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Teen Addiction Red Flags Every Parent Misses · The Parent Tap

• 0:00
  Katie Rizzo lost her firstborn son to addiction on September 17th, 2024.
• 0:06
  Today she's going to tell you the signals she missed, the signals no one taught her, and what every parent listening needs to do this week.
• 0:14
  This one's heavy.
• 0:15
  It's also the most important conversation we've had on the show.
• 0:22
  You know, again, keeping you know his memory alive.
• 0:26
  I I know that that's important, right?
• 0:30
  And and definitely I think the goal here for this podcast is to just sort of help us understand some of those signs that, you know, maybe in in the rear view.
• 0:45
  Also, like in doing it in hopes of helping others and and you know, right?
• 0:51
  Because I think that's I would imagine that's what a parent going through what you went through would want to do, right?
• 0:58
  A hundred percent.
• 0:59
  I remember when Nicholas was growing up, there was a family that lost a son to suicide.
• 1:07
  And it just through word of mouth, it got through the community that she always wished that she would let her son experience more hardship.
• 1:16
  She felt like he didn't have the tools to deal with hardship, and I held on to that.
• 1:22
  Like, okay, here's a nugget of truth.
• 1:24
  Like, hardship isn't bad, it's gonna keep my kids alive.
• 1:29
  So when I saw that I could talk on your podcast, I was hoping that I could give somebody something from this terrible loss.
• 1:40
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:41
  And I've dealt with personal loss for suicide, my best childhood friend growing up.
• 1:47
  It's been about 10 years now, and it's still very hard to believe.
• 1:51
  And I do the the typical stuff of looking back, did I miss signs?
• 1:59
  Yeah, uh, the blame game, you know, do I blame myself?
• 2:02
  Do I blame his circle of friends?
• 2:04
  Yeah.
• 2:05
  You know, kind of should I have intervened?
• 2:07
  You know, like there's a lot of like what if kind of games you you play with yourself, but yeah, I think at this point, you know, I I don't know.
• 2:16
  And I know it's different for everyone, but I I think that uh after 10 years for me, it's it's more of the acceptance and I did what I could, and you know, I and under s I think I understand because I've been in those dark places that life you know, like there's no rhyme or reason, and sometimes people just can't get you out of that space, and and you don't necessarily want people to help you, you know, when you're in that corner because you just feel like you feel like that, you know what I mean?
• 2:43
  So I think that guilt, yeah, guilt is a huge part of grief, and I've been in a lot of grief groups with parents whose kids died of cancer, and they have so much guilt.
• 2:56
  And I to me, I was like, how can you feel guilty?
• 2:59
  Like cancer is just random, and yet, you know, I could have gone to a different doctor, I could have done this.
• 3:05
  I just I think I think death brings a ton of guilt because our brains just aren't wired to understand that somebody who's that precious could go.
• 3:17
  And I so I think we do look in the rearview mirror and try to think of like what could I have done?
• 3:23
  Because our brains want to take the blame for something or find some blame.
• 3:29
  And I think something that I've held on to from Al-Anon.
• 3:34
  So Al-Anon is a support group for people who love somebody with addiction.
• 3:39
  And in Al-Anon, they say, How free do you want to be?
• 3:43
  And I want to be free, and I know that underneath that guilt, there's something real there, and like holding on to wanting to, you know, get justice and being angry and feeling guilty.
• 3:57
  Like, what is really under there?
• 3:59
  And a lot of times what's under there is just that really deep longing.
• 4:05
  And sometimes it's easier to be mad or to blame myself than to feel that.
• 4:10
  And sometimes there is just being mad.
• 4:15
  Yeah, right.
• 4:16
  Isn't it that wave of emotions?
• 4:18
  And I just wanted to get into and you know, correct me if I'm wrong on any of these assumptions that I'm having, because again, my uh I think that what I experienced is definitely a lot different from what you experience, and then you know, like the loss is different for everyone too, right?
