Addiction and Schizophrenia in an American Family, Part 4 of 9

         ADDICTION AND SCHIZOPHRENIA IN AN AMERICAN FAMILY, Part 4 of 9

           Adapted from “A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY: A Love Story"               

.                            Published by the University of Arizona Press

 Part 4   

     John was never a rebellious or angry young man.  He always cooperated in his treatment, which nonetheless always failed.  John’s complicity in our efforts to keep him clean defies belief, but it illustrates the craziness of our shared ordeal.

     I was trying to do my job as the Lehigh University president at this time.  In that role I was chatting with guests at a dedication of new Lehigh facilities and thinking about the remarks I was expected to make in an hour; when a campus police officer discreetly took me aside to inform me that my son John was in the campus lockup, high on drugs.  I excused myself quietly and went to my son, who was quite rational by that time.  Both John and I realized that he would bolt if set free, but I hated to leave him in our jail.  John suggested that we borrow police handcuffs and lock him to his bed in the President’s House until he came down from his high and I got back from my reception.  This we did.  I went back to my reception and gave my welcoming address.  John was waiting patiently when I returned home to free him from his shackles.

     The cycle of recovery and relapse continued, with each hospital detox followed by a rehab center whose promise ended in disappointment.  John was scheduled to move from one such three-day detox to a thirty day rehab when our daughter Lora was about to be married, and we all agreed that he could attend her wedding before the scheduled rehab.  People who knew John’s recent history were pleased to see him dancing happily at Lora’s reception.  Even in his addiction, John was always charming and never radiated anger as disaffected children often do.  Then John stole some of Lora’s most valuable wedding gifts and disappeared into the streets of the Lehigh Valley.

     Although Pat and I had never been secretive about John’s affliction, we knew that if we reported John’s theft to the police his arrest would be a headline story in the two local newspapers.  Not only was John Likins the son of Lehigh’s president, he was locally famous in his own right as a state wrestling champion.  Nevertheless, we immediately called the police, who found John within a few days. John Likins in handcuffs made the front page.

     The community reaction was quite surprising. I received a hundred letters, almost all reflecting the similar concerns of other parents in the Lehigh Valley, who seemed somehow relieved that even the president of the university shared their problems.  Although the newspapers were simply factual in their reporting, both papers also printed a piece I had written with the intention of having it printed in the Lehigh alumni magazine.  I knew that the story had to break soon and I had decided to break it myself.  Lehigh’s trustees were also quite understanding; they declined my offer to resign the presidency and urged me to stand my ground and face the issues directly. I did so.

     John’s theft landed him in jail, but the courts gave him the option of doing his time in a tough drug rehab called Hogar Crea, which was run by addicts in recovery.  John was there for some time and both Pat and I developed great respect for the men who made Hogar Crea work so well.  This organization was first established in Puerto Rico and many of the Lehigh Valley residents were Puerto Rican, but they accepted John and his family comfortably.  Despite their poverty-stricken lives, their drug use and associated criminal activity, and their lack of education or any prospect of success in this competitive world, many of these men were admirable in their own way. John learned a great deal, but not enough, from these men.  Pat and I may have learned more from John’s experience in Hogar Crea.  There is no doubt in my mind that these recovering addicts were better able to deal with drug addiction than the psychiatrists in John’s prior rehabilitation environment.

     After a period of recovery and subsequent relapse, John entered a rehab in Riverside, California, and a year later came back home to try one more time.  Always we had an agreement that any drug use would send John back to Riverside.  When after some promising months John did not return from his morning run, Pat and I confronted him when he got home after lunch.  Yes, he had been using drugs, and yes, he knew that he would have to go back to California. Within an hour John was on a plane to Chicago on his way back to California. Everyone was in tears, but tough love requires standing by your rules.

(To be continued in subsequent blogs.)

                   

                                            

Addiction and Schizophrenia in an American Family,Part 3 of 9

      (Adapted from "A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY:  A Love Story,"          Published by the University of Arizona Press, 2011)

                                                                                                                                         

(continuing…) 

     Finally we come to John’s story, which is characterized by extremes in every direction.  Pat and I knew from John’s infancy that his extraordinary energy would have to be channeled constructively, and fortunately his natural capabilities enabled him to excel on many fronts, most notably in the sport of wrestling. John was winning state championships in New Jersey for his age group and weight class soon after his introduction to the sport as a member of the community wrestling team Pat and I coached in Park Ridge, New Jersey when he was a boy. He continued his winning ways in high school, winning a Pennsylvania state high school championship in his junior year.  John was a fierce competitor; he took on every challenge and almost always won his matches.  The ultimate indignity for a wrestler is to lose his match by a pin, and in all his years of wrestling John was never pinned in competition.

