a guy’s perspective: loving your partner & children’s mom through addiction
Host: Brenda Zane, brenda@brendazane.com
Instagram: @the.stream.community
The Stream Community: online and app-based community for moms of kids experimenting with or addicted to drugs or alcohol
Free ebook: “HINDSIGHT: 3 Things I Wish I Knew When My Son Was Addicted to Drugs, by Brenda Zane. Download here
Guest: Andy Baskett
Instagram: @asbaskett5015
Resources:
NOVA Documentary: “Addiction” on PBS
Show Transcript:
Brenda 01:36
Welcome to a very special bonus Father's Day episode of hope stream. Today's guest shares a story and a point of view that we don't hear very often. And that is of a father and husband who fought a long battle to save his partner and the mother of his three young children from addiction. I thought that this was a really important story that I wanted to share not only because we don't really tend to hear this scenario that often, but because culturally, I have learned that there's an additional stigma that men feel and deal with when they are trying to help or find help for their spouse. It also really highlights how quickly addiction can take hold, and how unbelievably powerful these chemical connections are in the brain. So without any more for me, I hope that you will listen to this incredible story of strength, courage and fatherhood. With my really amazing guest Andy basket.
02:45
Hey, Andy, thank you so much for being on home stream and being a guest. I appreciate you taking the time and being willing to share your story with us.
Andy 02:54
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having me and I look forward to this discussion.
Brenda 03:00
Well I like to start out my my podcasts with a question for people to get to know you a little bit better, and that is what did you have for breakfast this morning?
Andy 03:10
So I am terrible at actually eating anything and I generally, my dad's from England, so I'm a British citizen myself, so I generally just have a lovely cup of tea in the morning and that's my breakfast.
Brenda 03:23
Wow, that's amazing. What's your favorite tea?
Andy 03:27
I just do simple black Tetley tea. bit o' cream, bit o' sugar.
Brenda Zane 03:34
A purest. I like it. I like it. Yeah. Well, that kind of is in line with the intermittent fasting isn't it that everybody's doing these days so you so you don't eat anything in the morning? What time do you normally eat?
Andy 03:48
Um, I usually around lunchtime, I'll get something I actually try to stick to that intermittent fasting schedule. So that's my that's my challenge every day is to cease the late nights now.
Brenda 04:05
Yeah, yeah, it's a struggle. Wow, very interesting. And you're a British citizen. That's so interesting. Wow. I would love it if you would just sort of let us know a little bit about you what you do. And then a bit about your story and and how you've sort of been impacted by addiction and how you ended up, kind of where you are today?
Andy 04:33
Yeah, thank you. So I live in Washington, DC in the suburbs, just outside the city. I raise my three kids here. I have twin identical girls, which is always hilarious. And my son Owen. They're only 14 months apart. So we get the Irish twins a lot. And without question, every time I leave the home, I get a wow, got your hands full there. Every time I'm out with my children.
So I found a very interesting career, I stumbled into non-profit fundraising, so I’m an expert at begging rich people for money, which is a weird thing I didn’t even know existed until I was searching for a job. I finished college in 2008 which was until this year probably the worst time to graduate college. I stumbled into it and have been doing this ever since. So it's a fascinating career and I love it and it lets me work from home and take care of the kids.
Brenda 05:35
What interested you about fundraising, especially for nonprofits? I agree that is a really unique niche, I guess.
Andy 05:43
Yeah, I love internet research. As long as I can remember, I love digging into some topic, and literally finding out every single possible thing I can about it. And that's one of the core foundations of this kind of work is you really have to do a ton of research and finding people, and what about them what their interests are. So you can kind of try to match up what a wealthy person likes to give to and you can pitch that to your clients. So that's kind of how I originally got into it.
Brenda 06:15
So then do foundations and nonprofits, they hire you to, to help them raise their funds I'm taking that's how it works.
Andy 06:24
Yeah. So they basically a lot of mostly organizations that are looking to kind of expand or museums. I started off whole country projects right now. And it's, it's, it's awesome. It's very fun work. I joke I've I haven't worked a day in 12 years.