• 4:32
  And that's what yeah, it's so personal and it's so you know, yours is uh not that long ago, it's it's very recent history.
• 4:41
  So could you tell us a little bit about your relationship with your son before September 17, 2024?
• 4:47
  I would love to.
• 4:49
  One of my favorite topics.
• 4:52
  So Nicholas was the oldest of three.
• 4:55
  I got to be a stay-at-home mom for a really long time with him.
• 5:00
  He was a blonde-headed kid who we live, we both live in Arizona.
• 5:06
  Ryan, you do too.
• 5:07
  And he, you know, we live right on a man-made lake, and he just loved being outside and running in the grass and you know, feeding the ducks.
• 5:18
  He was just, we had a trampoline, he he lived in his body, so he understood life through his body.
• 5:28
  I was a big reader, I'd read to him, but you know, he just how he understood things was he had to experience it.
• 5:35
  And he became really good at soccer.
• 5:38
  And soccer was kind of the place where he understood the world, he understood the rules.
• 5:46
  I I have so many images of him running down those fields with this wispy white hair, and he would score goal, and his friends would come close to him, and I he just looked like, you know, this is my pinnacle moment of my life.
• 6:02
  So his dad and grandfather both struggled with addiction, and they found some help through AA.
• 6:11
  I I didn't meet his dad until he had finished his relationship with alcohol, so I never knew him as an as an addict, but but Nicholas knew that he had that genetic in him or those genes in him, and he started getting more and more injuries playing soccer.
• 6:32
  He had a few leg surgeries, some knee surgeries, he broke his clavicle in his high school championship game.
• 6:43
  He was one of those kids who just he he put everything into it.
• 6:48
  And then, and every time he got injured, he would be given some kind of opioid.
• 6:56
  And I didn't know then how it I knew that they were addictive, but I thought, oh, you know, in a small quantity with that much pain, it's a good thing.
• 7:06
  But looking back as we've been talking about, I wish I would have asked the doctors not to.
• 7:12
  I wish I would have said, you know, could we just see how the pain goes?
• 7:16
  At one point we were in an ER one time when he had broken his the two bones in his forearm, and and the doctor said, Let me give him something so he won't remember this.
• 7:30
  And I thought that was so odd.
• 7:34
  Like, don't you want to remember the pain?
• 7:36
  And don't you want to so you don't do it again, right?
• 7:39
  And I said, Well, do you think we could not do that?
• 7:42
  Because I really don't like coming to the ER.
• 7:45
  I don't like him getting hurt.
• 7:47
  And he looked at his chart and he said, Well, he's been given this every single time he's had a surgery.
• 7:53
  And I was like, Well, maybe that's the problem.
• 7:55
  Maybe it should be okay for him to know that injuries are painful.
• 8:01
  So that's a little bit about him before his addiction.
• 8:06
  He was a big brother, he loved his his two younger brothers.
• 8:12
  He used to say family's everything, and I I I really think he believes that.
• 8:18
  You are an author now because of because of what you went through and a poet.
• 8:24
  Just curious, when did you start writing?
• 8:26
  Was that always there, or did it just kind of show up later through the inspiration of your son's story?
• 8:32
  Well, I've always loved to write, and I was a writer before Nicholas passed away, and but I never wrote poetry.
• 8:42
  Probably the day after he died, I started writing everything down because nothing was making sense to me.
• 8:50
  Like it just, this is like they'll say, people say, I can't imagine, and I think you can imagine.
• 8:58
  But people would say things and I would, I was just writing things down.
• 9:01
  Like, how is this making sense?
• 9:03
  Like this kid, it just felt like he was here permanently.
• 9:09
  He deserved to be here, he deserved a sweet life.
• 9:12
  And after about a year of writing, kind of what was going on, kind of things that I was noticing, like, for example, the mortuary call called and said his obituary was going live.
• 9:28
  And I was like mad.
