Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / On pills and needles: To hell and back; Dad's story of teen son overdose

Transcript

On pills and needles: To hell and back; Dad's story of teen son overdose · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:07
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph Channel
0:11
Speaker 1: one two. You know it's an equal opportunity destroyer. It
0:15
Speaker 1: impacts everyone, poor, middle class, wealthy, black, white suburbs, world cities,
0:21
Speaker 1: you name it. How does a teen boy, a teen boy,
0:30
Speaker 1: never been in trouble, leaves home on a usual Friday morning,
0:36
Speaker 1: just like your child, just like your children, just like you,
0:41
Speaker 1: and then suddenly he's staring into the face of death
0:49
Speaker 1: by overdose. I just had to let that sink in
0:56
Speaker 1: for a moment, because you know, this morning, like every morning,
1:00
Speaker 1: I'll wake the children up. I sing, oh, what a
1:04
Speaker 1: beautiful morning. As I wake them up, I bring him
1:08
Speaker 1: a warm drink in bed, We get ready and we
1:11
Speaker 1: go to school, get there early. I'm just trying to
1:15
Speaker 1: imagine if that afternoon I find out one of them
1:22
Speaker 1: are looking at death by overdose. That is exactly what
1:31
Speaker 1: happened to my guest, Rick Van Warner. I Nancy Grace,
1:37
Speaker 1: this is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us
1:41
Speaker 1: joining me. Rick Van Warner, author of a brand knee
1:46
Speaker 1: book on pills and Needles, The Relentless Fight to save
1:53
Speaker 1: my son from opioid addiction. Rick Van Warner with me
1:59
Speaker 1: Dr will Um Maroney, opioid addiction expert, author of American
2:05
Speaker 1: Narcan and l A psychiatrist, Dr Carol Lieberman, Alan Duke,
2:12
Speaker 1: and Jackie Howard. First, I want to go to Rick
2:16
Speaker 1: Van Warner. Rick, thank you so much for being with
2:21
Speaker 1: us at a time when the rest of the world
2:25
Speaker 1: is looking at America and claiming we have an opioid
2:30
Speaker 1: crisis that we cannot control. That's all well and good
2:34
Speaker 1: for a headline, but it's more than a headline for you.
2:38
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning, Rick, what happened? You know it?
2:43
Speaker 1: Really we had no idea that our teenage son had
2:47
Speaker 1: had fallen into this, this addiction until one day, on
2:51
Speaker 1: a Friday, he did not return home from school. And
2:55
Speaker 1: we initially felt that that while the US was unusual
3:01
Speaker 1: there is there are times that sixteen year old have
3:04
Speaker 1: a certain amount of angst and rebellion. But as the
3:08
Speaker 1: night fell that that particular evening, the dread started sinking
3:12
Speaker 1: in and we started searching around and calling around and
3:16
Speaker 1: looking to friends, houses, etcetera. And what the information we
3:21
Speaker 1: got turned our our fear into terror, really, because we
3:25
Speaker 1: heard that he had had hooked up with a friend
3:28
Speaker 1: of his and that they were they were using some
3:31
Speaker 1: serious drugs, which was an absolute shock to us at
3:34
Speaker 1: the time, and that led to a several days search.
3:38
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your chapter one and as you were talking,
3:42
Speaker 1: Rick van Warner, Jack, you look at my arm. The
3:47
Speaker 1: hair on my arm is standing up. I'm covered in chills.
3:50
Speaker 1: The way you describe he knows a typical Friday, and
3:55
Speaker 1: your son doesn't come home like he normally does, and
3:58
Speaker 1: then the hours passed us. Your first chapter is called
4:02
Speaker 1: the Vanishing the first sentence as darkness fell On the
4:07
Speaker 1: day after Tommy disappeared, his mother became increasingly anxious when
4:12
Speaker 1: her call to his phone went straight to voicemail. I've
4:17
Speaker 1: got a bad feeling, she says. I'm just Oh, that's
4:24
Speaker 1: just breaking my heart, she said, I've got a bad feeling.
4:29
Speaker 1: So when he doesn't come home from school, at first
4:31
Speaker 1: you think, uh, he went to a friend's house, he
4:33
Speaker 1: did this, he's that. But then it gets to the evening,
4:38
Speaker 1: it's dark outside. What's the first thing you do, And
4:42
Speaker 1: did you have a feeling, Rick, that something bad was
4:45
Speaker 1: going on. We got some information from one of his
4:48
Speaker 1: friends that he could be in serious trouble and this
4:52
Speaker 1: could be a very dangerous thing, and at that point
4:55
Speaker 1: I enlisted the help of a friend. And our daughter
4:58
Speaker 1: was very young, so so my wife needed to take
5:02
Speaker 1: her home, and my friend and I went to search building.
5:06
Speaker 1: Were an abandoned building in Orlando where we had been
5:09
Speaker 1: tipped off that they may be UM. It was a
5:13
Speaker 1: very imposing, large, vacant building, full of graffiti and broken glass.
5:18
Speaker 1: In fact, it was so daunting that we called the police,
5:22
Speaker 1: and the police refused to search the building because they
5:25
Speaker 1: felt it was too dangerous and anybody could be hiding
5:28
Speaker 1: in there, et cetera. It was a multi story building. UM,
5:32
Speaker 1: So we went into ourselves and I almost felt a
5:35
Speaker 1: feeling of of evil and dread in this. It was
5:40
Speaker 1: just a very very dark and and dangerous place where
5:45
Speaker 1: anybody could be hiding with me. Rick Van Warner, the
5:49
Speaker 1: author of On Pills and Needles, The Relentless Fight to
5:53
Speaker 1: Save My Son, you said you just had this feeling
5:59
Speaker 1: of evil when you went into that building to Dr
6:03
Speaker 1: William Moroney, who was not only the best selling author
6:07
Speaker 1: of American Narcan but also a renowned medical examiner and physician.
6:15
Speaker 1: Dr Moroney, you and I have both investigated a lot
6:18
Speaker 1: of criminal cases you in your way, me and mine.
6:22
Speaker 1: And I've got to tell you there have been times
6:25
Speaker 1: when I would get out of my car at a
6:27
Speaker 1: scene and I would just start walking in, no no problem.
6:31
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, armed with nothing but my badge.
6:35
Speaker 1: I would feel a sense of not dread, but a
6:40
Speaker 1: sense of evil, of something wrong, of something horribly wrong.
6:47
Speaker 1: And it's not like I had my mindset on that feeling.
6:50
Speaker 1: I'd be thinking about, Oh, I've got to get back
6:52
Speaker 1: to the courthouse. I've got to do this and that
6:54
Speaker 1: and that and this, and all of a sudden, it's pervasive.
6:57
Speaker 1: It's like I'm a dark blind kit on you, Dr Moroney.