Brenda 06:48
That's when you know, you're doing the right thing. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely it's always exciting. So tell us a little bit more about your family of the three kids and tell us more about how your family has been impacted by addiction.
Andy 07:05
So my connection to this world is through my former partner, my children's mother, she sadly fell into addiction, eventually getting to heroin and then succumbed to heroin related death at the end of 2018, and it was a very long five year struggle through all that. And it was I found it very even more so challenges. I think there's this is of already a very small community and not a lot of people can empathize with people that go through this addiction. And then my challenge was, it's also very rare that it's usually the male in a relationship or males that suffer through this that are in families and they're the ones in active addiction. So as being the person who doesn't suffer from addiction issues. My partner did she, I felt it was a very unique experience being a guy having to suffer through that. It was very interesting, I would say, and especially now after she passed away kind of the whole process of you know, dealing with her death, helping ensure my kids are okay. It's been very unique in terms of trying to find support. Looking at resources for my kids. So I would say it's a niche upon a niche of my experience.
Brenda 08:37
Oh, for sure. Yeah, would you mind just telling us a little bit about what how it was that she came into that because obviously you had three kids. I mean, it sounds like there's something kind of went haywire at some point. Along the way there.
Andy 08:56
Yeah. She was my next door neighbor. I moved in with a bunch of friends, one of them I knew from high school, and we lived in a suburban neighborhood. They all work for Exxon Mobil, so they could afford this lovely beautiful home and the outskirts of DC. And I moved in with them. I leaned my partner, she lived next door. And after a couple years we ended up meeting each other. So I have a prosthetic limb. Normally I have a cover on it. You can't even tell I have a fake limb. I've been able to do you know ice hockey, soccer. It's never held me back. And we're out of block party. She jokingly makes a she makes a comment of being like, oh, why are you limping? Are you trying to think you're cool or something? Because Oh, no, I have a fake leg and I lifted up my pant leg and she saw it and her face went white with shame. And everyone started laughing. So that’s how we first met and then at that point, I think it’s hilarious - in college I went by “The Peg” so I’m in no way offended - I think it’s hilarious, stuff with my leg.
So she was horrified though and went home, found me through Facebook and started talking, chatting and hanging out, started a relationship, but very quickly found out she became pregnant, and then found out she was pregnant with twins. Being in a new relationship, in the most expensive city in the country, to raise a family that was quite an interesting experience to say the least. It was definitely a challenge with our relationship, we weren’t together during the pregnancy, after the twins were born we got back together and it was great living together. And then we decided to just be even crazier and had another. We wanted to stack the deck and had our son very quickly after, he was born 14 months after the twins were. And then after he was born I noticed that Eileen really struggled differently with the experience with him versus what we had with the twins. You could tell she was distant, he went through a spell with colic and it really upset her that he would only stop crying if it was me holding him in a certain way, doing a certain motion, and you could see it hurt a strong piece of her because she was unable to soothe her son.
I think she was already in the start of postpartum depression and that situation made it much worse. Within a couple of months she started being very distant, we separated and she found a different partner, and it was a very odd situation where she would partially always want to stick with us and be around and then she would leave and say, “I just need a break, I need this escape, it’s so overwhelming.” And she was younger too, so the twins were born when I was 25. And she was 20 when the twins were born, and then Owen was born she was just about to turn 22 so she was definitely younger. It was a lot to process and I think that contributed to her having postpartum pretty serious
Brenda 11:56
Oh, that's so much to I mean to have three kids that young. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's an overwhelming amount of stress for both of you, not just for her, but for both of you.
Andy 12:12
Definitely. And I think, especially because, you know, our relationship was very challenging in that sense, because we didn't really know each other that well and then started this family, we would have really good spells, but after our son was born, she really kind of had struggled with that. So for the first, I would say, almost a year, she really had strong connection. And then at the, literally the day of the twin second birthday, a friend had made some introduction to her to a guy who ended up being a molly dealer. So like, ecstasy pills. And he convinced her to try one and she did and instantly thought that was the best feeling ever. And knowing what that does and how they’re using it to treat people with PTSD, I assume that would be similar to treating someone going through postpartum depression. So she instantly sunk into that world, and within two weeks she basically said, “I can’t do this anymore, you take care of the kids, you raise them, I can’t do this.” And literally disappeared. Off of this Molly dealer. She was gone for a few weeks, called, reached out to us again, I think she realized she just abandoned her kids and family so she felt guilt over that and wanted to try to mend it but at the same time she was now in active addiction with molly. Basically, over the next 6 months she really fell into this really dark place with that, by the end she was having crazy hallucinations because she would be up for days and was in a terrible place.