• 9:30
  I was like, I don't want a live obituary, I want a live kid.
• 9:36
  But when I read your story, you know, the first thing I, you know, kind of noticed or felt was like, what would I miss?
• 9:43
  So let's go there.
• 9:44
  When did you first sense something was off with him?
• 9:47
  Well, in high school, he was we we came home one time and we smelled pot, and his friends were there, and I was like, Oh, they're smoking pot.
• 9:54
  And you know, we came down like, you know, your dad doesn't drink, you can't, you can't do drugs, like you have the genetics for it.
• 10:04
  So I definitely missed an opportunity there.
• 10:08
  He had a lot of struggle with sleep, and we used to go to the our pediatrician, who I love, and she started thinking maybe he has a potassium imbalance and he needs to eat more bananas because he's exercising so much.
• 10:25
  But I think that was an indication that he was anxious, and I think that anxiety, he had some so some pretty big social anxiety, and I think he tried to hide it, but I think it came out at night and he struggled with sleeping.
• 10:42
  And if I could go back, I would love to go back and kind of get him help for that.
• 10:47
  I know in college he had a D2 soccer scholarship at Colorado Mesa, and there I think his anxiety really flared up.
• 11:01
  When I took him to college, he was so nervous, and I kept saying, like, let's just give it a day.
• 11:06
  Like, if it doesn't work out, that's fine, but at least we we tried.
• 11:11
  And he walked into his dorm room that he was sharing with this really cute kid, Jacob, and it was like he saw him himself.
• 11:21
  Like the two of them just they saw one another.
• 11:24
  And Nicholas looked at me and he said, I'm gonna be just fine.
• 11:27
  And I know he and Jacob both suffered from anxiety, and they the two of them managed it with a with with drugs.
• 11:36
  And if I could go back, I would have, I wish I could have said, Yeah, this is not gonna work.
• 11:42
  The two of you are just a terrible recipe.
• 11:47
  So there's that, the there are those times.
• 11:51
  I wish I would have gone to Al Anon sooner when I started to see the signs that he was doing drugs in college.
• 12:00
  A part of being codependent with somebody is when he would come to me and say, like, oh, I I wrecked my car.
• 12:10
  My first instinct was, okay, nobody's hurt.
• 12:13
  Thank God.
• 12:14
  Like, let's go hide the car, we'll fix the car, we'll get rid of the car, whatever we need to do.
• 12:20
  But I wish I would have stopped and seen it as an opportunity to help him figure out his path.
• 12:30
  So that is another thing.
• 12:34
  One time the he broke his elbow in college and uh it during a game, and the doctor called and said, I can't give him enough painkiller, like he's not responding.
• 12:48
  And it wasn't that that there wasn't enough painkiller, it was that Nicholas had a really high tolerance then.
• 12:57
  And so I wish I would have listened to that.
• 13:00
  And there's something to be said about when you're presented with drama with your kids instead of reacting and like making it all better, which was always my go-to, but to step back and really look at the big picture and see why it's happening instead of just fixing this temporarily.
• 13:23
  In the last year before he passed away, I think that's when the gas station drugs started up.
• 13:31
  I don't know if you know very much about them, like Kratum.
• 13:36
  It's also known as gas station heroin, and it affects the same opioid receptors in the brain.
• 13:44
  And that's not to say Nicholas wasn't at fault for taking it.
• 13:49
  And but also who, you know, we kind of rely on our FDA or somebody to legalize things.
• 13:59
  So yeah, I I wish I would have known more about that then.
• 14:06
  I I wish that I would have been more clear about what's important for myself.
• 14:13
  Like maybe two years before I knew he had a bad addiction, but I knew he was struggling.
• 14:20
  I saw on Facebook um there was a picture and her cute kids, and they were going on a trip.
• 14:25
  And I thought, oh, this is adorable.
• 14:27
  Like Instagram, perfect moment.
• 14:28
  And the captain said, best day of my life, my son has decided to go to rehab.
