A teaching moment about drugs comes from stranger on a plane

Crystal meth rock

Carol Forsloff - She was a stranger on an airplane and for hours cheerfully spoke of her life filled with business and busy moments, all the while she held a sadness, that spilled out suddenly in tears for her daughter. 

Sometimes we sit for hours, listening to the dull or the mundane from a seat partner when we travel.  Or we put on earphones to drown out the voices we don't want to hear as we muse over our own issues.  In this case, however, something was learned from this stranger on a plane that is worth sharing.

This stranger reached out for a moment, for someone to listen, to hold for a moment, as many will do in an instant when misery has become so overpowering it can't be held in anymore.  Her pain reflects that of many mothers when their young adult children are smothered with drugs and can't seem to get free.  What to do? she wondered aloud in whispers that remind us of the real terrors in our midst.  Those terrors are drugs everywhere.  Her daughter is addicted to meth.

Drugs are so commonplace that virtually every family in America is touched with the problem.  Yet it's hard to share the pain with friends and family because what isn't shared is that commonplace nature of drugs that should allow people to speak freely of their pain rather than hold it in silence.

And it can be embarrassing, or at best disconcerting, when one faces the problem of a drug addict in the family when all the neighbors and friends eventually find out.  But talking with a stranger allows one to vent, to share, to feel safe as well in sharing some of the pain that comes when close family members have an addiction that creates misery for others.

In its crystalline form, the drug is called crystal meth, ice, Tina, or glass.  Methamphetamine is highly addictive, no matter what it is called.  It is a stimulant with a long-lasting effect that brings a state of euphoria and makes the user crave it again and again.

The drug, some young people have reported, is relatively easy to obtain, despite the fact it is a Schedule II drug that requires a prescription for its authentic uses for weight loss and treatment of eating disorders.  For others, it is used for a high.  The National Institute for Drug Abuse reports a range of 1 to 2% of adolescents and young adults are users.

Because crystal meth is so seriously addictive, it is difficult to treat someone who uses it regularly.  The best treatment approach, however, according to NIH,  is what is called the Matrix Model, "a behavioral treatment approach that combines behavioral therapy, family education, individual counseling, 12-step support, drug testing, and encouragement for nondrug-related activities."

The stranger on the plane felt helpless because she had been told by treatment personnel they could handle her daughter and end the addiction.  The mother and father,however, were not involved in the counseling and the young woman remains living with the fellow who got her initially addicted to the drugs. This all-to-common treatment method is often used by former abusers who have become rehabilitated and elect to take courses in drug counseling and become credentialed.   Too often these same individuals have not conquered the problems that produced their own addictive behaviors, so
it is not uncommon to isolate those in treatment from family members.

It is not the model discussed as most effective by NIH.

When drugs are pervasive in various forms and impact young people and devastate lives, no one is a stranger who has a child who has succumbed to an addictive drug like crystal meth.

A mother weeps as mothers do when they watch their children hurt again and again and cannot stop the pain.  And to hold a stranger, a mother who weeps for a child, is never solace enough but something that becomes a teaching moment for us all on the dangers and sadness of drugs.