Quote of the Week


"If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.



Clean rebel
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Sunday, June 09, 2013

Click to see source

One of the tasks of adolescence is to move towards independence from family. It's part of growing up. Once teenagers get involved with drugs a couple things happen to complicate this natural age appropriate task.



First of all, in most families where teens have become drug abusers, becoming involved with drugs is THE WAY to rebel against family values. Once the drug abuse happens the teenager feels as though he has succeeded in becoming independent. In other words he has struck a blow for independence because he has adopted values that are strikingly different from his parents. In other families the teen might decide to become Conservative if his parents are Liberal, or perhaps join the Catholic church if his parents are protestant. Perhaps if his parents don't bother recycling the teenager might adopt a radical protect-the-environment group. If higher education is an important family value a teen might opt to drop out of school. Of course, many times becoming the "rebel" isn't that obvious or perhaps sometimes teens don't really get the rebel thing going all that much, or at least it doesn't appear so to the outside observer.



Now let's consider the teenager who adopts a lifestyle of drugs and/ or crime to his rebel's stance; however, he get's in trouble and ends up in Juvenile Court or in drug rehab. Now, he has become less "independent" and more "dependent" on his family and now on the system that begins to intervene in his life. Especially, with Probation involved, the teenager can soon feel as though he is being treated like he is 12 years old and, indeed, we hear a lot of screaming from teens at this point saying, "But I'm [insert age] years old! You can't treat me like I'm 12!" Of course we can and we do treat the teenager like he is 12 because suddenly we have a window of opportunity to keep the teenager safe from harm, and really with the fatal nature of this drug addiction we are struggling to keep these teens alive.

At this point we have a frustrated teenager. If he submits to the plan and to the expert recommendations then he is no longer striving for independence but he has surrendered all independence. We point out that down the road he will be calling some of his own shots but not now: now he needs to recover.

At this point with the striving for independence thing sort of put on hold another interesting thing happens. The parent now discovers that with the help of the rehab and/ or with the help of the Court they now have a bit of power. Wow! We are talking contracts and using such techniques as "nevertheless" and "regardless" to avoid arguing. We attend meetings and become educated about what exactly constitutes a good recovery from addictions and even more important we buy into the "non-enabling" approach to supervising our teenagers. All is good. But there is something that can go very wrong at this point.

As the pendulum swings the other way it is only natural that we parents try to micro manage. We sort of have to don't we? We are talking about helping the teenager choose his friends because we know that if he chooses to hang out with the same people that he got high with then there is a 99.999999 percent chance that he too will get high. So, how is the teenager going to get back on this Independence thing?

At this point let's divide our teenagers into two arbitrary groupings. The first group we have the teens who are clearly not trying to recover. They want to be treated like adults and yet they continue to make decisions that put them in danger. For these kids the drive for independence is still all about finding a way back to using drugs. We must prioritize our parenting and remaining aware of how we might still be enabling our teens is still the most important thing. When these teens accuse us of "micro managing" we need to agree that we are and state calmly that we will continue to do what we need to do to keep them safe. Even for these teens, once we know that they are safe, for example if they are in a halfway house, then we need to back off on the issues that are not so much about safety.

Let's call the second group of teens those that either have adopted a strong commitment to stay clean or at least are considering a commitment to stay clean. For these teens it suddenly becomes really important that we allow or help them to find a way to rebel. For these teens their whole way of striking out for independence was that they thought using drugs was the way to be different from family. Now they need a new way.

Another way to see this is to realize that teens must make some mistakes. They have to learn by making mistakes. We want to keep them out of danger but we don't want to protect them from all chances to learn by making mistakes. And where possible we want to encourage the whole rebel thing. Keep in mind that for teens risk taking is an important part of becoming independent. Teenager brains seem to be designed to accept risk taking as an activity.

