A Family’s Love is not Enough

It was a busy afternoon at work. My cell phone rang. It was the kids’ dad. I was in the middle of a task and let it go to voicemail. He immediately called again. “It must be important”, I thought, so I answered.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“At work, what’s up?”

“We need to meet now!”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. We need to meet now!” There’s panic in his voice. It made me stand up from my desk chair. Something was very, very wrong.

“You have to tell me what’s going on!”

“It’s what we always feared!” Everything stopped with those words. Except agony. Agony hurried in and consumed me.

Our family put so much energy into Evan, and now our youngest was gone. Why had he kept partying when bad things kept happening? Why hadn’t he just stopped like he said he would? Had we loved him to death?

Evan was a sensational soccer player. He was a strong athlete with remarkable skills and passion for the game. We put both our kids on the field at 3 years old, and they were playing competitively by age 8. Evan graduated high school as a four year Varsity Soccer Letterman and Most Valuable Player. He accepted a scholarship to play collegiate soccer.  Evan had grown into a polite, intelligent, handsome young man. He was a natural leader. His compassionate heart, contagious smile, and full-bellied laugh are remembered by those who knew him.

Evan had been a sweet and sensitive child, but he struggled with anxiety and allergies his whole life. As early as 2 years old, he would sneak sweets and eat until he threw up. When the kids reached school age, we overextended ourselves with activities so they wouldn’t “miss out”: soccer, basketball, scouts, wrestling for Evan, dance for our daughter. I’d pick the kids up from school and rush them to this or that activity with multiple stops many nights. The hardest part of it all was Evan. We walked on egg shells and catered to him trying to fend off the temper tantrums and rotten moods. We thought, “Maybe he’s hungry. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s getting sick again.” He was always sick. A doctor diagnosed Evan with dust and dust mite allergies. Evan was never really content or comfortable. In middle school, he started washing his hands repeatedly and having trouble sleeping at night. He was really struggling at his school, so we changed schools. When the kids were 15 and 13, their dad and I separated and eventually divorced. We sent them to counseling, but they didn’t like their counselors and eventually stopped going. We were always particularly worried about Evan and didn’t know what to do for him. At 13, Evan figured out what to do for himself. 

He started smoking pot in 7th grade. He started drinking alcohol in 8th grade. He experimented with psychedelics his Freshman year of high school. Pills came Sophomore year. He was grounded and back in counseling for most of his high school years. The summer before his Senior year, he decided on his own to stop the pills. He said he realized they were making him feel worse. We hired a summer tutor and worked on his homework together every night that year. We sent him off to a small Christian college in a neighboring state to play soccer and, hopefully, stay out of trouble. He was doing well but continually hounded us to go to the state university with all his friends. His Junior year of college, we caved.

Evan had just started his 3rd semester at the state university when lifelong friends alerted his sister that he was taking pills again - lots of pills. They had seen him really messed up a number of times and were scared for him. It just didn’t make sense. He was making A’s and B’s, seemed happy, and had not been in any major trouble for quite a while. This was not the Evan we dealt with while he was using in high school; then again, he was several hours away from home now.

We heeded their concerns and surprised Evan with a drug test. He tested positive for pot, benzodiazepines, opiates, amphetamines, and cocaine. He was also huffing. In spite of all this, he somehow  convinced us that he was just experimenting and that his friends were over-exaggerating. He promised he would stop, and he promised he didn’t need treatment to stop. We made him agree to talk every day, come home on weekends, start counseling again, and submit to random drug testing. If he didn’t stop using, he was coming home from school. We think Evan believed he should and could stop. His friends say he was listening to us. He preached everything we’d said to him to them. But he was furious and wouldn’t speak to his sister or the friends who had ratted him out.

Evan was in between semesters and had been home with us for almost a month. He spent most of his time with the family. It was an enjoyable and pleasant time. Evan was struggling though. He’d sweat a lot, his hands would shake, and he’d get sick to his stomach.  We attributed all of this to his lifelong struggle with anxiety and sickness. We’d bought into his experimentation story and had no thought that he might be having withdrawals. When the first day of class was about a week away, he decided suddenly to head back to school. He said he wanted to buy his books, clean his rental house, get groceries, and get a haircut. We reminded him that he needed to come back home for the weekend. He agreed and left on a Sunday. Although he appeared to have been clean for three months, we wondered if he might be going back to party before school started. We decided we’d drug test him the following weekend to see if he was lying to us. We never got the chance. A roommate found him dead Thursday morning. He was 21 years old.

Had we loved him to death? I don’t know. We loved him with all we had, and we still do. We beat ourselves up at first with should-of’s and could-of’s. We realize now that we did all we knew to do at the time. The past two years have been an arduous journey. I’ll be writing about our journey here, sharing what we’ve learned about addiction, denial, faith, and healing. For now, I’ll share one of the biggest lessons we learned too late… addiction is stronger than a family’s love.

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