7:05
Speaker 1: For the last fifteen years, there's been a slow and
7:09
Speaker 1: insidious disregard for safety and common sense in medicine. People
7:17
Speaker 1: have begun to share medicine. Doctors became careless, pharmaceutical companies
7:23
Speaker 1: became aggressive, and drug lords became street savvy. And it
7:29
Speaker 1: brought us to a heroine crisis in America, where we
7:33
Speaker 1: used to think it was just the homeless and the
7:35
Speaker 1: criminal element, and now it's our sons and daughters, it
7:40
Speaker 1: is every family in America. I have had people tell
7:45
Speaker 1: me that everybody in counseling knows somebody that died of
7:50
Speaker 1: an overdose this week or this month, And it used
7:54
Speaker 1: to be once or twice a year. He said, Oh,
7:56
Speaker 1: I remember the guy at high school. He died. It's
7:58
Speaker 1: but it's it's everywhere, and the estimates are underestimates. People
8:02
Speaker 1: are dying in places we cannot measure. We need to
8:06
Speaker 1: understand how big the heroin problem is, how deep it reaches.
8:11
Speaker 1: And every state is different, but some states are just
8:15
Speaker 1: caught way off guard. To Dr Carol Lieberman l a psychiatrist,
8:19
Speaker 1: this sense of dread the sense of something horribly horribly sinister.
8:24
Speaker 1: You know, when people tell me they have a hunch
8:27
Speaker 1: or a gut feeling, very often that will be pooh pooed.
8:33
Speaker 1: But you know Rick and one of his chapters is
8:37
Speaker 1: called Hunches and Heartaches. That's chapter three in his book
8:42
Speaker 1: Up on Peels and Needles. Dr Carol Lieberman, I always
8:46
Speaker 1: say a hunch is nothing to sneer at. A hunch
8:51
Speaker 1: is something created over thousands of years of our evolution
8:57
Speaker 1: of instinct of something You may have sane, but you
9:00
Speaker 1: don't realize consciously you've seen it, or heard it, or
9:03
Speaker 1: smelt it or felt it. You get that feeling of dread.
9:08
Speaker 1: You you feel it, just like when Rick Van Warner
9:11
Speaker 1: was telling me about his child not coming home from
9:15
Speaker 1: school and ours start passing. It's it's a feeling you
9:20
Speaker 1: know something is wrong. And he says, when he walked
9:23
Speaker 1: into this building, Carol, just this pervasive sense of something
9:30
Speaker 1: sinister surrounded him. Yes, people really need to pay attention
9:35
Speaker 1: to their gut feelings, their instincts. You know. Too often
9:39
Speaker 1: we just kind of pushed that aside and say, well,
9:42
Speaker 1: that's not logical, or we try to talk to ourselves
9:45
Speaker 1: and tell us all the reasons why you know, it'll
9:48
Speaker 1: be okay. And but yes, the other thing is with
9:51
Speaker 1: a parent or a family member or even good friends. Um,
9:55
Speaker 1: when you know someone so well, really, your unconscious mind
9:59
Speaker 1: is what's telling you, uh, you know, all the reasons
10:03
Speaker 1: why something really bad might happen. You know, in Rick's case,
10:07
Speaker 1: why his son might be doing something bad, or it
10:09
Speaker 1: might be a bad outcome. All of the reasons actually
10:12
Speaker 1: are what's creating that hunch. To Rick Van Morner, author
10:16
Speaker 1: of On Pills and Needles, Rick, while you were walking
10:21
Speaker 1: into that building, what did you observe? Well, I observed
10:26
Speaker 1: broken glasses all over the floor. It was strewn with
10:31
Speaker 1: trash and and a lot of graffiti. Some of the
10:34
Speaker 1: graffiti was was was pretty horrific in nature, just darkness.
10:40
Speaker 1: Really there wasn't any you know, there's no light or
10:43
Speaker 1: anything to see. Um but my hunch kept me coming
10:47
Speaker 1: back to that building. As the days passed and and
10:51
Speaker 1: I had been to bus station, the bus station, the
10:54
Speaker 1: train station passed out flyers of my son. We had
10:58
Speaker 1: reported him missing in the missing in person's database. And
11:01
Speaker 1: as the days went by, um, I just found myself
11:05
Speaker 1: continually being drawn to this building. And every time I
11:09
Speaker 1: got near it, day or night, I would I would
11:11
Speaker 1: feel that same sense of of almost sinister feeling. And
11:16
Speaker 1: it was a gut instinct that he was there. And
11:19
Speaker 1: I searched the building with friends because again the police
11:23
Speaker 1: would never go in the building. Felt it was especially
11:26
Speaker 1: the upper floors were too too unsafe and you know,
11:29
Speaker 1: elevator's chefs were empty. It was, you know, a building
11:32
Speaker 1: that was enabled building on a naval base at one time.
11:35
Speaker 1: And on the fourth day, UM my son had joined
11:40
Speaker 1: the search by now his older brother, and we found
11:43
Speaker 1: him and he was in that building. He wasn't there
11:46
Speaker 1: the whole time. And we would have found him on
11:47
Speaker 1: the searches. He had been in and out of that building,
11:50
Speaker 1: as it turned out. But we found him curled up
11:53
Speaker 1: in a in a corner and heavily into you know,
11:58
Speaker 1: opioid use and done, and then we were able to
12:02
Speaker 1: get him into a hospital from there. I want to
12:05
Speaker 1: understand what you're what you're telling me, Rick van Warner
12:07
Speaker 1: with me, who fought relentlessly to save his son from
12:12
Speaker 1: opioid addiction. I'm talking about heroin, but it's much bigger
12:16
Speaker 1: than heroin. It's oxyconton, it's oxycodone, it's parcoset, it's fentonyl patches.
12:22
Speaker 1: It just goes on and on and on and it.
12:26
Speaker 1: Opioids start over the counter OTC, and that's what he
12:30
Speaker 1: started with as well. Really started on OxyContin. Really yeah,
12:34
Speaker 1: he started on Well, we were he was unfortunately coming
12:37
Speaker 1: of age at the epicenter of the pill mill epidemic
12:41
Speaker 1: in Florida and the just extraordinary flood of oxy starting
12:46
Speaker 1: with oxyconton and Produe Pharma, but the flood of all
12:50
Speaker 1: these drugs that they were so easily available in the
12:53
Speaker 1: high schools that one officer told me they was easy
12:57
Speaker 1: to get as candy at the seven eleven and so
13:00
Speaker 1: his initial his initial foray into opioids, UM started with
13:06
Speaker 1: prescription pills, which, although marketed deceptively as non addictive, all
13:12
Speaker 1: you had to do was crush them to eliminate the
13:15
Speaker 1: time release mechanism, in which case they were easily snorted
13:21
Speaker 1: or injected or smoked, and it was the full dost immediately.
