[caption id="attachment_11173" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Opium poppy"]
[/caption]James Burris/Ed--When Pat Mains cell phone rang on the morning of Nov. 17, 2003, what she heard dropped her to her knees when she learned her oldest daughter, Mia, 26 had been found dead of a heroin overdose.
I fell down screaming “God, not her! Don’t take her! Take me instead,” Mains says, recalling the day a piece of her died, leaving an emotional wound that, despite being nearly five years old, is as fresh and painful as ever. “The four-hour drive home took forever. And walking down the steps to the Boulder County Morgue was like walking down to hell; seeing her lying there on the cold, steel table...”Today, the pain of Mains’ loss competes with the persistent ache of regret; regret for calling the police when Mia stole her car or kicking her out of the house when she forged a check, all in support of her spiraling drug habit. “The what-ifs are really hard,” Mains said. “What if I had kept her grounded longer; what if I had done more to help her? It drives you crazy as a parent. You never get over it.”
Mains’ experience, and that of her family and friends, is on the extreme end of the spectrum of emotional and physical collateral damage caused by those struggling with addiction, be it alcohol or drugs or both.
There are myriad programs, groups, books and materials available to addicts seeking help. But what of the parents, spouses, siblings and kids of those addicts whose lives have been damaged?
Joe Herzanek is nothing short of a savior for families needing help in helping people within families. As a chaplain working with addicts seeking recovery in the Boulder County Jail since 1993, Herzanek last year published “Why Don’t They JUST QUIT?” and a companion DVD that addresses this issue directly. The book and DVD have its roots in his experience working with addicts and their families, as well as his own recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. “For every addict, there are 6-8 people, sometimes more, that are impacted by that person,” Herzanek says. “Even if they have quit, they have done damage to those relationships, either knowingly or unknowingly.”
And just as Pam Mains did, the first reaction by a close friend or family member to an addict seeking rehabilitation is to blame themselves. “What they want to do is take the blame,” Herzanek says. “They say to themselves, ‘If I had been a better parent or wife or brother, they wouldn’t have this problem.’ But what they need to know is that they didn’t cause the problem, and they can’t cure (it).”
Herzanek’s advice involves some tough love tactics that include: “The tough love of saying ‘no’ makes the pain of suffering the consequences of (an addict’s) behavior a good motivator for getting help,” Herzanek says. “Parents often take responsibility . . . but they don’t know when they have crossed the line from helping to hurting.”
Establishing and maintaining real consequences are a must for addicts in recovery and among the hardest for compassionate family and friends to enforce, Herzanek says. And that was a big reason for his writing a book and creating the organization, Changing Lives Foundation. “Over the years I’ve seen how much family members struggle with this, and they don’t deserve it,” Herzanek says. “They want to take responsibility for a family member’s addiction and that can leave them bitter for years, and they don’t understand why.”
Much of the power in Herzanek’s message stems from its foundation in truth; qualities born from personal experience. As a teenager growing up in Kansas City, Herzanek was smoking pot at 19. Over the next 10 years, he indulged in hash, alcohol, cocaine and Valium.
As his tolerance increased, so did the frequency of his use. When he finally began getting help at an inpatient treatment center and embarked down the long, difficult road to recovery, Herzanek started to see the pain he was causing his family as well.“I was blind to how my actions were affecting my brother and two sisters,” Herzanek writes in his book. “Actually, the entire family did not understand what was happening. Even now, more than 25 years later, some members of my family remain bitter, and we have never been able to resolve those hard feelings.”
So after 15 years as a chaplain with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office working with inmates wanting to recover, Herzanek took the last year off to write and self-publish “Why Don’t They JUST QUIT?” and launch, with his wife, Judy, Changing Lives.
The “innocent victims” that result from a family dealing with a loved one’s addiction are the primary audience that Herzanek is trying to reach. For addicts, Herzanek is a firm believer in the effectiveness of the 12-step program, so much so that he consistently leads and promotes NA (Narcotics Anonymous) and AA meetings at the jail.
But for the family and friends dealing with an addict in recovery, he saw the need of something tailor-made for their experience. That something is a book that, in essence, has been decades in the making. The book is the product of the drug use, the struggle to stay on the road to recovery, and the subsequent work helping other addicts and their loved ones.