     Despite all the triumphant moments that I savored as an old wrestler cheering for his son, the most memorable of John’s wrestling matches tells more about his character than about his athletic abilities.

     Before our Park Ridge youth wrestling team scheduled a match with a team from another town, the coaches conferred in detail, trying to arrange a positive wrestling experience for every kid who wanted to participate.  We didn’t keep team scores, but individual matches for dozens of kids were won or lost. 

     A compassionate coach in a neighboring town asked if our 75-pound wrestler would wrestle a mentally challenged boy who had never wrestled before, just to give him a positive experience.  Our wrestler agreed to do it until he saw the boy, who was visibly clumsy in his movements and obviously slow in other ways too.  With the gym full of people, our 75-pound wrestler couldn’t face the embarrassment of going out there with “that retard.”  John had just finished his match at 65 pounds and he volunteered to wrestle again.

     The match that followed was a beautiful demonstration of the purest spirit of our son as a competitor.  John made the wrestling feel real to his opponent, falling down with the boy on top, rolling around for dramatic effect, and finally going to his back to be pinned for the first (and only) time in his life.  Both boys had a great experience that day.  I have never been more proud of my son.  His compassion for that mentally handicapped boy is particularly meaningful to me in retrospect; when John much later in life became mentally impaired himself, he was not always shown the same respect.

     After his dramatic success at the state high school wrestling tournament in the spring of 1986, the bottom dropped out for John.  As his proud parents, we felt that the bottom had dropped out of our lives as well.  Always vigilant, Pat discovered a marijuana pipe in John’s back pocket, which we found shocking.  John was too dedicated an athlete to smoke cigarettes and initially he seemed no more likely than I had been to get into trouble with alcohol.  We did however find disturbing John’s drinking alone, using alcohol as a sedative, as in the following example:  One afternoon Pat appropriated from John a large glass of “grape juice” that he was drinking in the living room while watching television, endangering the new carpet; she was astonished to discover that the glass held red wine.

     When Pat found the marijuana pipe in John’s jeans, she confronted him angrily.  He seemed unconcerned.  John accepted our insistence on counseling, and he left his counselors puzzled. They saw John as a good kid with fine values, but he persisted in using alcohol and marijuana.  In retrospect, we see that John’s psychologist offered a clue that we did not catch; he said that there was something going on within John that he could not identify.

     John escalated within a few months to snorting cocaine, which seemed to the people who thought they knew John as totally out of character.  When Pat and I took John for the first time to a local hospital for drug detoxification, we both came down the elevator in tears.

     John spent thirty days in an upscale rehabilitation center under the professional care of psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and counselors.  Within a week of his return he was using again.  He spent ninety days in a tougher environment in Erie, Pennsylvania that was essentially run by recovering addicts, and he returned home with every promise of staying away from drugs.  He re-entered high school, led his team to the state tournament and graduated with a wrestling scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh.  He entered Pitt for the summer session to begin his freshman year and when the wrestling season began he made the starting lineup immediately.  He seemed to be on his way to the realization of all his promise.  However, before Christmas he relapsed again. The Pitt wrestling team rescued him from the dangerous streets of Pittsburgh, but his promising wrestling career was over.  Pat and I took him back to our home in the Lehigh Valley for further treatment.

   

(To be continued in subsequent blogs.)

Peter Likins

Schools

     Maybe With this blog I can reach beyond the Sunnyside School District in Tucson, Arizona to describe a new way to tell the story of my recent book,  “A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY: A Love Story.”

     I was invited by Taunya Villicana, co-founder of Affinity Financial Group, to speak to the Sunnyside Foundation, which raises private gifts to support public schools in a relatively impoverished school district.  After I had agreed to do so, Taunya offered to buy fifteen of my books and offer them, suitably autographed by me, as gifts to the first fifteen people at the foundation breakfast meeting who contributed at least $100 to the foundation that day.   After my talk, which is reproduced here, eighteen people lined up to make the requested contribution to the charitable cause and receive a book autographed to them personally.  (I contributed to the foundation the three books that exceeded Taunya’s purchase.)