• 14:35
  I thought, how brave of her to put that out there, right?
• 14:39
  Let people know that these things really happen.
• 14:42
  And I wish, I wish that I would have joined Ellen earlier and I would have come to terms with how much shame I had about addiction and not wanting people to know.
• 14:52
  Because I definitely did my part in hiding it.
• 14:57
  Nicholas was super embarrassed by his addiction.
• 15:00
  He was embarrassed by stealing money from us or crashing his car from his DUIs.
• 15:06
  And I was so, I just felt so humiliated.
• 15:10
  Like, what kind of mom has a kid who does that?
• 15:12
  And now I realize that I'm the mom of somebody who was struggling with addiction.
• 15:20
  And that doesn't mean he was a bad person or that he didn't have willpower.
• 15:25
  I think he got to a place where doctors were prescribing, well, I know he was being prescribed benzodiazepines for sleep for three years by a doctor.
• 15:37
  Um, and I only found out about that after he passed away.
• 15:42
  And when he was trying to get off of those benzodiazepines, he had to go into the ICU for six days because his brain started to swell.
• 15:54
  So I think there's a lot of trust that I had in, you know, our our community, our this, our systems.
• 16:02
  And I think they let him down.
• 16:06
  If you look at how many people who are in jail who are addicted, or all of our homeless populations, it's like we're just throwing people away and saying, oh, that's bad willpower.
• 16:17
  They're not strong enough people, we're willing to risk them.
• 16:24
  The year that Nicholas passed away, 80,000 people died of an overdose, and most of those were to opioids.
• 16:32
  And right now, statistics that I can find are that 80% of people who go to rehab for opioid addiction go back to the opioids.
• 16:43
  So we don't really have a really good way to get kids clean.
• 16:48
  So I'd say don't let your kids start.
• 16:52
  And if they do start, to be really honest with yourself and your family and know that there aren't a lot of supports out there for you.
• 17:04
  Yeah, well, I thank you for sharing that.
• 17:06
  And there's a couple of things that's that come to my mind.
• 17:08
  First of all, do you think weed was kind of the gateway drug that got him into all of this?
• 17:14
  And then secondly, how did you all parent when he was going through all these challenges?
• 17:18
  You mentioned the the DUI or stealing.
• 17:22
  How did you kind of parent that?
• 17:24
  And would you do anything differently if you could now?
• 17:28
  Yeah.
• 17:29
  First of all, as for weed, I do think it was a gateway for him.
• 17:34
  I I don't smoke pot.
• 17:36
  I I know that Nicholas would have told you, like, no, weed's nothing, but I don't know.
• 17:45
  I think that tolerance works by you do you feel this good feeling and then you go chasing it and you're never gonna get that feeling again from from weed.
• 17:56
  So then you're gonna move on to another drug and you're never gonna get that feeling, and you're gonna move on.
• 18:01
  So yeah, I do.
• 18:02
  I think that I do.
• 18:06
  So yes.
• 18:07
  And then your next thing was how did we parent?
• 18:11
  Well, not well, because look at the result.
• 18:14
  So I don't know.
• 18:17
  I don't know what bottom is.
• 18:18
  Like you would have thought that when he crashed his car the second time and we were like, that's it, you know, you're gonna have to be walking, that he would have that would have been his bottom, or I mean, losing a job because of his addiction, having his younger brother say, you know, I don't want anything to do with you anymore.
• 18:44
  I mean, he had a lot of bottoms.
• 18:47
  He for a while he and his dad, you know, he would be like, Why isn't dad talking to me more?
• 18:53
  And I would be like, you know, Nicholas, it's hard when you're high.
• 18:57
  We had a rule, he wasn't allowed to come over when he was high.
• 19:02
  And yet he wanted to come over all the time.
• 19:07
  I don't know.
• 19:08
  I think drugs change your brain chemistry.
