As son battled addiction, parents faced struggle of their own
During October and November, the Healthy Kids blog examines the epidemic of teen prescription drug abuse through the stories of teens and young adults in recovery, their parents and treatment experts. You'll get a first-hand look at a problem that's more widespread and more deadly than many parents realize-- and find real-world advice about protecting your kids. Today: how parents are affected by their teen's addiction.
As son battled addiction, parents faced struggle of their own
By Sari Harrar
During October and November, the Healthy Kids blog examines the epidemic of teen prescription drug abuse through the stories of teens and young adults in recovery, their parents and treatment experts. You’ll get a first-hand look at a problem that’s more widespread and more deadly than many parents realize-- and find real-world advice about protecting your kids.
Previous posts told the story of Tim Rader, a high school football star from Ashland, Pa., who became addicted to prescription pain pills while undergoing cancer treatment at age 17. He is now in recovery after a 10-year battle with addiction.
Today: Parents talk about their own struggle as their son sunk into addiction
Lou and Patty Rader’s experience shows that prescription drug abuse and addiction can happen to any kid, in any family-- and how even the savviest parent can easily explain away or ignore early signs of trouble in a teen. Lou, now 62, ran a program for drunk drivers at a Schuylkill county hospital and was often called to evaluate whether participants needed treatment for drug addiction. He later oversaw drunk-driving programs for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “I started my career working at a drug and alcohol clinic,” he says. “I sat across from people who needed help with drug problems all the time, but I didn’t recognize it when it came into my own house. I missed all the signs in my own son because I didn’t want to see them.”
The Raders were the kind of family that ran the ticket booth at high school football games, took their sons to church on Sundays and volunteered whenever school needed parents to help out. Patty Rader helped run the all-night after-party at Tim’s high school prom so that teens could celebrate in a save, supervised way. “We were very, very involved parents with Tim and with his brother, Michael,” Patty Rader says. “Tim was a good kid. He was involved in plenty of healthy activities. He never got into trouble with alcohol. We never thought anything like this could happen to us.”
But she says she did felt twinges of worry at times when Tim asked for painkillers in the months after his cancer diagnosis. “In the back of my mind, I felt a little bit of a concern-- I didn’t want the kid to take too many pain pills, but he was in real pain. At one point it was because he’d had a port put into his chest for the chemotherapy. Another time, it was because he his gallbladder was removed. We were so worried about the cancer that we weren’t thinking beyond that.”
When Tim went away to DeSales University the following fall, the family was overjoyed-- their son’s life was back on track. But looking back, Rader says she knew something had changed-- changes she now realizes were possible clues to drug use. “Tim started coming home less often,” she says. “When I would go down to pick him up, the kids in his dorm room would start quickly cleaning things up when I came into the room. His grades slipped. Something didn’t feel right. But I was so happy that he was back to living the life he wanted that I didn’t think about it too much. Then things improved at school. Tim joined the golf team. He brought his grades up high enough to get on the Dean’s list. It was easy to think everything was okay.”
Rader graduated, got a high-paying job as a drug-company representative, moved into a Manhattan apartment and asked his girlfriend to marry him. “Looking back,” Patty says, “It was like the fox guarding the hen house. He was around drugs all day in his job. Eventually he couldn’t withstand the pressure.” While dropping off drug samples at a doctor’s office one day, Tim stole painkillers from a medicine closet-- beginning a descent into addiction that ultimately led to heroin and homelessness.“At one point before things got really bad, Tim even told us at dinner that he was a drug addict but that we shouldn’t worry-- he was seeing a doctor, he had everything under control and didn’t want his girlfriend to know,” his mother says. “I didn’t know what to do. I would sometimes drive from our home in Ashland, Pa., to New York at three in the morning and knock on his door, just to see if he was all right. And I could always tell from looking into his eyes whether he was or not.”
Ultimately, Rader lost his job and his fiancé. He bounced in and out of rehab as his parents tried to help him. “I would look at him and I could see that Tim wasn’t there,” Patty Rader says. “He wasn’t in that body. It was like I lost him, like somebody took his soul. And he was gone for years. The other people in rehab called him ‘the preppy addict’ because he looked so handsome and always wore those golf shirts. Every once in a while he’d get clean and be like his old self. But then the addiction would start again.”
In stark contrast to the support and consolation she’d gotten from friends and family during Tim’s struggle with cancer, Patty says the family’s struggle with addiction was met mostly with silence. “We were so accustomed to the troops gathering around with the cancer, being cheerleaders and helping and cooking dinners, but now there was dead silence,” she says. “It was horrible. We weren’t embarrassed, but nobody talked about addiction. We were alone. It had to change.”
Finally, the Raders got help for themselves through Narcotics Anonymous and a parent support program at Caron, a drug and alcohol rehab center in Wernersville, Pa. At 27, Tim reached the end of yet another stint in rehab, this time in New Mexico and Patty made a decision. “I knew that helping him out was just enabling him,” she says. “I had tried for years to detach with love. To stop giving him food and shelter and money, but I always gave in one way or another. I would always take him in, or go down and pick him up when the police called. But this time, I told him he couldn’t come back home. I called my family and my friends and asked them not to help him, either. I remember one of my best friends crying her eyes out on the phone. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But the addiction was tearing our lives apart, too.