13:25
Speaker 1: And that's what started his addiction, was prescription pain pills,
13:29
Speaker 1: which were easily available at five bucks a piece in
13:33
Speaker 1: the high schools. How did he get his first pill, Well,
13:37
Speaker 1: he got it in high school. He he got it
13:39
Speaker 1: from a friend and he thought that they would try
13:42
Speaker 1: this that they'd heard about. That this was because prescription
13:46
Speaker 1: pills are essentially synthetic caroline, and it's just one's made
13:50
Speaker 1: in a pharmaceutical lab and once made in a street lab. Um.
13:54
Speaker 1: But they essentially had those pills and had planned out
14:00
Speaker 1: a Friday night to experience what that was about. And
14:04
Speaker 1: then he and then he just started using more and
14:07
Speaker 1: more from there, and you know, over over the course
14:10
Speaker 1: of the following eight years, which is this this journey
14:13
Speaker 1: we've been on, and thirteen relapses, detoxes twice he's been
14:20
Speaker 1: revived from death by overdose. And really it's a story
14:24
Speaker 1: about how how a family can cannot give up hope
14:28
Speaker 1: and and it's a story of survival. The book as
14:32
Speaker 1: well as as well as and insights into this epidemic.
14:36
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just keep going back to you in
14:39
Speaker 1: that building and that feeling of nefarious, uh sinister evil
14:46
Speaker 1: as you walk in, the police don't even go in.
14:49
Speaker 1: And even after you look around and you don't find
14:52
Speaker 1: your son, and I can just imagine this, you keep
14:57
Speaker 1: going back to the building. Something is pulling you back
15:00
Speaker 1: to the building, and then you ultimately discover that your
15:04
Speaker 1: son ends up in that building and you find him
15:09
Speaker 1: curled up in a corner. I want to pause and
15:14
Speaker 1: thank our partner making our program today exposing opioid addiction possible.
15:22
Speaker 1: It's legal Zoom. New Year's is over and now it's
15:27
Speaker 1: time to write your own success story for two thousand eight.
15:31
Speaker 1: Team and legal Zoom can help you with that. Let
15:35
Speaker 1: this be the year you finally launch and run your
15:38
Speaker 1: own business or rest easier knowing your family's future is
15:42
Speaker 1: secure by you making the right estate plan. As a
15:46
Speaker 1: matter of fact, legal Zoom has been helping people just
15:49
Speaker 1: like us take care of dreams and responsibilities over sixteen years.
15:56
Speaker 1: The good news is legal Zoom is not a law firm,
15:58
Speaker 1: but they have the sources to put you on the
16:01
Speaker 1: right path, including advice from a nationwide network of independent
16:07
Speaker 1: lawyers at your fingertips. Whether you want to take your
16:10
Speaker 1: business to the next level or take control of your
16:13
Speaker 1: family's future with an estate plan, Legal Zoom plugs right
16:16
Speaker 1: into your life without billable hours like a law firm,
16:21
Speaker 1: because at legal Zoom, pricing is up front. What a
16:25
Speaker 1: relief right your own two thousand and eighteen success story
16:29
Speaker 1: at legal zoom dot com Now special savings. Enter promo
16:32
Speaker 1: code Nancy in the referral box at check out legal
16:35
Speaker 1: Zoom where life meets legal legal zoom dot Com with me.
16:40
Speaker 1: Rick Van Warner, who fought uh a seemingly endless battle,
16:47
Speaker 1: a relentless fight to save his son from opioid addiction.
16:52
Speaker 1: The author of a new book on pills and needles
16:56
Speaker 1: his family put through hell how to try and save
17:02
Speaker 1: his teen boy. Dr William Moroney, now world renowned expert
17:08
Speaker 1: in opioid addiction, author of American Narcan, The Locks Own
17:14
Speaker 1: heroin Fitnell Associated Mortality, and Dr Carol Lieberman, very well known,
17:21
Speaker 1: high profile l A psychiatrist. Dr Carrol, I want to
17:26
Speaker 1: talk to you in just a moment about when one
17:28
Speaker 1: person in your family, particularly your child, is suffering a
17:33
Speaker 1: drug addiction. After what you're hearing from Rick Van Warner,
17:36
Speaker 1: how it puts the whole You go to the devil,
17:39
Speaker 1: you go to hell and back the whole family is
17:43
Speaker 1: along for the ride. Dr William Morroney first to you. Opioids.
17:49
Speaker 1: When we say that, what are we talking about, we
17:53
Speaker 1: use the word opioid to say it's like and opiate,
18:00
Speaker 1: and opiate is from opium. Opium. Poppies allow you to
18:08
Speaker 1: natural chemicals codeine and morphine. Those are naturally occurring chemicals
18:18
Speaker 1: in the opium plant. When you chemically change it and
18:22
Speaker 1: synthesize it, it becomes an opioid. Hydrocodone, oxycodone, methodone. All
18:33
Speaker 1: those chemicals that are taken and copied from the original
18:39
Speaker 1: natural plant our opioids. Technically, the only two opiates that
18:46
Speaker 1: are available are codeine and morphine, and they come naturally
18:51
Speaker 1: from the poppy plant, and we've had them in medicine
18:54
Speaker 1: for five thousand years. Okay, hold on, when I when
18:57
Speaker 1: I think of opiate I think of heroin, and I
19:02
Speaker 1: also think, and I've told you this before, don't laugh
19:04
Speaker 1: at me. I think of the Wizard of Oz when
19:06
Speaker 1: Dorothy is running through the big fields of poppies, and
19:12
Speaker 1: you know with the tin man, the lion and the
19:14
Speaker 1: scarecrow in Toto, and they're trying to get to um
19:20
Speaker 1: the Wizard. Okay, Emerald City, all right, then they get
19:24
Speaker 1: sleepy because they're in poppies. I E opiate, I E heroin,
19:31
Speaker 1: and they fall asleep. And then, for some reason I
19:35
Speaker 1: can't remember, the dog is the dog never goes to
19:39
Speaker 1: sleep or that starts snowing, and they wake up and
19:43
Speaker 1: they're saved. Dr Maroney heroin or opioid now comes, give
19:48
Speaker 1: me the names of medication that is considered to be
19:53
Speaker 1: opiate related. Oxy Codon, OxyContin, well purchase at Norco, Viking
20:02
Speaker 1: in o'panna. All these I have brand names and generic names.
20:09
Speaker 1: They come from pharmaceutical companies that have copied morphine and scientifically.
20:18
Speaker 1: Heroin used to be available prior to nine fourteen and
20:24
Speaker 1: the Harrison Narcotic Act. It was sold because it was
20:29
Speaker 1: used to try to get people off of morphine when
20:33
Speaker 1: they realized people were addicted to morphine a hundred years ago.