We had a good example of this phenomenon at our meeting in Wexford yesterday. A mother in group described situation where her and her husband who happens to work in law enforcement cautioned if not outright forbid their daughter who is recently returned home from rehab not to get involved with some people who are in recovery and who have a crisis that involves the police. The daughter got involved anyway and while she was still clean she became an embarrassment to her parents especially because her father is in law enforcement. She claimed that these people who are in recovery (but who may not be clean any longer) needed her help. She took a risk by going to help them. She became a rebel because it was forbidden by her parents. She stood for something. She took a stand. She remains clean and apparently committed to recovery, at least for today. She tells her parents not to try to work her recovery for her. She may discover that trying to hard to help others is not good for her recovery at all. But it might just be the thing she has to learn herself.

Mom: You know we asked you not to go over there to help those people with their problems.

Teen: I had to. THEY NEEDED me. I can't turn my back on my peers like that.

Mom: You know that was embarrassing for your father.

Teen: Don't work my program for me.

Mom: Look, just listen a second. OK?

Teen: Yeah go ahead.

Mom: We wish you wouldn't throw us under the bus like that. We wish you could appreciate that we have been through a lot with your addiction and try to show some respect and gratitude for what we have done. Still, I see that you want to help others. I know you are a good person, a loyal person, and I know that you can be a great friend. I love that about you. We are proud of you. Very proud of you. Maybe we need to start giving you a little more room. This is your life honey. You are trying to be clean and you know, it's hard sometimes for us to realize that you have to find your own way. We can handle the embarrassment. And in fact the hell with what other people think if you are clean and working a program of recovery then we will stand behind you. OK?

Teen: I didn't expect to hear all that.

Mom: Well, it's nice to know we can still surprise you.

Teen: I'm sorry I make it look bad for daddy but mom I just had to do my part.

Mom: I know. We love you. Let us know if we can to anything to help- OK?

Another parents in group during closing comments shared that "the bond between people in recovery can be incredibly strong. We went to a meeting to see our son pick up a clean tag and celebrate an anniversary and we witnessed people reaching out to him and my first thought was, 'wait a minute- how long have you known this person?' but we are learning that when it comes to meetings and recovery, and out son goes to a lot of meetings, the bond that they form is really strong."

If not for these bonds our teenager might not be able to stay clean.

Our teens in recovery have a huge job. Work a program of recovery, become independent, take risks, discover who you are that must be quite different from who your parents were, at the end of the day don't pick up a drug. Suddenly, our teens aren't just dysfunctional people trying to get better and trying to be more normal, they are heroes who amid much risk and turmoil find a way to not only help themselves but find a way to help others. They discover who they are by being brave.

4 comments:

Jenn said...

Thanks, Lloyd, for the thought-provoking post. Although my son is still in the dependent & in placement stage right now, I know that he will be one of those brave risk-taking rebels, but hopefully doing it for good reasons. I am sure I will need to come back to read this post again in the future.

As parents we can get so immersed in our children's consistently poor behavior, that we come to expect a continuation of poor choices, almost pre-judging everything they do. We hardly know what normal is anymore, and it's very helpful to have a different perspective on a teen's normal growth patterns & potential for good.

Jenn

Wilma said...

Lloyd,

Is this for me (and Fred)?