“So we got help, we detached from Tim and we talked about the experience. We did it because the addiction was making us so sick, so obsessed.”
For the Raders, it was the turning point-- but change was slow. After several years on his own, Rader agreed to go into a recovery program. “My family had to get healthy before I got healthy,” he says. “It was a gamble. There was no guarantee that tough love would help me. But when an addict has nowhere else to turn eventually there’s a chance they’ll try recovery. It worked for me. Recovery isn’t easy; I work on it every day. But I’m myself again. I’m married. My work is telling kids and parents about what really happens in drug addiction.”
This summer, Patty Rader had a heart attack at age 59. “All my numbers looked good, but there’s no way to measure the effects of all the years of stress,” she says. As a result, she’s quit a decade-long cigarette habit and feels that in a small way she understands how tough recovery just might be. “You have to fight all the time,” she says. “When I see how far Tim has come, I’m just so grateful.”
Tomorrow: What parents should know about prescription drug addiction
Sad story, "thier" in the headline ... really?— BIRDDOGG- Wait, it gets better! Not only do they use "thier" - twice - in the headline, they spell the poor kid's name "Radar." It's "Rader". New media are killing English (and yes Philly.com, "media" is a plural word). — almont2112
- Back in the Dark Ages 25 years ago when I used to write headlines for a print newspaper (imagine that!), I would have had my knuckles seriously rapped for such stupid, careless misspellings. Today, though, I imagine that egregious spelling errors are no big deal, which is one reason they happen so much. Another reason is that a generation raised with spell check has no interest in knowing how to spell.
- I'm still having a tough time finding any sympathy for drug addicts. The "tragedy" is completely self-inflicted and due to a total lack of willpower. I'm just not sure why I, or anyone else, should care. In fact, my immediate reaction is to incarcerate them just so they don't drive while intoxicated and kill innocent people. I don't find their stories compelling, sad, or deserving of any compassion or understanding. In fact, I think I receive tremendous enjoyment when bad things happen to them.
Showing sympathy for drug addicts is being an enabler. The only thing that teaches drug addicts to change is jail, divorce, or death.
Drug addicts waste billions of dollars on rehab...diverting precious finite health care resources away from others who need those resources to treat their diseases they did not cause to themselves. So drug addicts actually kill thousands of innocent people a year by diverting health care funds to treat their pathetic lifestyle choices.
— URANIUM235 - you must be either very young or very stupid. OR...just a typical faceless online poster. — Docpaul
- I agree with Docpaul, Uranium has never met an addict in his life. He knows absolutely jack about what he's talking about. Let's see what his attitude is if one of his kids becomes an addict.
— verve - totally agree with uranium235. Why should we care about that selfish loser. He is weak— Old German
- Let me guess: You're a Republican! "Why should we care about selfish losers" seems to be the GOP anthem, especially in the campaign that Mr. 53% and Mr. Atlas are running. Further, your dismissal of Tim Rader's struggle is especially inhumane in light of the fact that he didn't go out and willfully experiment with drugs; rather he got used to them while being treated for a life-threatening, painful disease. I know of a number of cases of people who became addicted to various narcotic painkillers while fighting injury or illness. If such a thing ever happens to you or someone you know, I hope you'll remember how you reacted to this story.
Some people are born with addictive personalities and some fall into the morass of drugs no matter how hard you try to raise them properly. Don't blame the parents or the drugs: blame the user.
The only cure for many addicts is institutional incarceration or death.
That's the jaw dropping facts.— MODEREATER- How can that be a fact when millions of people are living drug free after being addicted for years. Like this guy. Moron. — Docpaul
Comment removed.- Zzzzzzzzz— Jay Grace 69
- I took a serious look at my family many years ago and knew that drugs/alcohol exacerbated their problems. As a result I never touched neither because of their addictions. If you look around and see that these drugs cause havoc why would any rational person think that they are the exception to the drugs/alcohol wrath? If you don't want to be addicted then don't try it.— jerryk2b
- I'm amazed at some of these comments. This is actually a great story. How many drug users actually make it out of their addictions, not only to survive but thrive? Tim seems to be doing just that. This is a sad story but all too often, there isn't an individual alive to tell it. The comment from uranium is more sad than this story is. Hard to judge a moron because, well, they're morons. How can someone who made it back from being addicted to HEROIN and HOMELESS and actually making a difference due to the experience be WEAK? You wish you had a fraction of the heart and resolve this family seems to have. Hats off to Tim and his family. Did whatever it took to beat addiction.— Docpaul
- How can't you have sympathy for this family? How can't you have sympathy for someone who got addicted to drugs because he had to use them in the beginning for true pain relief from cancer? Do some research - there is definitely a genetic aspect to alcohol and drug addiction. And Dave Clemens I am voting for Romney and I do care about others.— lulu