20:37
Speaker 1: This isn't the first time that's happened in America. This
20:39
Speaker 1: happened in America a hundred years ago, and a chemist
20:43
Speaker 1: made heroin so we could get people off of morphine. Addition,
20:48
Speaker 1: without realizing that heroin was three to ten times more
20:53
Speaker 1: addicting than morphine, so then it became illegal. Dr Carol
20:59
Speaker 1: labor Man an l a psychiatrist Rick Van Warner's describing
21:04
Speaker 1: the years eight years he battled to save his son,
21:08
Speaker 1: thirteen relapses in and out of programs. They have other children,
21:13
Speaker 1: so father, why the son? The rest of the family,
21:18
Speaker 1: The whole family goes on the trip. It's not just
21:21
Speaker 1: the one child that you're trying to save. Everybody is
21:25
Speaker 1: put through so much torture. Dr Carroll, Yes, it's actually
21:28
Speaker 1: it throws the whole family into chaos. Um. First of all,
21:34
Speaker 1: you know, there's a degree of helplessness, UH, confusion, what
21:38
Speaker 1: do I do? Fear of losing this child? Um anger.
21:44
Speaker 1: It's a helplessness and anger at the child for throwing
21:46
Speaker 1: the family into chaos. The siblings feel on the one hand,
21:51
Speaker 1: they don't want anything to happen to him either, but
21:54
Speaker 1: they are angry that the parents are paying so much
21:57
Speaker 1: attention to that sibling and not paying as much attention
21:59
Speaker 1: to their going through the rehabs that would have cost
22:02
Speaker 1: a lot of money that wasn't being spent on them. Um,
22:05
Speaker 1: feeling guilty for their sibling rival. All kinds of feelings
22:10
Speaker 1: are stirred up when one member of the family has
22:13
Speaker 1: an addiction. Now the key is too for the family
22:16
Speaker 1: to be willing to look at themselves, uh, to see
22:20
Speaker 1: what they may have contributed to why this other family
22:24
Speaker 1: member has become addicted. And and Rick's book, Um, I
22:29
Speaker 1: see how he is willing to look at himself, look
22:32
Speaker 1: at his own father, who was an abusive alcoholic, and
22:36
Speaker 1: see how that affected him, which then he realized affected
22:40
Speaker 1: his son. So the openness to acknowledging what kinds of
22:44
Speaker 1: things that you may have done to contribute to the
22:47
Speaker 1: addiction is part of what a family needs to do
22:51
Speaker 1: to help the addict to recover. But to Ring Van Warner,
22:53
Speaker 1: author on Pills and Needles, right, you signed your son
22:58
Speaker 1: curled up in a ball, yes, in a corner of
23:02
Speaker 1: this empty warehouse. What happens then, Well, we were able
23:06
Speaker 1: to my son actually found him and brought him out UM,
23:11
Speaker 1: and we then his mother. By then his mother and
23:14
Speaker 1: his sister were there and his brother, one of his brothers,
23:18
Speaker 1: and UM also the policeman had to be on hand
23:22
Speaker 1: to release him from the missing persons because he was
23:25
Speaker 1: now found and we all just embraced and he was
23:28
Speaker 1: in the days, but there were tears and everybody was very,
23:32
Speaker 1: very relieved. And when we took him directly to a
23:36
Speaker 1: a psychiatric ward of a hospital that also did detoxes
23:40
Speaker 1: at the time, and he was there for a few
23:43
Speaker 1: days and then and then straight into his first residential
23:48
Speaker 1: recovery because he was still a minor and were able
23:50
Speaker 1: to insist that that happened. UM. I think that the
23:54
Speaker 1: biggest the biggest thing is to understand that the the
23:58
Speaker 1: root closet is it's a very convenient label to call
24:02
Speaker 1: addiction of disease, but in a lot of cases, it's
24:05
Speaker 1: a complex stew of brain chemistry. It's it's socialization and
24:09
Speaker 1: life experiences as was just mentioned, it's someone's mental health.
24:14
Speaker 1: Do they have underlying anxiety or depression or anything of
24:19
Speaker 1: that nature. And there is a genetic predisposition factor as well,
24:23
Speaker 1: But it's not one thing. It's a complex stew of
24:26
Speaker 1: things and that person ultimately that especially with opioids, which
24:32
Speaker 1: is a a drug of not getting high, but a
24:36
Speaker 1: drug of escape from pain, if you will, and escape
24:39
Speaker 1: from feelings of isolation and worthlessness. And and that's really
24:44
Speaker 1: the underlying cause of what we're our son's problems. But
24:48
Speaker 1: hold on, I want to ask you, you know, I
24:51
Speaker 1: look at attain them like they've got the whole world
24:55
Speaker 1: in front of them. They're young, they're healthy, they're happy.
24:58
Speaker 1: Feeling bad about what? What is there to feel bad about? You? Yeah?
25:01
Speaker 1: I gave them a beautiful home, a loving family. How
25:06
Speaker 1: could what feelings lead him to trying that first peel
25:10
Speaker 1: and then becoming an addict. Well, I I look back
25:13
Speaker 1: on it, and I talked a lot about this in
25:15
Speaker 1: the book. But he never could find his group. And
25:19
Speaker 1: I think that even starting in middle school, that's critical
25:22
Speaker 1: that that that kids find their group. Whether it's science
25:25
Speaker 1: club or a sport or music, whatever it is. People
25:29
Speaker 1: need to feel that they belong. And it's a harsher
25:31
Speaker 1: world than ever. Social media adds to those feelings of
25:35
Speaker 1: isolation when you're not in a group or don't have
25:38
Speaker 1: a ton of friends. And this was my one son
25:40
Speaker 1: who tried a lot of things, but could never wasn't
25:43
Speaker 1: very good at sports, wasn't you know it wasn't. He
25:46
Speaker 1: was talented artists, but never could find a core group.
25:50
Speaker 1: So then the group becomes the misfits, if you will.
25:53
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like the Island of Misfit Toys.
25:55
Speaker 1: It's the people who feel disenfranchised and disengaged because they
26:00
Speaker 1: don't have a group by the time they're fifteen or sixteen,
26:04
Speaker 1: they find each other in a lot of times that
26:06
Speaker 1: leads into some of these destructive behaviors. But he never
26:10
Speaker 1: felt he was he out of our four children, the kindest,
26:14
Speaker 1: most gentle, never heard a fly, nicest kid still is
26:19
Speaker 1: and and and thank the Lord he's he's alive. And
26:23
Speaker 1: but when we shifted to family, love and acceptance is
26:26
Speaker 1: really in the end what m what saved him to date.
26:32
Speaker 1: And of course it's a one day at a time proposition. Well,
26:35
Speaker 1: when you say it's a one day at a time thing.
26:38
Speaker 1: Rick Van Warner, author of On Pills and Needles, his
26:42
Speaker 1: relentless fight to save his son from drug addiction, a
26:47
Speaker 1: brand new book out right now and it really overwhelmed me.