Bam is clean and sober for over a year - we are now in the clean rebel stage. Bam seems to be embracing recovery, goes to meetings and I think is building (or trying build) a recovery support system. There have been many young men d/c from the 1/2 way house and Bam has connected with them, and It seems like he is trying to mentor some of them, even bringing some of them to our house for an afternoon of "chill'n" -all approved by Fred who is home during the day as he is retired.
Fred is still enabling and I am still (trying to)micro-managing. Bam terrifies me. He turned 19 last Friday! And today is the
19th anniversay of us bringing him home from the hospital-for those who don't know Bam is adopted and he was 3 days old when we brought him home. We had a borrowed cradle in the hallway and family and friends stopping by all weekend with gifts for this precious son we had waited so long for. Fast forward to 2013. Today we took Bam out to dinner for his birthday. He got rained out at work and called Fred to say he was coming home-didn't ask just had his cousin bring him home. This is o.k. for Fred-enabling?. Since Bam was already here I said o.k. to dinner-more enabling?. We did tell him that it had to be Olive Garden since we had gift cards (Fred had already bought Bam groceries last week).Dinners are awkward and today was no exception-Bam was tired (said he didn't sleep at all since his alarm wasn't working and he didn't want to be late for work so he didn't sleep all night)so we don't really talk, eat fast and take him back to the 3/4 house. Today Bam asks me to come into the house to see it. HMMM, up to now he didn't want me there, however I think his motvation was to show me how he is living sharing a basement room with two other guys (and it's not the finished basement at home). I get to meet an older guy who asks Bam if he has food for him and he's not joking-so says the older guy and he does look serious. This place resembles a frat house and as a mother I don't want my son living in this place with mattresses on the floors however the place is HUGE and conveniently located to public transportation, stores, etc It is a 3/4 way recovery house, Bam's second in less than a month, his decision, maybe another rebel action. He had to figure out how to pay the rent for the new place when he had already paid for the 1st place which he managed to do on his own-impressed me with accomplishing this. We had decided before or IF Bam was allowed to return home he had to demonstrate that he could be responsible and accountable-keep a job, manage his money, stay clean. And the REBEL has emerged.
Bam has missed work due to weather so his paychecks will be smaller than anticipated. His job is seasonal and weather is an issue so there could be more weeks like this. I think he will have a rent crisis in a couple weeks.
I think this is a situation where Bam has been a rebel-he quit a permanent job INDOORS for the seasonal job OUTDOORS which I understand is more fun and he is working with his cousin. However, he is then in a position where he can't pay his rent, phone bill and probably not paying his credit card. He will not let us help him with managing his finances so he is facing getting kicked out of the 3/4 way house for McKeesport-a lesson learned? I do think if this happens he will quit his job because it will be more difficult for him to get to work-longer bus ride, his cousin won't drive all the way out there and Fred has told him he is not going to Mckeesport to transport Bam around. And this is on of my fears-will Bam be strong enough if this happens to use it as a learning lesson and not give up and relapse.

It is really hard for me to let him go as decisions he has made in the past haven't been just stupid mistakes but ones with life-threatening consequenses.

Thanks, LLoyd, for this enlightening post.

Wilma

Lloyd Woodward said...

Wilma thanks for responding to my post. No, I was actually not thinking of you but I believe this is a universal thing that in some way or another comes up in every recovering family.

You make a very good point as I read your comment. Yes, sometimes the clean rebel will create huge mistakes and have to reap the consequences. We learn best from failure and even when clean that's going to happen.

It's had to watch our teens make mistakes, even when they are clean. It's ironic that that part of it is true in all families irrespective of whether recovery issues are present. It's pretty normal stuff with adolescents. Not suggesting that Bam doesn't still have "special issues," for of course he does and will continue, but we all learn from mistakes especially at that age.

Anonymous said...

Lloyd,
Thank you so much for for this post. It really put everything we have done the past 3 years into perspective. Ed has always wanted independence, but us (his parents)and society have gotten in his way. In placement he followed the rules and was a role model. I have always said Ed "does grounding well". When he got out of placement we micro managed him. He had a strong contract, he couldn't see old friends, did what he had to do to get by. All the while he was secretly planning his exit. We thought everything was in our control, we had the power, but the rebel in him still wanted his freedom.

He is now finding that independence is hard. He would never admit it to us though. The rebel in him won't let him admit defeat. He tells us he is fine and happy with his new freedom.

Thanks for enlightening us on the rebel teen. I saw Ed, and us, as I read it. You were right on.

Alice

Credits

This layout (edited by Ken) made by and copyright cmbs.