I often think of a touching patriotic story that took place by a flagpole in a city park. An older man proudly looked up at Old Glory as he quietly hummed the Star Spangled Banner. Tears flowed freely down the trembling face of this World War II veteran. A group of younger people walking by noticed the old man and began to shake their heads and chuckle. They didn’t understand the price he and others had paid for that Flag. Only you know the price paid in love and sacrifice for your son or daughter. Today’s children are often strategic targets for spiritual battle and any child can fall prey. For adolescents and young adults, alcohol/drugs, pornography and other sexual sin, the drug culture, and the double life that goes with them are the most powerful cultural predators. Chemical dependency is a life long battle but it is never alone because it is a blaring alarm that warns of a bigger spiritual problem. The hooks used to lure kids into this trap include peer rejection, low self-esteem, boredom, physical or sexual abuse, family hurts, emptiness, numbness, daily social combat, academic struggles, body image distortions, instant gratification emotions, entitlement mentality, and the illusion that the wild side of life can give them that feel good status that they can’t get anywhere else. Until an effective way of dealing with these real-life challenges and needs is developed, drug abuse is probably not going to stop.

Kids who struggle with chemically dependency, drug/alcohol abuse, bad attitudes and behaviors, and the double life come from all kinds of family structures including married parents, divorced parents, remarried parents, and single parents. Some kids are birth children and some are adopted. Some families are strong, loving, and committed, and some aren’t. Some are rich, some are poor, and some are in the middle. Some kids are smart, athletic, good looking, and religious, and some aren’t. However, all of these kids and their families are the same as you and me, just real people created by God to be our true selves and to achieve our unique life’s purposes.

I’ve worked with more than two thousand adolescents struggling with alcohol and drugs and the systemic problems that go with the territory. Every single one of these kids was gifted with the same awesome, God-given potential as any other kid. The solutions were never quick and easy, but they were always possible. In every situation I asked the question, “What makes this kid’s story make sense?” Not what makes it right or smart, but how did they get to this point? When an adolescent gets involved in alcohol and drugs, all involved parents and counselors want to find the cause, and rightly so, because when you find the cause, you find the keys to solutions. But the cause of adolescent chemical dependency has many pieces that work synergistically to create the big picture. Like a jigsaw puzzle, it takes many pieces to create the picture. Not all families are a part of the cause, but they are all indeed the primary resource for solutions. Discovering the jigsaw puzzle is the first step to a full recovery. Over a million American adolescents will need treatment for alcohol and other drug abuse this year. Hundreds of thousands will go to inpatient treatment programs. The parents within those families all want sobriety and a successful life for their children. Sadly, the majority will fail. Only the minority will succeed. What determines the outcome? The successful families identify the extent of the problem, discover the causes, create a strategic game-plan, and diligently take intentional daily action until the battle is won.

In other words the families who succeed are the ones who accurately determine the severity of the situation and bring a big enough gun to the fight. Taking a BB gun to a grizzly bear hunt is not a good idea.

When I used to say winning the battle I want to clarify what I meant, because I don’t express myself in the same way today. Winning, overcoming, defeating, and other words denoting the same concept are thought of in terms of an ending point. For example, “we won the game” means the game is over and we were victorious. “We defeated the enemy” means the battle or war is over and we are the victors. Victory in the case of addiction is defined by learning to live a life that is healthy, fruitful, and fulfilling. Once developed, an addiction is an irreversible condition of the brain and is considered a disease by most of the counseling field. Overcoming in the context of addiction is learning to thrive in spite of it, but it does not mean ending the addiction because once an addiction is developed that condition of the brain will always exist. Because a person has an addiction does not mean they have to be actively using alcohol/drugs. Please hear what I am saying and not what I am not saying. I am not saying that his life is destined to be a disaster centered on the idea that “I am a defective person because I have an addiction” on the contrary, life should be healthy, fruitful, and productive even with the addiction. At fifteen our oldest daughter got a serious auto-immune disease and it will never be cured; however, she has learned to live a life that is healthy, fruitful, and fulfilling as an individual, daughter, sister, wife, and hopefully a mother soon (Her mom and I are ready).

A non-addicted person can start using a chemical (or other addictive behaviors) and then stop basically at any given point. The person with an addiction cannot stop once he starts, like an avalanche that starts will only stop when it finishes its course. Your son may not have developed an addiction yet but instead may be abusing alcohol and drugs and be on the path of addiction. In other words, the switch of addiction may not have flipped yet and his “not stopping” may be due to other factors with which he is struggling. Having an addiction has nothing to do with character, spirituality, intelligence, love of family, or self-discipline, thus the concept of disease. The person with an addiction has lost the ability to control their use but continues to do so in spite of the negative consequences they are experiencing.

There is a genetic component at two levels that affects the development of an addiction. First, the tolerance pace of the individual refers to how fast he needs to increase his intake of a substance in order to get the same mood change or feeling as he previously did with a lesser amount. Second, as this tolerance pace is continuing its course there is no way to determine at what point addiction will develop. However, it does seem that a faster tolerance pace often correlates with an addiction developing sooner and a slower tolerance pace with a later development. But when will an addiction kick in with any given individual? There’s just no way to predict it so from that perspective there is an aspect of its timing that is genetic. One person abuses drugs for months before addiction kicks in and another person abuses for years before developing an addiction. Just like our skin responds differently to the sun’s rays, some people burn faster than others. The concept of genetic predisposition is a strong factor as far as the tolerance pace and the timing development of an addiction. Anybody can develop an addiction and these genetic factors, along with several environmental factors, contribute to the speed at which it happens. The most important thing to remember is that no matter when it is developed, once you’ve got an addiction, you’ve got it for life. The goal then becomes learning how to live a life that is drug/alcohol free, healthy, fruitful, and fulfilling.

Setbacks don’t turn into comebacks by getting lucky. Any comeback is built on a winning strategy. The strategy includes praying with humility, planning with wisdom, and acting with courage. The winning attitude is like the tortoise on a triathlon, not the rabbit on a hundred yard dash.

If you’ve ever had a child in life-and-death danger, either physically or spiritually, you know nightmares can be true. You may never have said it, but did you ever feel like God had broken the rules? Did you make statements like, “How could God let this happen?” I did. I felt that way when the daughter I mentioned above became ill. She endured multiple surgeries and fought off death for more than a year. But God didn’t break the rules. He never has and He never will! In my family’s search for solutions, my wife and I became very frustrated. We took our child to medical professionals who were almost adequately qualified, but so busy they seemed insensitive. I also remember medical professionals who were genuine and caring, but not experienced enough to be qualified for the severity of our child’s illness. Then God led us far away from our home to a gifted doctor at the Cleveland Clinic and his team. For our medical need, Dr. Victor Fazio was, and is, the best in the world. Not only did he literally save our child’s life, he genuinely cared about her life, not just the success of his surgeries. That was the combination that we had prayed for.

After years of working with chemically dependent adolescents and their families, I asked myself, “If this were my son or daughter, what kind of program would I want for them?” My question was answered with the vision of a program that had all the things I had ever dreamed would help a kid and his family win against chemical dependency and the drug culture. God has blessed that vision into a reality: Capstone Treatment Center. Its name is no accident because it honors our Builder. That you are reading this letter is no accident either. I believe that someday, maybe even today, you’ll know someone who needs help because of the nightmare you are facing with your child. In your search for solutions, please don’t wish for luck. Pray for God’s guidance and see where He leads you.

Sincerely,

Adrian Hickmon Ph.D.
Executive Director
Capstone Treatment Center