Done_With_It

A Mother's Story of Her Son's Addiction


A Mother's Story of Her Son's Addiction

Photo: Michele Borzoni
By Ashley Neglia

My firstborn son is handsome, elegant even, with large brown eyes and olive skin, a little over six feet tall, and so very smart. A graduate of Boston University with a bachelor's degree in communications, he has worked in Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C., for some of the most well-known public relations agencies. He could be anything he wanted to be.
He is a drug addict.

So begins Libby Cataldi's memoir, "Stay Close: A Mother's Story of Her Son's Addiction," wherein she recounts her son's downward spiral into an intense ketamine and heroin-fueled addiction that nearly killed him. For Jeff Bratton, now 29, what started as recreational use of the usual gateway drugs, alcohol and marijuana, quickly escalated to include cocaine, ketamine, crystal meth and, finally, heroin. Cataldi's powerful and heartbreaking account details her struggle to keep her son alive through his addiction, even while she was battling breast cancer. Today, thanks in large part to his mother's refusal to give up on him, Jeff has been sober for more than two years. AOL Health had the opportunity to speak to Cataldi about her son's addiction and how she lived through some of their darkest hours.

AOL Health: Was there a catalyst for your son's drug abuse?

Libby Cataldi: That's a good question and a hard question to answer. My [former] husband and I tried our best to provide a stable environment for our kids. We did a lot as a family so the real question is where does addiction come from? There are no easy answers. One son is an addict. One son isn't an addict. Some medical authorities will say it's an illness -- a chemical imbalance in the brain. Others will say that there's a propensity for [addiction], just like there's a propensity in a family for diabetes or depression. Where did it come from? What was the catalyst? I don't know.

Jeff says it started at a party. It started with alcohol and pot, and it was nothing but a party. It was fun. He said after awhile he got caught in a sandstorm, and all of a sudden it wasn't about a party anymore, it was about Jeff getting loaded. So where's the line between the party and the addiction? There isn't any real clear answer as to why Jeff is an addict and [why] Jeremy [my other son] isn't. Why did I have breast cancer and nobody in my family had cancer? I don't know.

AOL Health: Were there any other red flags early on that pointed to an increased risk for drug abuse?

Cataldi: Yes. There were definitely signs along the way, and I missed some of them. A psychologist asked once, "How many red flags do you need?" Jeff got arrested [when] he was caught stealing cigarettes in the 6th grade and things escalated.

AOL Health: Were there any recurring signs that signaled he was using drugs?

Cataldi: There are some things I should have paid attention to like weight loss, change in attitude, [the loss of a] sparkle in his eyes. Friends make a huge difference, but I wasn't paying attention. I thought that they were okay.

A girl called me and she said, "Jeff's using heroin." And I [said], "Heroin? How could it be heroin?" And she said, "Haven't you seen him nodding off?" I had been seeing him nodding off for a long time, but I didn't educate myself. I didn't know that was a sign of heroin [use]. When he came home with swollen feet and shoelaces that weren't tied and he tells me, "Well, momma, this is the fashion," I'm thinking, "This is okay." Meanwhile, he was shooting heroin into the veins in his feet, and his feet were so swollen he could hardly put on shoes.

AOL Health: Looking back, do you think these were obvious signs you missed? And if so, do you regret not acting sooner?

Cataldi: Anybody listening would probably think, these signs were so obvious, where were you? But the reality is, as a mom, I don't think I'm so unusual. The other problem with saying, "Yes, there's a problem. My kid is an addict," is [that] now I have to do something. So admitting it is really hard because what do I do? I didn't know. That's where Al-Anon [a self-help organization for family and friends of those addicted to drugs and alcohol] helped me a lot. And I wish I had gone a lot sooner.

I'd be a liar if I said to you that I didn't have a lot of regrets. Maybe I could have done something differently from the beginning. For me there were high expectations. I wanted my kids to be great. When they were at school or with me, they were an extension of who I was and I wanted them to be perfect. But they weren't and neither am I.

AOL Health: Did you have a clue about what was going on with him or were you in such deep denial that you couldn't acknowledge he had a problem?