“The book . . . is for family and friends, to help them recognize the signs of addiction, what to do when they see those signs, how they can help them stay drug and alcohol free and what they might be doing to make the problem worse,” Herzanek says. “People can’t quit on their own.”
Mains’ experience, and that of her family and friends, is on the extreme end of the spectrum of emotional and physical collateral damage caused by those struggling with addiction, be it alcohol or drugs or both.
There are myriad programs, groups, books and materials available to addicts seeking help. But what of the parents, spouses, siblings and kids of those addicts whose lives have been damaged?
Joe Herzanek is nothing short of a savior for families needing help in helping people within families. As a chaplain working with addicts seeking recovery in the Boulder County Jail since 1993, Herzanek last year published “Why Don’t They JUST QUIT?” and a companion DVD that addresses this issue directly. The book and DVD have its roots in his experience working with addicts and their families, as well as his own recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. “For every addict, there are 6-8 people, sometimes more, that are impacted by that person,” Herzanek says. “Even if they have quit, they have done damage to those relationships, either knowingly or unknowingly.”
And just as Pam Mains did, the first reaction by a close friend or family member to an addict seeking rehabilitation is to blame themselves. “What they want to do is take the blame,” Herzanek says. “They say to themselves, ‘If I had been a better parent or wife or brother, they wouldn’t have this problem.’ But what they need to know is that they didn’t cause the problem, and they can’t cure (it).”
Herzanek’s advice involves some tough love tactics that include: “The tough love of saying ‘no’ makes the pain of suffering the consequences of (an addict’s) behavior a good motivator for getting help,” Herzanek says. “Parents often take responsibility . . . but they don’t know when they have crossed the line from helping to hurting.”
Establishing and maintaining real consequences are a must for addicts in recovery and among the hardest for compassionate family and friends to enforce, Herzanek says. And that was a big reason for his writing a book and creating the organization, Changing Lives Foundation. “Over the years I’ve seen how much family members struggle with this, and they don’t deserve it,” Herzanek says. “They want to take responsibility for a family member’s addiction and that can leave them bitter for years, and they don’t understand why.”
Much of the power in Herzanek’s message stems from its foundation in truth; qualities born from personal experience. As a teenager growing up in Kansas City, Herzanek was smoking pot at 19. Over the next 10 years, he indulged in hash, alcohol, cocaine and Valium.
As his tolerance increased, so did the frequency of his use. When he finally began getting help at an inpatient treatment center and embarked down the long, difficult road to recovery, Herzanek started to see the pain he was causing his family as well.“I was blind to how my actions were affecting my brother and two sisters,” Herzanek writes in his book. “Actually, the entire family did not understand what was happening. Even now, more than 25 years later, some members of my family remain bitter, and we have never been able to resolve those hard feelings.”
So after 15 years as a chaplain with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office working with inmates wanting to recover, Herzanek took the last year off to write and self-publish “Why Don’t They JUST QUIT?” and launch, with his wife, Judy, Changing Lives.
The “innocent victims” that result from a family dealing with a loved one’s addiction are the primary audience that Herzanek is trying to reach. For addicts, Herzanek is a firm believer in the effectiveness of the 12-step program, so much so that he consistently leads and promotes NA (Narcotics Anonymous) and AA meetings at the jail.
But for the family and friends dealing with an addict in recovery, he saw the need of something tailor-made for their experience. That something is a book that, in essence, has been decades in the making. The book is the product of the drug use, the struggle to stay on the road to recovery, and the subsequent work helping other addicts and their loved ones.
“The book . . . is for family and friends, to help them recognize the signs of addiction, what to do when they see those signs, how they can help them stay drug and alcohol free and what they might be doing to make the problem worse,” Herzanek says. “People can’t quit on their own.”
Information can also help people like Pam Mains deal with the pain of loss and the what-ifs that are involved in that pain.For Pam Mains, she has gained strength, she says, from using some of Herzanek's principles, even though it was a painful process. But she says it also gave her the tools, the strength, the hope that she, too, is on a long path of recovery from the grief, regret and self blame she feels.
“Until I got some help after Mia’s passing, I had myself convinced it was all my fault,” Pam says. “It was too much... Sometimes it’s still too much. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what I could have done differently. But addicts con you, they all do. And that’s what Joe’s book helps you understand; that their addiction wasn’t your fault and there’s nothing you can do to cure someone else’s addiction. Knowing that won’t bring Mia back, but it helps make sense of it all.”
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