26:52
Speaker 1: Rick Van Warner when I read it, Your battle to
26:55
Speaker 1: save your son. I'm thinking about that moment when you
26:58
Speaker 1: first see her son after he has been missing and
27:03
Speaker 1: you couldn't find him, and you keep going back to
27:05
Speaker 1: this empty warehouse strein with glass and needles and graffiti.
27:10
Speaker 1: When you first saw him, What did you think? What
27:13
Speaker 1: did you feel? How could this happen? Just a profound
27:19
Speaker 1: sense of sadness and relief that we found him, but
27:23
Speaker 1: just tremendous hurt and sadness and grief to say, how
27:28
Speaker 1: could my sweet son be in the state, How could
27:32
Speaker 1: this possibly what could possibly be going on that he
27:36
Speaker 1: feels about himself that he was indifferent to whether he
27:40
Speaker 1: lived or died. I was looking at your chapter six
27:44
Speaker 1: out of sight, out of mind and starts. Sitting in
27:47
Speaker 1: a circle of folding chairs in the center of the room.
27:50
Speaker 1: We listened a stranger after stranger recounted familiar tales of pain, anger,
27:55
Speaker 1: and despair from California to Maine, blue collar te owns
28:00
Speaker 1: to wealthy suburbs. The stories the same drug abusing children,
28:05
Speaker 1: nearly destroying families and marriages. What does that mean to you,
28:12
Speaker 1: Rick Van Morner, Your son's addiction nearly destroying families and marriages? Well,
28:19
Speaker 1: it was it was was mentioned earlier at chaos. The
28:23
Speaker 1: entire family um was in chaos. During this period, Tommy
28:27
Speaker 1: sucked all the air and energy out of the family,
28:31
Speaker 1: whether he was with us or whether he was in
28:33
Speaker 1: a period of homelessness or a period where we we
28:36
Speaker 1: had to turn him out in in you know, to
28:41
Speaker 1: protect the family. You mean there were times that you
28:44
Speaker 1: put your son out of the house. Yes, there were
28:47
Speaker 1: times when when his behave well, the stealing, the planning
28:51
Speaker 1: of his siblings and our you know, belongings. There were
28:57
Speaker 1: times when if he was an active you it just
29:01
Speaker 1: was untenable to have him there. And there were times,
29:04
Speaker 1: most times it was him leaving or running off and disappearing.
29:09
Speaker 1: And again when I talk about the you know the
29:13
Speaker 1: name of that chapter that you mentioned, it's really about
29:17
Speaker 1: the kicking the can down the road. And it took
29:19
Speaker 1: us several years and probably two d thousand dollars worth
29:24
Speaker 1: of mostly debt related to various rehabs, residential and outpatient,
29:30
Speaker 1: to try to realize that none of this is really
29:34
Speaker 1: having much of a difference in him. He would you know,
29:37
Speaker 1: it's a vicious cycle of sobriety for a period and
29:40
Speaker 1: then and then relapse detox recovery, and then right back
29:44
Speaker 1: to it. So after a while we understood that it's
29:49
Speaker 1: a disease of isolation, it's a it's a it's a
29:52
Speaker 1: problem of of self esteem, and what are we doing
29:57
Speaker 1: if we're just shipping him off to another rehab We're
30:00
Speaker 1: just exasperating the feelings of isolation, rejection, and some of
30:04
Speaker 1: the underlying causes of of him turning back to drugs
30:09
Speaker 1: in the first place. So we started detoxing him at
30:12
Speaker 1: home several years into this and started really just embracing
30:17
Speaker 1: him with unconditional love and acceptance of his family, and
30:21
Speaker 1: that's when things started to turn for him. And that's
30:25
Speaker 1: much more powerful than the isolation of just what I
30:28
Speaker 1: call kicking the can down the road and sending to
30:31
Speaker 1: a recovery center. Recovery programs work for some, they don't
30:35
Speaker 1: work for everyone. It's a it's a it's a gray world,
30:38
Speaker 1: not a black and white world. And and it's especially
30:42
Speaker 1: with opioid addicts, it's um success rates of traditional twelve
30:48
Speaker 1: step recovery are pretty pretty low. And just thinking about
30:51
Speaker 1: what all you and your family went through and the pain,
30:55
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine the pain of having to put
30:58
Speaker 1: my son or daughter out of the house. I just
31:02
Speaker 1: it's it's almost unthinkable to me. Dr William Moroney, you're
31:07
Speaker 1: hearing what Rick went through trying to save his son.
31:10
Speaker 1: Why is it you got to rehab you get clean?
31:14
Speaker 1: Is it a physical addiction you have to go back
31:17
Speaker 1: to heroin or opioid. There's two steps to the answer.
31:20
Speaker 1: The first answer is the social discharge out of a
31:26
Speaker 1: rehab has to go into an environment that continues the care.
31:32
Speaker 1: And what he did was he created that environment in
31:35
Speaker 1: his house. We look at that as aftercare. Whatever you
31:39
Speaker 1: do in rehab, it's completely meaningless unless you can have
31:43
Speaker 1: the follow up. And that follow up has to the
31:46
Speaker 1: the investment of the family, of the friends, significant others, parents, spouses.
31:51
Speaker 1: And the second thing is the Surgeon General last year
31:56
Speaker 1: said addiction is a chronic relapse sing brain disease. Somebody
32:03
Speaker 1: may have chosen the first time to take a drug,
32:07
Speaker 1: snort it, put in their mouth, or inject it. But
32:12
Speaker 1: once that drug is in the brain and things change,
32:16
Speaker 1: they don't know the sense of time, They don't have
32:19
Speaker 1: a sense of value. All they know is now and
32:22
Speaker 1: I need something because if I don't get it, I'm
32:24
Speaker 1: gonna get sick, and it's a deathly sick that scares people.
32:30
Speaker 1: People their guts hurt, they're in panic, they can't breathe,
32:34
Speaker 1: they break out with a cold sweat, they have goose flesh,
32:38
Speaker 1: and there's nothing you can do to stop that by
32:43
Speaker 1: going to a primary care doctor or an urgent care.
32:46
Speaker 1: You have to go to the specialist that understands what's happening.
32:50
Speaker 1: And on the street you just go back to Heroin.
32:54
Speaker 1: If you go to a specialist, they'll talk about symptoms
32:59
Speaker 1: and maybe sub institution therapy and helping with counseling. But
33:04
Speaker 1: he brought up an interesting point is that the traditional
33:07
Speaker 1: twelve step abstinence space has a success rate of five
33:12
Speaker 1: to ten percent at the end of a year. So
33:15
Speaker 1: you really need specialized counseling and medicine that stabilizes the brain.