Cataldi: I was in denial. Big, big, big denial and lived an illusion. What did I know? When he was 19 he went to his first drug rehab center. He started using pot and alcohol at 14. He used ketamine [also known as Special K and commonly used as a date rape drug] for many years. Ketamine is an animal tranquilizer, and he shot [it] into his legs and into his arms. That was [his] drug of choice for many, many years until he started heroin. So when he was 19 I realized my kid was in trouble and so I forced him to go [to rehab.]

Done_With_It

Photo: Michele Borzoni
AOL Health: Jeffrey yo-yoed in and out of rehab a dozen times. Why were there so many relapses?

Cataldi: There was no follow up, and when he came back [from rehab] I thought, "Well great. Now it's all done." [But] it's like going to the hospital [when] they cut out my cancer. There was follow-up to do.

One doctor said to me, "After you had your cancer surgery, if you had never gone back for chemotherapy or radiation would anybody have said anything?" I said, "They would've been banging on the door." He said, "When your kid got out of the rehab center, did anybody call or bang on the door to try and get him to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and to continue?" No, they didn't. I'm not saying this is anybody's fault. I'll take the blame more than anything. I didn't know, and maybe he knew and just didn't do it. He wasn't ready. He wasn't choosing; I was choosing. And that's the difference. An addict has to choose to get well. And there I was his mother choosing for him, forcing him and it doesn't work that way. You don't get well because somebody else wants you to get well.

AOL Health: What do you think finally led Jeffrey to choose to become clean?

Cataldi: He's been in and out of probably 12 different centers, 12 different institutions, 12 different clinics. He went to [one clinic to] detox so many times that the third time he went the guard said to him, "Get out. We're not a hotel." That's how bad Jeff was. Could my son have died? One-hundred percent yes. Did I live with that fear? Every night, yes. But I knew that I had done everything and it was now his turn.

When he was [living] in California, he had no support and [realized] that I wasn't going to bail him out again. He knew that he had to do something. Why did he finally make the decision to turn around? He said that the consequences of his addiction just became too heavy. There's a saying in AA: "Never deny an addict his pain." What I did is I enabled, enabled, enabled. He'd get arrested; I'd bail him out. His car got towed; I'd pay his fine. He'd do this; I'd do that. He'd drop lower; I did more.

AOL Health: Your story is similar to a lot of other people's stories in terms of wanting to help your son, but instead enabling his addiction.

Cataldi: Dealing with an addiction is counterintuitive because as a parent you want to help your kids. Enabling him prolonged [his addiction]. [It's] the truth. Say I hadn't enabled him, would he have been as sick? Maybe? With addiction I don't have any answers, I have a story, I have a lot of heartache and I've learned a lot. I've been beaten into wisdom, but it's not much else. Would it have been different with him if I had not enabled him all of those times when he had hit bad places. I think maybe if I had quit enabling. If God forbid I ever have to do it again, no I can't enable. I just can't. Stay close, don't abandon, but don't pay the bills. Don't pay his cell phone. Don't pay to get him out of jail, don't.

AOL Health: Which was more difficult as a mother: Listening to your son plead for help and not giving it? Or was it easier to just turn your back and wash your hands of it?

Cataldi: I never could turn my back. Someone recommended to me that I have a funeral for him, like he's dead. Then when he calls me and says "Mom, this is Jeff," I'd say, "Jeff's dead." That really was recommended to me. I couldn't do these things, I couldn't turn my back on my son.

AOL Health: In the book, you refer to Jeff as having a split-screen life. He graduated from Boston University, got promotions at work, yet he was addicted to heroin throughout. How do you think he was able to keep up this façade?

Cataldi: Actually, alcoholics and addicts are very functional. Not all of them, but many of them are very functional. But eventually it catches up to you and then you can't function. But Jeff got promotions while doing drugs. Some drugs hype you up, give you lots of energy and you can keep tremendous hours. So Jeff was just a very capable and very functional addict. I think he learned to manage his drug use so that he knew when he needed to use so he wouldn't get sick, because with heroin you [can] get really sick. So I think he really managed his whole life [with] a fake confidence. And I think that he thought he was faking out the world. This counterfeit confidence that he had, he believed he could make it work. And he did. I think a lot of addicts and alcoholics make it work for a long time and then all of a sudden everything starts crashing down.

AOL Health: At one point, Jeff detoxed from heroin in your home, which is something you had no experience with. How did you cope with his withdrawal, especially while you were the head of a private school?