Usually her addiction was tied to someone she was dating at the time, because they would be a dealer or someone in that world, and then that would crumble because they're both in crazy active addiction with molly. So she broke up with him and then moved to New Jersey with a guy and she did get cleaned then. And she was there for about six months but was much more of experience to try it out just separate from the Molly life that she was in.
And she was planning after a few months to move back here when she was kind of stabilized and felt that she was strong enough and then be normal again. So she moved back at the twins third birthday, so that was about a year of her kind of in this lost molly world. And then she moved back, but wasn't well, she was still kind of really struggling with, you know, the demons the guilt of what happened. So she ended up falling back into addiction with her old circle of friends. And it was you know, drinking nothing crazy hardcore, but just kind of hanging around the wrong people.
So she was kind of in and out of our life then again for a few months and then met someone who did Vyvanse. So she became addicted to that, and sunk into that world and the person that she was living at that time who would deal that? They would, you know, be on that for days and have horrible come downs. So they would then start doing pain pills to help them with the comedown from Vyvanse when they wouldn't do that for a few days. Because apparently, that makes if especially if you're using it gives you horrible headaches. You know, you're not you don't sleep for days, so your body is just exhausted, so they would take pain pills to come down off that. And that's kind of how she really started getting into the opioid world.
So this would have been about a year and a half into her starting to kind of dabble and fall into drugs. And that's when she started with the pills. She started freebasing them to take the pain pills easier and quicker, and then kind of met someone else who would then do pain pills. And that's when she shifted to kind of opioids And he dealt blues which I guess are OxyContins and those kind of pills, this is coming up now on two years into addiction. She was with that person for a few months. And apparently during that time, they were using so many of the pills he was selling, shifted to heroin at that point. And she really struggled. We didn't see her for six months during this whole spell. She just was gone.
And then as what would usually happen in these kind of, I found her cycle tended to be six months of using something and a person and then she would usually try to come back. She did and during this whole time, her mother and I who was amazed I can't sing her mother's praise enough she was one of the most genuine amazing person she backed me through all this because she saw her daughter was in this act of addiction really was just not in a good place. So her mom ended up agreeing with me that you know, we had tried this whole Okay, you're using you're doing drugs you need to stay away. We had saw we've tried that for Two years now and it's it's now gotten to heroin. So obviously that strategy is not working. So we let her come back. She couldn't use drugs in the house. But we were just trying to tell her, you know, it's okay. When you're ready for help. We're here. You know, we love you. We're here to help you. She fell deeper into the heroin world for those couple months, but eventually got to she was with some people, they were going to cars at night to steal. You know, they break into a whole series of cars and parking lots and whatnot, they would end up getting a couple thousand dollars a night doing that. And it allowed them to kind of buy crazy amounts of heroin so they could sustain their addiction. At that point, she was starting to get really dark into it, and we were pushing her to get to treatment. That crew, a couple of them got arrested and that was kind of her wake up call. So this would have been December 2015. And finally she realized she needed help. So we talked her into go into great treatment. program here in Northern Virginia. She got into this great treatment program. She would do NA meetings during the day she'd be going to programs, you know, they had meetings, counseling groups, and she really made a great change.
Brenda 18:12
And are you thinking Are you think in at this point that because this is this her first time in actual, like structured treatment program?
So you must have been thinking, Okay, this is potentially going to be different than the other times when she's sort of gotten gotten clean on our own.
