He gave me a warm, tight hug. Was he hopeful that his strong arms around me would defuse any disappointment?  But I wasn't upset. Maybe too many things had happened these last two years, which taught me that I can't can't totally protect my children.  My son held his own keys to his future and the only thing I, as a parent, could do was be there for him for support and encourage him to heal.
   I told Alan what Kyle had said. The days of trying to hide all the chaos such as Kyle's car accidents and drinking to protect him from his dad's wrath were over.
  "Tina, I'm scared that he doesn't have the will power to fight this demon. I'm scared we're going to lose him." Alan had a catch in his voice, he was struggling not to cry. I often wondered if he cried alone in his car while driving to a job. How could he hold in so much pain? "We have to make him go to full drug rehab. He needs to be sent out of California away from his drug buddies. We have the money."
    I agreed but wondered if  Kyle would agree.  

    After Kyle had a session with his psychiatrist, I was called into his office. I have an architect husband, so I know what an organized office looks like, but even Alan had a pile of active files on his desk. Every book the ceiling to floor bookcase was lined up in perfect order, even the two pens obeyed and laid parallel, two inches from the desk pad. And one file sat on the pad, I assumed Kyle's. 
  The doctor crossed his legs. "Kyle admitted that he slipped and used again."
   I was proud of Kyle for telling his psychiatrist the truth. Last two or three years, the truth was something Kyle had learned to stretch as if making taffy. I told the psychiatrist that Alan and I want to place our son into a full care rehab facility out of state.
   "Mom, I know I can do this," he said quietly but intensely.
   The doctor glanced at Kyle and said, “He’s 21, neither you or I can force him to go if he doesn't want to.”
   Belligerently I spat out, “Well, we could kick him out on the street if he doesn’t go to a full care facility." Alan and I had already agreed that this was an option. We felt that maybe this would wake our spoiled son up and teach him to be responsible.
   But the good doctor pulled his squarish black rimmed glasses off and then shared that because Kyle was mentally ill, he calmly suggested, that we didn’t do that.
 I asked the doctor since Kyle was mentally ill if I could fill out paperwork so we could make mental health decisions. He said we could do that, but Kyle had come a long way on the new medication. He was right, the schizophrenia and bipolar symptoms were pretty much under control. His scratching, hallucinations and talking to himself about cops following him around had disappeared entirely. "You need to trust him," the good doctor had suggested.
   After Kyle's breakdown, he tried to jump into taking a full load of classes at college, but his medicine hadn't taken hold yet, so we encouraged him to take a break for a while so could give himself time to heal. The following year he was ready; we suggested that he start with one class.  This time he wasn't struggling like he had the semester before.
   He knew that he had placed stress on Alan and I’s relationship. He knew Alan, and I needed a break from it all when we decided to celebrate our 30th anniversary. We wanted to do something special, so we had planned a trip to Vancouver. I was very apprehensive about leaving him alone, and Kyle could feel it.
   “Mom, I’m going to be okay. Stop worrying.” He reminded me that since he had no keys to his car because of his last D.U.I.(we hid them), he could only get around by friends driving him and he had stopped going to parties over a year ago and after finding wet towels in my cupboard, a tip of a knife broken in my cutting board and a filled hole in the ways in the laundry room, I had had it. (Often times I didn't tell his dad.) I told Kyle if he had any more huge parties that I personally would kick him out.
   I asked one of my students that had graduated a few years earlier if he’d take Kyle to his psychiatrist and group drug counseling appointments. I was tempted to ask Travis to stay the five days at our home and pay him so Kyle would have someone around. But Alan argued that I needed to trust Kyle.  I was very apprehensive about leaving him.


   Kyle overdosed and passed away while we were in Vancouver.
   Would anything have changed if we wouldn’t have gone to Canada?   Nope. Friends came out of the woodwork after Kyle died, telling us of the plethora of times their parents or wife made them go to rehab and how they finally realized enough was enough and they kicked themselves into rehab. and became clean because they wanted to, not because someone was forcing them.
   We learned later that Kyle wasn’t going to his group drug meetings, and sometimes would slip out the backdoor when I dropped him off or after his session, he would have a drug buddy pick him up, and they would go shoot up. In plain English.....he wasn’t ready to stay clean.