Cataldi: It was nuts. It was terrible. The nurse with whom I spoke at the [rehab] center said that I [could] give him four Motrin but no more. So here I have this heroin addict who's in extraordinary pain, and I'm telling him, "I can only give you four Motrin. All you can have is four Motrin!" I didn't know what I was doing. Jeff said he was in a sandstorm. Well, I was in a sandstorm with him. Four Motrin to a heroin addict? That's like a drop of water, and I wouldn't give him anymore. I didn't, and he suffered. He suffered.

He was in bed in agony. Agony. His legs ached and pounded. He trembled. He'd go from sweats to frigid cold. He kept putting himself in the bathroom trying to get himself warm. Then he'd get cold. Then he'd get warm. That's the reason why a lot of heroin addicts stay out on the streets. Detox is so painful. I'm a mother, and here I am trying to run a school, and this was happening at home. Talk about a split screen. It was like a crazy world, and we hung on. We kept moving forward.

AOL Health: Jeff relapsed 12 times. Did you recognize what was happening? How long did it typically take you to realize when he relapsed?

Cataldi: I didn't know and I think it's an important thing you bring up. Now I know, as part of the process of recovery. But I didn't get that. I figured that once you came out of the centers, he was okay and we'd be okay. The relapse happens much more frequently than I really understood, and I really wasn't looking for it. And the truth is I didn't want to look for it, can you believe that? I wanted to believe he was okay, and he had gone on to a place that cost a fortune and he'd gotten help.

AOL Health: Do you ever blame yourself for Jeff's relapses?

Cataldi: I blame myself all of the time. Absolutely I felt like a failure, like a failure as a mother. I should have been able to fix it. I should have been able to do something differently. If I could have cut out my heart and given it for him to be well, I would have done that. There was one time when Jeff read the first half of the book, I said to him "Look at all of the trauma you caused. Why didn't you stop?" He looked at me and was crying at the time and said "You wrote an entire book, you don't get it yet do you? I love you. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to cause trauma. I'm an addict, momma. I'm an addict."

Done_With_It

AOL Health: When writing the book, how did you listen to your son's painfully honest and often brutal accounts of his downward spiral into drug abuse?

Cataldi: It was really hard. In A.A. they say that recovery can only be achieved through rigorous honesty. And that is what this book took, rigorous honesty from both of us and Jeremy, too. It was hard, hard, hard. The more we were honest the more honesty was easier to achieve. It was like opening the floodgates, and the book helped do it. It was the most healing thing we'd ever done.

AOL Health: Was there ever a point when you thought he would never really get better?

Cataldi: I prayed that he would get well. I really in my gut thought he'd be healed one day, but I didn't always know if he'd live long enough to get well. I can't say I was confident that I would see this day, but as a mom all I could do was hope.

AOL Health: Do you consider him healed today?

Cataldi: No. With addiction you're never healed. Like diabetes or high blood pressure, it's always there. He has to choose every day. Every addict and alcoholic has a choice. They can always go back. What Jeff says now that he's clean is that if he could choose drugs again he would. He said, "Drugs were fantastic." But he said [that the] consequences of his addiction became so overwhelmingly bad and heavy that he knows if he goes back, he'll goes back to where he was. It's a progressive illness, so it will get worse and he doesn't want to do that. I don't know how you get any worse and stay alive. So in A.A. they say "one day at a time." Some people say "Oh I don't want to hear this one day at a time, just make the decision and stay clean." My dad was a drill sergeant in the Marines and he'd say, "Tell him to stop! Tell him to stop!" Telling an addict to stop is like telling a paraplegic to do somersaults. It's impossible. The addict has to say no. So Jeff has to choose every day. Today he's good. Tomorrow I pray he's good too.

AOL Health: There was so much that had gone on: drugs, jail, lying, rehab and back again. Did you ever imagine that things would get as bad as they did?

Cataldi: No, absolutely 100 percent no. That's why I think it's one of the reasons I kept enabling him and fixing things. I never thought it could get any worse. Here's a kid who was raised in a good family, good education, religion and in the end he was in Miami-Dade county jail. At that point I though, "For sure he'll never go back to drugs after this." [But] the addiction is more powerful than anything. So as a mother I'm looking at him and thinking, "It can't get any worse than this, I'll fix it now." So I'd fix it. But the reality is that every time he hit bottom, I'd fix it and I'd enable it.