Andy 18:31
Yeah, that she'd always tried to do things on our own, but just usually very quickly fell back into something. But she had also never, this was this was basically coming up to almost eight months of using heroin at that point. So she really saw how dark her life was getting and I think when the friends that she was with, they all started getting arrested, you know, they're doing all the theft. That was kind of a wake up call of, oh, wow, I'm losing my life. I need to save this. So she was doing really well in treatment.
19:05
I was finally able to start working again because that was my struggle was she was so in and out. I should when she first started, she just disappeared one day, so I had to quit my job to take care of the kids while kind of dealing with that whole situation.
Brenda 19:20
Well, yeah, I have I have so many thoughts right now my mind is just spinning because I'm just thinking of what you're, you know, dealing with this just as a just as a single guy would be mind boggling. And I'm thinking through all of this, as you're talking that you've got three kids that you are raising and trying to cope yourself with the sort of the trauma and the chaos because I know what that chaos feels like you never know what's going to happen on a particular day. And I think it shows that it can happen to anyone and it happens so fast. It's not you know, we're not talking this is a five year or 10 year thing that it takes to for this addiction to come on, for her it sounded like it was pretty immediate.
Andy 20:11
It was it very quickly turned on I, I think there are obviously with addiction. I think there's all mental health issues there. I know, at some point before that we had her evaluated with a therapist as part of one of the time she came home to try to go to counseling. And she only did that a few times one of their initial assessments which she might have bipolar disorder. So we as what is always the case with addiction, there's usually mental health issues there as well that kind of makes the issue much worse that most people don't recognize and can empathize with. So yeah, it was definitely the the biggest challenge I kind of saw was almost no one kind of got it. They would just see like what a piece of crap that she was, you know, they most of my friends and family just were like don't even stick around. They're like, what are you doing? And my challenge was that for my kids I was the consistent thing. So to them it was normal for dad to be home and mom to be away. So it I wanted them to have just a consistent environment. You know, this is their home, I didn't want to bounce around they want to move closer to my friends and family. So that's why I kind of ended up sticking out here because I just wanted to make sure they had some semblance of normalcy, normalcy during this.
Brenda 21:34
Are you kind of thinking that being a mom, are you thinking maybe she'll she'll get this together for the kids or what what sort of what was going through your mind as far as thinking about what was going on with her and how she might, you know, come around.
Andy 21:50
So during it definitely took a few years to kind of get a good perspective on it. I think. Initially it was, you know, hatred and anger. Jealousy because it was seeing, you know, she would go off and generally would be with another person. And you know hindsight now that's definitely more they were more vehicles to get her access to the drug but it would just be anger at her being like you're abandoning us for some flame relationship that you're going to be done within six months this What the hell are you doing? Like you have three young kids here. And that's when she came back finally, and she was addicted to heroin before she got clean for those few months. That's where I think I was finally able to have that perspective to see what was going on really with her to know that, you know, being the anger, the guilt shaming and all that that's not going to work. And it's just you got to be consistent with love and support. You know, like, I'm here for you. Whenever you're ready to get help. I'm here and I'll support you whenever you need to, especially during that time that was where it was very difficult where again, my friends and family thought I was an idiot and couldn't believe it. what I was doing, I thought I was harming the kids, because I was staying in Northern Virginia, hoping that at some point, she would get herself together and we'd be able to, you know, continue on as it were. So it was definitely hard during those times. And also, you know, I would try to look for work. And there was definitely a kind of challenge of being, I raise three kids alone. So I'm going to have to do this and there was definitely a culture of being, oh, well, you're a guy though, you should just be able to work. Get someone to watch your kids or, you know, figure it out. So that was definitely a challenge as I kind of started to try to get my my life back together.
Brenda 23:40
Yeah, I could imagine there's a bit of a bias there where it's, it's not equal, where somebody will look at you and say, Well, come on, man, like, you know, get to work and, and figure it out and the stigma, I think, you know, as you're talking it's exactly the same thing that parents go through with their Kids as people look at you and say, What are you doing? Why would you let that person come back in your house? And they, it's so impossible to understand unless you're in the midst of it.