33:21
Speaker 1: But if you're really worried about death, you need to
33:24
Speaker 1: have rescue medicine because it's a chronic relapsing brain disease
33:30
Speaker 1: and they keep relapsing. Well, just in a nutshell. What
33:33
Speaker 1: is that life setting medicine. The only medicine in the world,
33:37
Speaker 1: not in the United States, in the world is no
33:40
Speaker 1: lock zone. It's an opioid like the opioids of abuse,
33:45
Speaker 1: but it's a blocker and its brand name is Narcan,
33:49
Speaker 1: and it's available in hundreds and thousands of pharmacies across America.
33:55
Speaker 1: Parents have to look for this themselves to rig Van Warner,
33:59
Speaker 1: author of On Pills and Needles, Right, When you look
34:03
Speaker 1: back over those eight years in and out of rehabs,
34:09
Speaker 1: what was the worst moment during that time, Well, there's
34:13
Speaker 1: there were many, so it's hard to pinpoint one. But
34:17
Speaker 1: I do believe um finding out from my brother during
34:22
Speaker 1: a period where my son was living in New Jersey
34:24
Speaker 1: and that was his first foray into actual street heroine
34:28
Speaker 1: that he had overdosed and been revived through CPR, that
34:34
Speaker 1: was That was just earth shattering, switching gears. I need
34:39
Speaker 1: all the energy I can get. Every day that passes,
34:43
Speaker 1: I seem to have less energy and get more fatigued
34:46
Speaker 1: more easily. But I recently learned this could be due
34:50
Speaker 1: to a decrease in circulation. And if you give your
34:54
Speaker 1: body what it needs, it promotes natural, healthy circulation and
34:58
Speaker 1: keeps you feeling great. And that is why I and
35:02
Speaker 1: my family drink super beats. Super Beats promotes your body's
35:07
Speaker 1: own natural ability to produce healthy circulation. It gives you
35:11
Speaker 1: increased energy and stamina all day long. Only super beats
35:16
Speaker 1: made from beats grown to exacting standards then concentrated down
35:20
Speaker 1: into super food crystals. I mix it with cold water
35:24
Speaker 1: and ice and sip it all day. If you want
35:26
Speaker 1: to give your body what it needs, call eight hundred
35:30
Speaker 1: five one six zero six eight three, or go to
35:34
Speaker 1: Nancy's Beats dot com in a n C Y S
35:38
Speaker 1: B E E T S dot com with a first order,
35:42
Speaker 1: get another thirty day supply of super beats free plus
35:46
Speaker 1: indicator strips. To see how super beats working for you
35:50
Speaker 1: and free shipping, call eight hundred five one six zero
35:54
Speaker 1: six eight three eight hundred five one six zero six
35:58
Speaker 1: eight three, or go online to Nancy's Beats dot com
36:03
Speaker 1: Today super beats. We would always go to bed in dread,
36:09
Speaker 1: wondering when the call was going to come in the
36:11
Speaker 1: middle of the night, that he was, that he was
36:13
Speaker 1: gone or in jail. I'm thinking back on what you
36:17
Speaker 1: just said. Rick Van Morner, author of Pills and Needles,
36:20
Speaker 1: The relentless Fight to save My Son from opioid addiction,
36:26
Speaker 1: that the worst moment was when your brother calls and says,
36:32
Speaker 1: your son has odd on street hereman. Yes, um, you know,
36:37
Speaker 1: his mother would would lie in bed and plan his
36:40
Speaker 1: funeral in her mind. She later confessed somehow he survived
36:45
Speaker 1: through all this process, and we were able to to
36:49
Speaker 1: help him survive through through his family and really that's
36:52
Speaker 1: the only thing that kept him afloat. So it goes
36:55
Speaker 1: from as a teen boy to one pill, one oxy
37:00
Speaker 1: code on roxy cotton peele one pill, to you searching
37:06
Speaker 1: the city, searching abandoned buildings, warehouses, streets, alleys, trying to
37:12
Speaker 1: find your son, to the moment you find out he
37:14
Speaker 1: is actually overdosed. Through one rehab after the next, after
37:19
Speaker 1: the next, after the next, relapse after relapse thirteen in all,
37:26
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking about what you said that every
37:29
Speaker 1: night you go to bed afraid, dreading that you're going
37:33
Speaker 1: to get that call that he is dead. You know, Rick,
37:36
Speaker 1: my fiance was murdered shortly before our wedding. That was many,
37:41
Speaker 1: many years ago. Do you know to this day, to
37:45
Speaker 1: this day, when I wake up at night, I go
37:49
Speaker 1: check every single person in the house to make sure
37:51
Speaker 1: they're still Breathingstand isn't that like crazy? All these years later?
37:57
Speaker 1: Because I'm convinced. I mean, I don't think it too rationally.
38:01
Speaker 1: I just know it can happen, and in my world
38:06
Speaker 1: it will happen. That feeling you and your wife had
38:09
Speaker 1: when you would try to go to bed at night,
38:12
Speaker 1: describe that, Well, it's very difficult to be on the
38:16
Speaker 1: same page in the midst of such a crisis. Uh,
38:20
Speaker 1: It's very hard to tend to the needs of your
38:24
Speaker 1: your other children, and I think the needs of your
38:27
Speaker 1: spouse end up being about laughting inline in the middle
38:30
Speaker 1: of this. So I think that that that feeling of
38:33
Speaker 1: just just horror, of pain and and just just despair.
38:39
Speaker 1: It was absolute despair, and it can happen to anyone.
38:43
Speaker 1: It's no family safe from this epidemic. It is. It
38:47
Speaker 1: is out there, it is everywhere. I think that it's
38:49
Speaker 1: one of the biggest problems we have right now is
38:52
Speaker 1: there's so much stigma still around, and a lot of
38:55
Speaker 1: it to the word heroin itself, which has been stigmatized
38:59
Speaker 1: for you know, decades. Now, I think that we need
39:02
Speaker 1: to drag this out of the shadows and create more
39:05
Speaker 1: awareness and education around this. And that's really why I
39:08
Speaker 1: wrote the book to help other families and try to
39:11
Speaker 1: do that. To let other people know that you're not
39:14
Speaker 1: walking down this road alone. There are there are many others.
39:17
Speaker 1: Most of them, however, are keeping it to themselves because
39:21
Speaker 1: of the stigma and not seeking out support of other
39:24
Speaker 1: families and other people. Here. Chapter eleven of your book
39:28
Speaker 1: on Pills and Needles with Me, Rick Van Warner is
39:32
Speaker 1: titled the Abduction, and it describes you at the beginning,
39:36
Speaker 1: racing through the airport with your son Paul, racing, racing,
39:41
Speaker 1: right getting on a plane planning an abduction, and your
39:47
Speaker 1: son says, so what's planned? Ad. Once you're finally sitting
39:50
Speaker 1: on the plane and you say, I have no idea.
39:55
Speaker 1: Why were you on a plane planning a kidnap? Well,
39:57
Speaker 1: because it was right after the MO that we found
40:00
Speaker 1: out that he had overdosed on heroin, his friends performed CPR.