AOL Health: At one point, Jeremy, who had always seemed to stick by his brother's side, cut Jeff out of his life. As a mother, how did that make you feel seeing your two sons come apart?

Cataldi: The whole family was breaking apart at the seams. We just were imploding, and that's what addiction does. It just implodes the family. [It causes] incredible pain.

AOL Health: People often blame the parents for their child's addictions. Having gone through what you went through, what would you say to that?

Cataldi: I don't know if it's in the United States or if it's cultural, but we all want to put blame somewhere. Some loss has to be somebody's fault, and so the parents are the easy people to blame. Maybe they are [to blame]. Maybe we're at fault for everything. I don't think that's true. I think sometimes [it's] the roll of the dice. Some kids get in car accidents -- why? Some kids are addicts -- why? Some kids are wonderful skiers -- why? Why are some people so talented? Is it the parents? Sometimes no.

There are lots of families that are wonderful, and they have kids who are addicts. There are some families that are terrible, and they have wonderful kids. There's no correlation out there that says, you know, here's the way to have a good kid. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. That stuff happened in our family, and we're trying to help others by sharing our story. But it's hard. Our prayer is that maybe other families will know that it's important to get help and it's important to work together and then maybe we can start to make a dent in this thing called addiction and save some kids' lives.

AOL Health: Both of your children were there during and after your bilateral mastectomy, but you learned later that Jeff was on heroin at the time.

Cataldi: It's a strange contradiction for me. The normal reaction would be: I was outraged. I was betrayed. The reality is that I wasn't. By that time I was so beaten up, and I knew that he was sick. I knew he was sick. He was washing my hair and saying, "Let me dry your hair, momma. Don't you look pretty?" In his stupor, he still loved his mother. It's still emotional. So the truth is -- through that I knew that he was alive underneath it all. I knew that my kid hadn't died on me. And so in some crazy way, it gave me hope.

AOL Health: Who do you hope to help with this book and with the family secrets about Jeff's addiction that you kept hidden for so long?

Cataldi: Families need tremendous support. Often times you think the addict is the guy on the street who is incoherent, but for every addict there's at least four other people directly affected. Families need tremendous support. We're not alone but we keep our secrets. I mean what family wants to talk about my son the addict, my husband the alcoholic, my wife the alcoholic? People don't want to talk about that. There's a saying in A.A. that says we're only as sick as our secrets. And that's one reason we started to write the book, to bring it out into the open.

Addiction doesn't discriminate. It doesn't have any one kind of family. It happens in rich families, poor families, Wall Street families, educated families, uneducated families. We get kind of pompous and say it won't happen to us. I got pompous and said it wouldn't happen to me and my family. It does, no one is immune. We have to educate ourselves. A.A. is for addicts and alcoholics and Al-Anon is for those of us who love addicts and alcoholics. Al-Anon was my lifeline. I read, devoured their literature and listened and found tremendous support in the halls of Al-Anon. And I have to be honest I was too proud to go for awhile. I was afraid someone would see me and know someone in my family was having a problem because there I was at Al-Anon.

I don't want to keep addiction in the shadows. The longer we keep it in the shadows, [the more] it thrives. It thrives in the dark. We have to bring it out. It's time to say we can survive this. We can live. Let's show people it's not a death sentence. I think when we give up hope everything is lost.

Done_With_It

A Mother's Story Of Her Son's Addiction - AOL Health

Impurrfect

((Done))

I was just reading about that on AOL, but didn't get to finish it. I'm glad you posted it here, as it looked really good.

Hugs and prayers!

Amy

Done_With_It

I didn't get to finish it either but looked like something some here would like.

shockozulu

Thank you for posting this Done. I especially enjoyed this one passage:

This is one reason I'm such a fan of Al-Anon/NarAnon. Its a great place to discuss the "family secrets" so we aren't sick from our secrets anymore.

uards

I read that on AOL also. How could you not go to it when you read the title on the front news page. I'm really glad it has a (so far) happy ending. He was certainly a highly functioning addict to get through college etc.

Ann

Thanks Miss Done, I only read part of it but will be back to read the rest soon.

Hugs