GRANT HAD BEEN DOING BETTER for the past few weeks since he got out of detox, or so he’d been telling us, although he still called with money-related and other life crises. Meanwhile, I’d been watching a lot more of Intervention and Celebrity Rehab.
But it turned out that Grant had been lying to us again. He called us in mid-March with the news that he’d been continuing to use since his last bout in detox and wanted to go back to rehab.
“I need help,” he said.
Joan had been calling around, looking for a decent free or affordable rehab facility for Grant, but we couldn’t find one nearby without a weeks-long waiting list. We were, however, able to get him into Ocean Hills Recovery, a ninety-day residential program a former counselor had recommended, which we hoped would give him a better shot at stability. The only thing was that it was in Dana Point, California, about thirty minutes north of Oceanside.
Putting some distance between Grant and his dealer and drug-using buddies in Arizona was Grant’s choice, but to me it sounded like he wanted to run from his problems and avoid dealing with the reasons he took the wrong path in the first place. Either way, Joan and I were tired of all the hassles and hoped that after he finished treatment he’d find a job and an apartment there with his new, sober friends.
This would be his third stint in rehab, and his habit was getting pretty expensive. He’d spent a couple weeks in a failed outpatient program for cocaine addiction in October 2007, then two weeks later he did a six-week stint in a residential program. Every time he relapsed, it angered me even more that he’d let us down—again.
I can’t understand why he can’t stop the lying and doing drugs. Can’t he see how it’s hurting his family?
But if I was tired of his lies after just a few months, I could only imagine how Joan felt after dealing with them for nearly two years. For me, the hardest and most confusing part of this was my inability to counter my anger toward him and my self-doubt about my parenting skills with memories of the good times Joan said that he and I had shared while he was growing up. All I had to go on was the irritation of the moment.
Grant stayed the night at our house under close watch before he and I headed to California at 6:00 A.M. on March 18, as Joan was leaving for work.
“You have to get better,” Joan told him tearfully. “This is yet another opportunity. We’re spending a lot of money on this. You have to give it your all. You can’t live like this—you will die.”
As we headed toward Interstate 8, the freeway that led us into southern California, Grant fell asleep. This was okay with me because I didn’t have anything more to say to him. At least by taking him to rehab, I could know that he was safe and getting better, giving Joan and me a much-needed respite from worrying whether he was getting high, getting hurt, or, even worse, hurting someone else.
Grant slept for most of the trip, waking up at the halfway point in Yuma for a bathroom break and a drink.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I asked, hoping to avoid any more nasty surprises.
“No, no,” Grant insisted. “Nothing.”
Once we arrived at the Oceanside harbor, I put him to work washing down the boat while I worked on the interior, monitoring him carefully to ensure that he didn’t take any shortcuts. Joan and I had decided that I would keep Grant on the boat with me one night then take him to rehab early the next morning.
We went to a Mexican restaurant to grab some tacos and burritos, where Grant told me about all the times we’d come out to California as a family before my accident, traveling to many motocross events even before we’d bought the Meridian.
“We had so much fun with the Jet Skis and just hanging out on the boat,” he said, describing the leisurely excursions to Catalina Island and Huntington Beach on the Fourth of July and my birthday.
Then he grew somber, saying he was scared about the months and years ahead. He seemed like a different kid, acknowledging that his days of participating in family vacations would be over for quite some time. It saddened me that he saw his future in such a bleak light.
I tried telling him that his life wasn’t finished, it was just beginning, and that he needed to start a new life without drugs. I wanted so much to hold and console him, but I had learned from my TV education on addiction that because nothing else we’d tried had worked, what he needed most from us now was tough love. If Joan couldn’t give it to him because her emotional attachment was too strong, then I was going to do it on my own. I was the logical choice, and even though I didn’t really know how, I certainly would give it my best.
“Your days of fun are over for now,” I said. “You need to straighten out your life before you can think of having fun because fun is what got you into this mess to begin with.”
We spent the rest of the night watching hockey on television. After being out in the sun all day, we were both worn out, so around 11:00 I told him to go to bed. My plan was to leave for breakfast at 7:00 in the morning.
In the meantime, however, I was worried that he might try to sneak off in the night to get high. “If I hear you moving around, I’ll break your f---ing legs,” I said.
Thankfully, he was still there the next morning. We gathered up his belongings, making sure he didn’t forget anything, had a quick bite, then headed north on Interstate 5.
The Ocean Hills treatment facility was a two-story blue and tan house in a middle-class neighborhood a few blocks east of the highway. The place seemed a little weathered, with a yellowing lawn, but it matched the rest of the neighborhood. The owner, Shaggy, a man in his midforties with bleached brown hair that hung just past his shoulders, looked like a beach bum. He and Thurman, the intake counselor, greeted us when we arrived for our 8:30 appointment.
Thurman was a muscular, hard-nosed guy with a shaved head who reminded me of a marine. He gave us a quick tour of the place, which had room for twelve residents, ages eighteen to twenty-five. Including Grant, it housed ten, four of whom were women, which, as you might imagine, could make for some obvious challenges. But it wasn’t so bad—the back wooden deck had an ocean view.
The office was in the garage, where the door was always open. The residents often smoked in the driveway and on the back patio. We sat out there, filling out the necessary paperwork, while the counselor asked Grant some questions.
“When was the last time you used drugs?” he asked.
“Five days ago,” Grant said.
I noticed that Grant’s speech was slow and lethargic, and so was his thinking; he was struggling with questions that even I could answer.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I asked him.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“I don’t care if you’re tired. Pay attention and talk right.”
I was determined to be hard-nosed with him, giving him my best tough-love act. After I’d put the $7,500 for the first month on my credit card, Thurman asked if I wanted to stick around while my son got settled in. But feeling a jumble of emotions, I felt the urge to get out of there as soon as possible.