• 19:10
  And I think that we would like to say, like, you know, you can control drinking, you can control an addict, but I don't think you can.
• 19:21
  I don't know what's the magic thing that makes somebody become sober.
• 19:27
  And I've heard that it's almost impossible for somebody to come off meth.
• 19:32
  It's very difficult for opioids, and it's it's hard on on pot and alcohol.
• 19:39
  But I think that we just need to change the way we're thinking about it.
• 19:42
  That I don't in Al Anon they say you can't cause addiction, you can't cure it, and you can't control it.
• 19:53
  But then at the same time, they say you can contribute it to it.
• 19:56
  So then you are causing it, curing it, controlling it.
• 19:58
  So I don't know.
• 20:00
  I do know that my son's brain really changed, and he would come home and say, Mom, the only thing that matters is you guys, and I think he meant it.
• 20:10
  And I also think there was a monkey on his back that just wanted nothing more but to go and forget and to feel good again.
• 20:19
  And I think his tolerance got to a point where the only way he could feel good was to take those drugs.
• 20:31
  So it was important to me and his obituary that we talked about his addictions that people would know like this is a deadly disease, that people die addicted to opioids and benzodiazepines.
• 20:46
  You talked about the gaps that exist, like for resources.
• 20:50
  Could you explain like what you mean by that and what like what we need to provide for families going through you know similar events of what you just went through?
• 21:03
  Well, I don't have all the answers, but I feel like there are some winners in the addiction game, right?
• 21:14
  There are rehabs, so I don't know if you know how much typical rehab stint costs, but you know, it's a lot of money, and it can be about eight thousand dollars a week to put your kid into rehab.
• 21:28
  Before rehabs are detoxes because you need to come off of them, and that's a whole nother amount of money, and it's it's costly, you know, you know, four or five thousand dollars a day is not a it's not a little bit of a money.
• 21:41
  Um, and even I've I've met a lot of kids who've gone to rehab and detox, you know, 12, 13 times.
• 21:51
  So those programs are making quite a lot of money, and they're they're full of people who are very well intentioned, but their track records are really terrible.
• 22:03
  So I would love to see that change.
• 22:08
  The other people that are making a lot of money off of this is big pharma, like the people that make the benzodiazepines and the opioids.
• 22:19
  I don't know, 80,000 people overdose the year that Nicholas did.
• 22:24
  That's 80,000 families that were crushed.
• 22:27
  I don't know, it just feels like money is winning out over people.
• 22:32
  Real quick, my dad is 85 and he just went into the hospital in Denver to Anschutz, and they removed his upper lobe of his left lung because he has cancer.
• 22:44
  And when he came off, they were pumping him in his IV with opioids.
• 22:48
  So I said, could we just wait till he wakes up to see if he needs them?
• 22:52
  Like, we have he probably will.
• 22:53
  I don't, I'm not saying don't give them, but I I don't know that he needs them.
• 22:58
  And I said, you know, my son died from an addiction.
• 23:01
  And the doctor was like, Well, your dad's 86 or 85.
• 23:04
  And I'm like, okay, could we still like and my sister had had her knee operated on, and they tried a non-addictive, non-opioid medicine on her, and it really worked.
• 23:18
  And I asked, could we try that?
• 23:19
  I'm not saying don't give them opioids, I'm just saying, could we not, could we try something else?
• 23:24
  And the doctor was like, I love that medicine, it works, and this hospital doesn't have an agreement with them, so I can't prescribe it here, but I can prescribe it when you leave.
• 23:37
  And I felt a little crazy.
• 23:39
  I was like, this is insane.
• 23:41
  Like, we know that people get addicted to opioids, and we're not like dealing with that whatsoever.
• 23:50
  So sure enough, you know, my dad, he's been at the hospital for three months and he just finally got off.
• 23:58
  He's having a really hard time sleeping without them.
• 24:00
  So now there's a lot there.
• 24:06
  And I thank you for sharing that.