     Taunya suggested afterward that we had invented a model that she may wish to use for her other charities, simultaneously raising funds for charity and putting more of my books into circulation to tell my family story.  I think she’s on to something good.                   

                     SUNNYSIDE SCHOOL FOUNDATION TALK

                             October 14, 2011

                               Peter Likins

     Before we get down to the specific objectives of our meeting this morning, I want to try to put our work into a context defined by some fundamental changes that we are experiencing in America.  Sometimes change comes slowly over a lifetime, so you have to stop and think about it in order to see it clearly.  One of the benefits of being 75, as I am, is the perspective that comes from experiencing decades of change.  I’m not a social scientist and I can’t describe all the changes in America with academically verified statistics, but I can tell you what trends I have seen and what I expect the future to hold for all of us.

     I was born in California in 1936.  My parents, high school sweethearts, married in the middle of the Great Depression, which makes our recent Great Recession look like child’s play.  My father abandoned his family when I was 7, leaving my mother with four kids aged 8,7,2 and 1.  We couldn’t pay the rent, so we were evicted from our home and ended up in a two-room, cold-water cabin that my grandparents owned in the redwood forests a few miles North of Santa Cruz, California.

     My mother got a job as a sales clerk in a gift shop for $35 a week and we survived.  There was no Medicaid in those days, no alimony and no reliable child support from my father, but we survived. 

     We attended public schools in Santa Cruz, a small town then with only one high school.  I come before you today as President Emeritus of the University of Arizona because of those schools and because of the teachers, coaches, librarians and principals in those schools.  That’s why I’m here today with the Sunnyside School Foundation, doing what I can to help find ways to keep public education in America strong, so that every kid has a chance to reach full potential.

     When I got out of high school and college in the 1950’s, my education opened up golden opportunities for me, and I made the most of them.  I didn’t give much thought then to the fact that in the America of the 1950’s such opportunities were available only to straight, white, Christian males like me, but many of us have fought hard for the past fifty years to open such opportunities to everyone.  We were motivated initially by compassion and concern for the underprivileged, but in recent years it has become clear that we must make opportunities available to everyone for the sake of our country.  America needs all the help our people can provide and we can’t afford to let talents languish from opportunity denied. 

     The straight, white, Christian males to whom such opportunities were available in the 1950’s were always less than half of the population, but that fraction is rapidly shrinking.  Some of you in this room will live to see the day when what we now call “white” people in America will become just another minority.  Long before that happens, however, the whole concept of minorities in America will have to change.

     US Census data tell us that between 2000 and 2010 the most rapidly growing category of resident is “more than one race,” which category grew in this decade by 33%.  Because the children of people of more than one race are automatically also of “more than one race,” and because in 2008 one in seven marriages in the US crossed racial and ethnic boundaries, and finally because it is becoming socially acceptable to acknowledge a multiracial heritage, I can guarantee you that the multiracial population in America will continue to expand rapidly, blurring the lines that Americans have historically drawn between and among the races.  Rather than see Americans as a collection of separated islands of race, we will recognize Americans as a continuous distribution of the descendants of people from all over the earth.

     In the 21^st Century, all of America will become as diverse as the Sunnyside schools. This will be a new America and the students of the Sunnyside School District will be key citizens of that America.  We must prepare them for that new world and make them understand that it is their world if they are prepared to lead it.

     But they can’t be prepared unless the Sunnyside schools get them ready, both academically and psychologically. And we must do that in the face of another American trend that is just as powerful as the demographic changes I’ve been discussing. 

     For the past thirty years or so, Americans have been trying to shift social and financial responsibilities from the society as a whole to individuals on their own.  This trend is reflected in education by the growing tendency to see education as a “private good,” to be paid for by individuals, rather than a “public good” to be paid for by taxpaying citizens.  The result is better education for wealthy families and trouble for the poor.

     The great political debates of the present and the past thirty years focus on the role of government in human affairs, importantly including education.  As government support for education is withdrawn, private money is required for good teachers and good leaders in good schools. For families that cannot afford tuition, the only hope for salvation comes from private philanthropy.