“No, I’m going to take off,” I said.
Grant walked with me to the end of the driveway, started to cry, and gave me a big hug. “I’m sorry for putting you guys through this,” he said.
“Don’t apologize,” I said, hoping he could see how pissed I still was. “This is your chance to get better and to make everything right. Do your job here, and make sure you get everything out of it that they teach you.”
I hugged him and kissed him on the check. “Good-bye. I love you and stay strong,” I said.
“I love you too, Dad.”
As I walked to the car, I fought back the tears, making it around the corner and down the next block before I could pull over and let the tears come gushing out. I felt horrible, dropping Grant at a depressing place like that, where we didn’t know any of the people. I felt like a terrible father who had abandoned his son and left him to fend for himself.
I called Joan at work and shared my sadness with her. “I tried so hard to make it through saying good-bye without breaking down,” I said.
She tried to calm me down but mostly just let me vent. I told her how disgusted I was with myself, being such a hard-ass with him on the drive to the boat from Gilbert. By the time we’d gotten to the rehab place that morning, I said, “Grant looked like a beaten man. It was so hard because my heart went out to him, but I was still just so angry with him.”
“Look, I know this is tough,” she said, “but we’re doing the right thing for him and he really needs this right now. He needs us to be tough on him.”
Joan always knew what to say to make me feel better, but I still felt like crap. Deep down I knew I could handle losing my memory and everything that came with it, but I wasn’t sure if Grant could handle getting clean. That’s what really scared me.
Can my son get through life without using drugs again?
After talking to Joan for an hour, I drove back to the boat, where I sat on the top deck for the rest of the day thinking and taking in the view of the boats, the people eating and drinking on the outdoor decks of the restaurants nearby, and the folks milling around on the boat ramps.
I pondered what the future held for me and my family and what I was going to do if my memory didn’t return. As I tried to relax and get my mind off the headache that was pounding like a drum, I mentally prepared to spend the next couple of days alone until Taylor and Anthony arrived for spring break on Saturday. They were planning to stay until Wednesday, when we would caravan back together.
Later that evening I was watching a hockey game at Rockin’ Baja Lobster, a sports bar, when Shaggy called to tell me that Grant was going through withdrawal, experiencing painful stomach cramps, alternating bouts of hot and cold, and an inability to sit still. “He needs to go to a medical detox facility,” he said.
Apart from being furious, I couldn’t even comprehend this. “How is he going through withdrawal when he hasn’t used in five days now?”
Shaggy said that Grant had lied to us—he’d sneaked out of our house in Gilbert the night before we left for California and bought some heroin.
I was numb. I simply could not believe what I was hearing.
“He’s going to be detoxing, and we’re not set up for that,” Shaggy said, explaining that there were medical risks, and they wanted to take him to a place that charged $550 a day, where he needed to stay for at least three days.
“I’ll have to talk to Joan,” I said. “I’ll call you back shortly.”
I was so disgusted with my son. If he’d just been honest, we could have taken him back to the free place in downtown Phoenix before having to throw even more money at the problem in California. When I told Joan that I’d asked him repeatedly on the drive out if there was anything else he hadn’t told me, she was as pissed as I was.
“That f---ing liar!” she said. “Not only do we have to spend all of this money on rehab, now we have to spend $1,500 more on detox.”
The more we talked, the higher the anger bubbled up inside me. “Why does he lie so much?” I asked.
“He’s an addict,” she said. “He’s not capable of telling us the truth.”
After discussing our options, we decided we had no choice but to send him to the detox facility Shaggy had recommended. I called him back, asking him to tell Grant that we didn’t want to hear from him while he was in detox; we would call Shaggy to check on him. “I want him to go through as much pain as is tolerable,” I said. “I don’t want this to be easy for him.”
“Okay,” Shaggy said, as if he completely understood.
Because I couldn’t do anything more at this point, I stayed at the sports bar, although I really wanted to drive up to Dana Point and beat Grant’s ass. His drug addiction was costing us a small fortune, and yet he seemed completely oblivious to that.
I was so upset, my anger kept me up for two nights straight, and the pain pills did nothing to numb my headache. All I could do was watch television, cry, miss my wife, and try to process what was happening.
The nights were chilly, so I drank coffee to stay warm and dozed off during the day for fifteen-minute catnaps. I read more about addiction on the Internet and rehashed Grant’s lies in my mind, which only served to prolong my fury. I needed Joan to help calm me down, and I wanted to help her do the same, but I’d promised Taylor that we could hang out on the boat during her vacation.
While I waited for her and Anthony, I passed the time talking to our boat neighbors, Barb, Ray, and Davey. I updated them about everything but Grant because I was embarrassed and didn’t want to look like I’d been a bad parent.
When the kids showed up, they were more interested in Jet Skiing or Boogieboarding than spending time with me. I spent most of my days wiping down the dust and excess oil from the boat engine, preparing for the sale we hoped would be forthcoming.
After having dinner with them, I talked to Joan about Grant and us for hours at a time. Sometimes we realized we were both watching the same show, such as Two and a Half Men, and we shared a few laughs and talked during commercials.
I felt lost without my wife, almost as if I couldn’t function properly without her. I’d heard the expression “he’s my right-hand man,” and this was truly appropriate to describe what she meant to me. But she wasn’t just my right hand; she was my everything. When we were apart, nothing made sense. Given the circumstances, spending this time away from her was even more difficult because I wasn’t able to hold her or feel her next to me. I missed her comfort.
Although I enjoyed spending time with Taylor and Anthony, Wednesday could not come soon enough for me. I was eager to get home to Joan and familiar territory because the boat only reminded me of Grant’s drug habit and my anger. My sanctuary had become more like a prison, and the joy of being there was gone.