Andy 24:10
And I would say that's something that also happened. I mean, we because we had children so early in our relationship, it was very much, okay, I had kids with this person, I'm gonna have to make this relationship work. And not so much like, Oh, we really love each other. This is the one for me. We very much like develop the relationship with each other and it grew. And I would definitely before my son was born, I that's when I would say I genuinely loved and cared about her and in a very deep, like, Oh, I want to be with this person, not just, this is the mother of my kids. I have to stick with her. And I think that I'm glad that happened this way, that way, because I think it definitely gave me the perspective to just be patient and try to just be as supportive as I could throw a lot of this and just think this will work out because she would always come back and we'd always kind of have this like it would she would almost always say like, Andy, I met you too early. I want to be with you but I'm not ready to have the family yet. And that would almost be this kind of fall back when and that's not okay. Because we had children that's not a you can't say that when you have three kids but that was almost kind of the thought process that I had to get myself through it. She's gonna pull this together and then we can go you know, the five minutes can be a nice little family again.
Brenda 25:37
I must have been so hard to see a mother put chemicals before and her kids I know as parents we see our kids putting chemicals before their future and you know everything else but when you when you're watching your partner who is a mother to kids putting in these drugs and these other people because it does become a lifestyle. Like you said, it's not just They're doing a drug, they're in a lifestyle. And that had to have been so painful to see.
Andy 26:07
It was. Again now in hindsight, I think it gave you the perspective to truly understand the grip and power of addiction. And helped me really grasp that it is a disease. Now, obviously, there's a choice to begin and start, but I think the person's there and they have the underlying problems that for some people, they'll just be able to try it and be like, Oh, it's okay. Not for me or just stop when they want but for others, if they fall in that path, they're they're stuck and trapped in it. Yeah. And I think seeing that she was a mother knowing how loving animate animate when she was here, she was an amazing mom. And she was so great with them and she complimented, you know, my shortcomings as a parent, she complimented them so well and you know, and likewise, I kind of was great, you know, picking up where she wasn't the best that so it was. I think that made it hard, but Also the same just being like, okay, she's gonna figure this out at some point. And hope that will happen.
Brenda Zane 27:05
Right? Right. Yeah, I think you're right i think when you see an extreme like that it does show that these these chemicals get in and cause of an actual physiological physiological change. It's not just emotions. It's not just oh, this is more fun than this, you know, than my, my sober life, there's actually just a change that happens that they want to change as well. But unless you get that really professional help, it's it's, I think, almost impossible to do it on your own.
Andy 27:39
Yeah, as I said earlier, I love and devour finding out as much as I can about a subject matter so that's that's what I would do. I would watch every addiction, opioid heroin documentary, read every article I could find one of the most powerful ones was a PBS doc about two years ago that came out. That was really getting into the brain chemistry of people in active addiction with heroin. And one of the most fascinating aspects of it was highlighting that it truly rewires the brain that when you have when you have just the thought of, I'm going to stand up, there's a chemical reaction in your brain. That's almost like a motivator, chemical that is like processing you to stand up and it activates your body to do that, but individuals with active heroin addiction that that is literally rewired. So that that chemical process can't function and the thought goes through to get heroin to do that. So I thought that was fascinating that they can as the doctor in the documentary pointed out, they truly when people just say Can't you just get clean or come on your kids are there you're abandoning them but they truly chemically can't. They have their brain is rewired. And it's not a matter of just, you know, seeing that they need to pull it together. It's it's getting to such a horrible place that you can fight that change in your brains chemistry that When I, when I saw that, that gave me such peace of kind of being able to go back and deal with, you know, years of, you know, essentially her abandoning the kids and it really sucked.
Brenda Zane 29:12
Yeah, that is interesting. I think the more you learn, and that's part of the reason why why I do this podcast is I think the more you learn about what's going on, it does help you cope a little bit better because otherwise you just see this person, whether it's your spouse, or your child or a parent, you just see them doing these horrible things and you think they're a horrible person. So getting some of that perspective and education can really help. Not distance but it helps you make a bit of a separation from the person and the addiction and how those two kind of impact each other.
