A Cottages of the Palm Beaches patient, Tyler B., expressed his internal struggle with drug addiction in an creative and therapeutic way through an original poem he wrote after a one-on-one counseling session with his counselor:
I've been a substance abuse counselor for 13 years and can say, with no hyperbole, that addiction is a largely economic problem. While it's true that people of all income-levels succumb to drug dependency, lack of affordable drug treatment options makes it next to impossible for addicts without means to get the help they need. To make matters worse, depression and anxiety are two common triggering factors in substance abuse, and often stem from poverty and lack of financial stability.
Before we sent my daughter to an affordable drug rehab facility, I catered to the needs of my addict . . . my daughter. We gave her anything that she asked for, doling out money for her rent, her car payments, fines, anything you can think of, really. Is that not what a parent is supposed to do? Are we not supposed to provide for them when they need it most? Well, it turns out that I was financing her drug expenditures. By the time we all wised up to the situation, we knew that we would need to look for an affordable drug rehab.
The most valuable lesson that I learned, after my daughter finally agreed to go to an affordable alcohol and drug rehab, was that addiction is a family disease. Everyone plays a role in the addiction. More often than not, the mother is the enabler. Undoubtedly, I was the enabler.