     I’ve been talking about two powerful and sustained trends in America:  Our population is becoming more diverse and more interconnected racially; and We are demanding a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector. When these trends unfold together, Americans will become more polarized socioeconomically even as we become less polarized racially.  If, as is presently the case, nonwhite Americans are disproportionately represented among the poor, and therefore socioeconomically disadvantaged in even much larger numbers that together comprise a majority, the potential for disaster becomes very real.

     What can we do to keep America united and strong?  One absolute requirement is the education of every kid to his or her full potential, without handicapping students of color or family poverty.

     How can we meet this compelling need?  In the longer term, the disturbing trend toward a nation of selfish individuals can be reversed by the decisions of voters in our democracy. The evidence suggests that this will not happen any time soon, however, and kids in grade school and high school cannot wait for democracy to work its magic.  They need help right now.

     People like you and me must step up and provide continuous funding for public schools.  If you don’t do it as an act of compassion, do it as an act of patriotism.  If we don’t do it right now, it won’t get done soon enough for today’s kids, and we will all be impoverished by our lack of resolve.             

Addiction and Schizophrenia in an American Family Part 2 of 9

(Adapted from A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY: A Love Story, Published by University of Arizona Press, 2011.)

 (continuing ...) 

         My wife and I did recognize that our Indian children had special vulnerabilities to worry about. We understood that American Indians are statistically vulnerable to alcoholism, and both of the birth parents of our two Indian girls faced early death in which alcohol was complicit, so we were apprehensive as first Teresa and then Linda entered the dangerous adolescent years. Teresa has not avoided alcohol and may have had more experience than we realized, but this has never seemed to be a special problem for her. Linda experienced on one occasion an episode that was reminiscent of my own introduction to potentially lethal levels of intoxication, but this kind of behavior did not persist. The two children who we thought might be most vulnerable have not been the most affected by alcohol. With some help from the Morongo tribe of their birth, they have established secure lives for themselves in Pennsylvania. 

         Nor was Lora ever a concern.  She was the “designated driver” among her partying friends.  She was there with them but she was sober, or so we believe.  Who knows why?  Was her mother’s example being deliberately followed, or is this a coincidence? Although adventurous in many ways, Lora has always been the dutiful daughter; she earned two master’s degrees and found her calling in nursing and education.

          Paul had less trouble with alcohol in high school than I did, but it persisted longer and gradually escalated after he dropped out of college and found his way into a fast life in Manhattan.  Paul tended bar on occasion and even managed a bar for a while, so alcohol and other drugs were part of his daily life. Nonetheless, it surprised Pat and me when Paul decided that he was an alcoholic and joined Alcoholics Anonymous, which became part of his life for many years of dedicated participation.  

         This decision was a critical turning point for Paul, and he never relapsed or fell back from his resolve to rebuild his life, beginning with a very successful return to college.  It became apparent after two abstinent decades that alcohol was more a symptom of Paul’s problems than a cause, but in facing his alcohol abuse problem he learned to deal with destructive behavior in all of its guises.  Pat and I have always appreciated Paul’s intelligence and his potential for achievement, so his success in conquering his demons and realizing that potential meant a great deal to us.  He is now a successful professional in the exploding field of digital advertising, building a career with a master’s degree in communications from NYU.

         Krista’s experience in high school with alcohol and other drugs was probably typical for her generation.  We did not recognize any problems until she was a young adult, exploring social relationships in new territory. For some human beings the path to addiction seems predetermined as a direct consequence of the initial use of addictive substances, but for others this is a gradual process that sets in only after years of incidental use of alcohol and other potentially addictive drugs.  After Krista left the constraining influence of her home with us and entered the world as a young adult, her casual use of cocaine gradually became compelling.  She began a downward spiral that led to serious crises in her life and sporadic attempts at rehabilitation.  She found herself in the darkest of places as she approached her fortieth birthday and resolved to turn her life around.  She completed a tough, five month program at a Narconon facility and then completed with high marks a training program that enabled her to become a certified nursing assistant in California.  I truly believe that she is now permanently on the right path after several years of abstinence and responsible living. Her mental and physical health are now both excellent and she is beautiful again, inside and out.  Her recovery has been a great blessing for everyone in our extended family.

(To be continued in subsequent blogs.)