40:06
Speaker 1: They immediately took him to a rehab center in New Jersey.
40:11
Speaker 1: He checked himself out within two days and went right
40:15
Speaker 1: back to using. And it was with an older woman
40:17
Speaker 1: that he was that he was now living with at
40:20
Speaker 1: the time. And I was certain, and my wife and
40:23
Speaker 1: I were certain that this was that this was the end.
40:25
Speaker 1: He was the next time, he wasn't going to be
40:27
Speaker 1: revived and he would be dead. So, uh, my oldest
40:31
Speaker 1: son came home from college and the two of us
40:34
Speaker 1: flew up there without a plan, because our plan was
40:38
Speaker 1: if we have to stick him in a suitcase for
40:40
Speaker 1: going to bring him home, we're going to force him home.
40:43
Speaker 1: Of course, didn't work out that way, because the person
40:47
Speaker 1: only can choose to come, and you can't exactly abducted
40:51
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old at that point. You know, I'm
40:54
Speaker 1: looking at your chapter titled planning the Funeral. When I
41:00
Speaker 1: say those words planning the funeral, I can't even bring
41:04
Speaker 1: myself to put my twins in that sentence. But you
41:09
Speaker 1: had to do that about your son. It says it
41:12
Speaker 1: took eight days from the time I dropped Tommy for
41:17
Speaker 1: the first time. Uh, he dropped him off. I guess
41:21
Speaker 1: this is at a rehab until the experts deemed him
41:24
Speaker 1: completely detoxed and ready for the next step of recovery.
41:29
Speaker 1: He was transferred to recovery center and suddenly, after a
41:34
Speaker 1: long weekend sleeping on benches and scrounging for food, he
41:39
Speaker 1: shows back up and they give him a second chance.
41:42
Speaker 1: Was this rehab number six or seven? Why do you
41:47
Speaker 1: title this chapter planning the funeral for your son, because
41:51
Speaker 1: we had been through so much of it at this
41:53
Speaker 1: point that we had to reach it because it was
41:57
Speaker 1: such a roller coaster. We had to reach a point
41:59
Speaker 1: of what I all at the time hope neutral. In
42:02
Speaker 1: other words, you can't get too hopeful or get too
42:05
Speaker 1: high when he's doing well, because that makes the low
42:09
Speaker 1: even lower when he's doing poorly. And we had to
42:11
Speaker 1: adjust to accepting the fact that there wasn't a single
42:15
Speaker 1: thing we could do about It's not something we could
42:18
Speaker 1: have any control over. All we could do is provide
42:21
Speaker 1: him with the love and acceptance, but only he could
42:25
Speaker 1: help himself. Ultimately, that's a tough thing to come around
42:29
Speaker 1: for a parent. Yeah, we we take care of our
42:32
Speaker 1: kids from the time they're young and and we try
42:35
Speaker 1: to protect them from the world. When you have somebody
42:38
Speaker 1: who's fallen into addiction, to accept that you no longer
42:42
Speaker 1: have any control over what happens to them or what
42:46
Speaker 1: they choose to do very difficult. So that so that
42:49
Speaker 1: chapter related to my my wife's you know, lying in
42:53
Speaker 1: bed and what she shared with me about what she
42:55
Speaker 1: used to think about um. But it really was it
42:59
Speaker 1: was a period where we accepted that we had no
43:03
Speaker 1: control over his over ultimately whether he lived or died.
43:08
Speaker 1: Your chapter fourteen is tital fleas things and fractures, and
43:15
Speaker 1: it describes your boy, after you've been through so much,
43:22
Speaker 1: is living in a place, a slum east of Orlando,
43:29
Speaker 1: fleas things and fractures. Black teeth was the name. They
43:39
Speaker 1: abused me, with sometimes several of them chanting this in unison.
43:45
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Well, that was to do with
43:49
Speaker 1: my own childhood. That was that was I had a
43:54
Speaker 1: condition with it, with the color of my teeth as
43:57
Speaker 1: a young child, and that was it was my introduction
44:00
Speaker 1: to how brutal kids can be when it comes to
44:02
Speaker 1: Bolan and how how does that relate to your son
44:06
Speaker 1: living in this this horrible condition. Well, I think that
44:10
Speaker 1: I think that that gave me empathy. I've never had
44:15
Speaker 1: any tolerance for bullies or people who choose to pick
44:19
Speaker 1: on the week. I've never had any tolerance that in
44:22
Speaker 1: my entire life, and I think that it created a
44:25
Speaker 1: lot of empathy and in me. You just feel for
44:29
Speaker 1: your son in those conditions. And he had been very
44:33
Speaker 1: very he'd been living with a girl who was also
44:36
Speaker 1: an addict, and and he'd been living in a in
44:39
Speaker 1: a terrible conditions, as we found out, And it was
44:43
Speaker 1: when she eventually died from an overdose that sent him
44:46
Speaker 1: into his his very bad relapse where he almost died
44:52
Speaker 1: again as well. And just really dr Carol Lieberman, ally psychiatrist,
44:57
Speaker 1: how many times can you go through an overdose? Then
45:02
Speaker 1: he's brought back to life, he's dragged to the hospital
45:07
Speaker 1: you put them through. I forgot how many rehabs? He said,
45:10
Speaker 1: eight rehabs, centers, thirteen relapses? How many times can you
45:17
Speaker 1: endure emotionally your child almost dying, not from an illness
45:24
Speaker 1: inflicted upon them, but from their choice, their addiction. It's
45:29
Speaker 1: not really a choice, it is an illness. It is
45:31
Speaker 1: a physical addiction to go back to opioid. How can you,
45:36
Speaker 1: as a parent, how many times can you bring your
45:40
Speaker 1: child back from death at the door of opioid and
45:46
Speaker 1: and at some point just not get numb? Well, yes,
45:49
Speaker 1: it's hard to not get numb. But the answer to
45:51
Speaker 1: that is really as many times as it takes. You know,
45:54
Speaker 1: it's kind of ironic that um with opioids, and especially
45:58
Speaker 1: since they start from prescription um. You know, they're prescribed
46:02
Speaker 1: and get into the wrong hands and so on. But
46:04
Speaker 1: you know, they are for pain. These are pain killers.
46:08
Speaker 1: And it's not so much um, physical pain, it's the
46:11
Speaker 1: emotional pain that people have that let them, let lead
46:15
Speaker 1: them to become addicted to them. But I wanna, um,
46:19
Speaker 1: you know, I must say that, I'm wondering if there's
46:21
Speaker 1: anything Rick that you would tell people to do differently,
46:25
Speaker 1: because you say something in your book about you don't
46:27
Speaker 1: believe in tough love, and yet um, it pains I'm
46:31
Speaker 1: talking about pain. It pains me, and I'm sure it
46:33
Speaker 1: pained you um a lot more to actually put your
46:37
Speaker 1: son out of your house. I mean in a sense
46:39
Speaker 1: that is tough love. And I don't know that. I
46:42
Speaker 1: mean from what you were saying, it seems like obviously
46:45
Speaker 1: it was became intolerable. But um, out of your house,
46:50
Speaker 1: there is more chance of his dying of an overdose
46:53
Speaker 1: as you saw. Actually, and I'm wondering, like why you
46:56
Speaker 1: didn't call the police. You know, if someone is abusing
47:00
Speaker 1: you said you couldn't bring a nineteen year old kidnap him,
47:03
Speaker 1: but you could call the police and um, they could
47:06
Speaker 1: put him in jail for possessing or you know, the
47:09
Speaker 1: drugs or some some crime that they could use to
47:12
Speaker 1: put him in jail, which would start at least his
47:14
Speaker 1: detox and then you could get him to a hospital.
47:17
Speaker 1: Your question is why he didn't call police? I think
47:19
Speaker 1: what about it? Right? Well, when you know, let me
47:22
Speaker 1: address the tough love thing. Initially, we did believe in
47:27
Speaker 1: tough love, because that's what the that's what the doctrine
47:30
Speaker 1: of of the same kind of doctrine that's all or
47:33
Speaker 1: nothing of twelve steps, which is that this is the
47:36
Speaker 1: only approach that works. Is that. It was much later
47:41
Speaker 1: when we realized that tough love rarely works with a
47:44
Speaker 1: person when the core issues self esteem and and feelings
47:48
Speaker 1: of worthlessness. As far as calling the police, when we
47:51
Speaker 1: were in New Jersey, there was no grounds to have
47:54
Speaker 1: him arrested. He had no drugs on him per se.
47:58
Speaker 1: There was you know, he was a adults. There was
48:00
Speaker 1: nothing really that we were aware of that was like
48:04
Speaker 1: a Baker act in Florida or anything of that nature.
48:07
Speaker 1: So there really wasn't much we could do. He didn't
48:09
Speaker 1: live with us, he was already on his own. Uh So,
48:13
Speaker 1: So there's two different things. One was the tough love
48:17
Speaker 1: earlier on, before we realized that there was no no
48:20
Speaker 1: positive impact of that. In the second, ones was the
48:23
Speaker 1: why we didn't call the police much later when we
48:26
Speaker 1: tried to force the home. I want to get to
48:28
Speaker 1: chapter eighteen called Breakthrough, and you described going into the
48:32
Speaker 1: hospital to see Tommy, your son, your boy you've been
48:36
Speaker 1: battling for, and he is lying attached to i v
48:40
Speaker 1: s and heart monitoring wires. At first, you're happy to
48:43
Speaker 1: see that he's not bloody and battered, but quickly that
48:46
Speaker 1: relief turned to frustration. Why well, he wanted nothing to
48:52
Speaker 1: do with with me being there. As soon as I
48:55
Speaker 1: tried to talk to him about about, you know, getting
48:58
Speaker 1: some more help, he felt nothing was wrong. It was
49:01
Speaker 1: just a little bump in the road and he needed
49:03
Speaker 1: to get to work. So he was ready to sign
49:05
Speaker 1: himself out of hospital. And then when I started asking
49:08
Speaker 1: him what had happened, uh, he wouldn't give me any information.
49:12
Speaker 1: And then of course the nurses wouldn't give me any information.
49:15
Speaker 1: And so it's just a cycle of of madness in
49:18
Speaker 1: many ways, of of you know again, helplessness and understanding
49:23
Speaker 1: that you don't have any control over this. I think
49:27
Speaker 1: the biggest thing is you just can't give up. As
49:31
Speaker 1: as was mentioned, you they're your child. You'll do anything
49:35
Speaker 1: to save them, and you'll do anything to help them
49:38
Speaker 1: within your power, no matter what. And that's really our
49:42
Speaker 1: fight through that. He understands that now. I think that
49:46
Speaker 1: it's the reason he's alive today is that and doing
49:49
Speaker 1: quite well. Is the fact that we wouldn't give up
49:52
Speaker 1: on him, and we had to convince our our other
49:55
Speaker 1: children to not give up on him as well and
49:58
Speaker 1: to embrace him. Very difficult journey with me. Rick van Warner,
50:02
Speaker 1: author of On Peels and Needles, The Relentless Fight to
50:06
Speaker 1: Save My Son from Opioid Addiction. Dr William Moroney, opioid
50:11
Speaker 1: addiction expert and author of American Narcan, The likea Zone
50:16
Speaker 1: and Heroin Finnell Associated Mortality and renowned psychiatrist Dr Carol Lieberman. Rick,
50:22
Speaker 1: what is your advice to parents, Well, I would advise
50:26
Speaker 1: that no matter what, don't give up. Understand that you're
50:30
Speaker 1: your child. When they are using opioids, they only have
50:35
Speaker 1: one thing on their mind. It's the drugs, reason, logic,
50:39
Speaker 1: normal punishment that might change behavior. All those are out
50:43
Speaker 1: the window. It's again the same same idea of tough love,
50:48
Speaker 1: rarely working with somebody who feel so so low about themselves.
50:53
Speaker 1: So I think that the biggest thing is to accept
50:55
Speaker 1: without judgment. Um, you know, don't sweat the small uf.
51:00
Speaker 1: I mean it are in our case, he's alive, So
51:03
Speaker 1: what if he now has a couple of tattoos or
51:07
Speaker 1: you know, he don't sweat the small stuff. The most
51:09
Speaker 1: important thing is to keep them alive, to let them
51:12
Speaker 1: know they're loved and that you're not judging them, and
51:15
Speaker 1: that you accept them, recognize there will always be ups
51:19
Speaker 1: and downs, but your job first and foremost is to
51:22
Speaker 1: keep them afloat. You know, people who are as as
51:26
Speaker 1: what the doctors mentioned, people who use opioids. It rewires
51:30
Speaker 1: their brains. The good news is the brain can repair
51:34
Speaker 1: over a long period of sobriety, but it does rewire
51:37
Speaker 1: the brain in ways that it is so difficult for
51:41
Speaker 1: them to to get off the drugs and to overcome this.
51:45
Speaker 1: Uh I understood that it took very minor setbacks would
51:50
Speaker 1: lead him to relapse and a car accident, a breakup
51:53
Speaker 1: with a girlfriend. Of course, you know, the death of
51:55
Speaker 1: a girlfriend was was the worst, but all these types
51:59
Speaker 1: of things. Understanding that that these these small coping mechanisms
52:04
Speaker 1: are just not there for somebody whose brains being rewired
52:07
Speaker 1: biopioids on pills and needles. Rick Van Warner joining US
52:12
Speaker 1: with Dr William Moroney and Carol Lieberman. Nancy Grace Crime
52:16
Speaker 1: Stories signing off Goodbye friend,