Andy 29:49
No, no, it's it's it's such a wild thing to be able to finally be able to comprehend, comprehend and process what addiction does to a person and when you're able to kind of see the larger picture with it. And thankfully, if there's a positive, what's happened is there's now so much research into what goes into what a person goes through when they're inactive addiction. So in a sense, you know, that's been able to give catharsis. I think the people that the family members that go through this because, you know, I'm sure you've touched on this as it's not just the person in active addiction, it's the people that love them that also just get dragged into it. And, you know, as you said, it's such a, it's an insane lifestyle that you get dragged in, you know, you're nervous to, oh, I can't leave my money out. I can't do this. I gotta be careful.
Brenda 30:38
I think I interrupted with all of my thoughts, because I was so so overwhelmed with what you were saying, but it - so she went into treatment in 2015. And was there doing well, it sounded like,
Andy 30:52
Yeah, she, you know, attending all the NA meetings, was doing great participation in the groups. She was a stand-out in kind of the modeling. She was doing fantastic. She really took to the whole program the lifestyle. And that's what gave us such, it was just 2016 was such a great year because she was sober. She was back being the mom that we knew. And she was just awesome. It was it was having her back, which was great.
And then the challenge came up when an ex that she knew before me, had also fallen into addiction. And he got out of prison. And in July of that year asked to hang out and see her and in a good way. He said, Look, I'm all the people I know are addicts, and it's that lifestyle. I you're doing so well. I'd have you as a good friend. And I told her like Dude, you're just you're still very new in this like I wouldn't, please don't and she didn't. And then in the fall of that your girl started kindergarten, I was back working. So I would go into the office and she We would walk our kids to school and we have this great beautiful yard. And there's a creek in the backyard. It's very shallow but, and doing that one day walking into school, she slipped and cut her finger and ended up getting this horrible infection. It wasn't mersa but it was along those lines of a kind of just a horrible infection. her finger swelled up so much over the next couple days. It looked like you know, a sausage almost her finger, it was so swollen.
So she ended up having to go to the emergency room. They removed her fingernail in the ER, and she was in shock. It's so painful. And they ended up giving her this whole battery of medication tried to combat that but they also because she was in treatment they refused to and rightly so they didn't give her any pain medication. And they were almost that that was one thing I won't forget was she said one night she was in the hospital for three days. One of the nights she was in a lot of pain and herself didn't want to take medication for the pain. And the nurse came in and was almost just very dismissive to her and just being like, well, you know why we can't give you pain medication because you're an addict. It was like almost just like throwing her face. And I thought that was kind of crappy. And I remember that, like, that interaction, like really stuck with her because she felt like ashamed, but like angry but also like, just embarrassed.
So she gets out. She needs because it's such a serious infection. She gets a pic line put in her arm, and she has a direct IV line now. And we have to give her a daily dose of this like antibiotic medication that gets delivered to the house every few days. And she has to sit there for like half an hour while this goes in intravenously through her arm for like a month, and then she's ready to get the pic line out and they take the IV line out, and that causes a blood clot right in her shoulder right where the vessel goes into the arm and the blood clot forms. They're and her arms start swelling up because the blood isn't leaving her arm and it is extremely painful. She's crying in bed, you know, the next day after this is taken out, and now the blood vessel is built up from blockage and she's just horrible pain.
And finally, the doctors you know, get give her medication treat that but it's such an excruciating pain that they finally agree because she was such an amazing candidate for what she was doing in treatment. Her sponsor, the doctors that oversaw her treatment agreed that it'd be okay if she took some pain medication. Sadly, she wasn't ready. And that's where she started her kind of relapse issue where she took that pain medication to stop and dull the pain so she could sleep she was up for three days by that point, and she fell back in she got kind of got the taste of it. She said around that same time when she finally got that dealt with. The friend who had reached out to her over the summer reached out again and this this would have been October 2016. The End toward the end of October and he was like, Hey, I really need a good person in my life. And again, it was it was good, honest intention, but because they didn't do heroin, but they definitely dabbled in kind of the drug world when they originally hung out. So they hung out and she said, they were just getting kind of sharing stories about what they went through just talking about it. And because she had recently taken the pain medication for arm, they both were like, fuck it. Let's just go do heroin.
So they were going to the casino, they go up to a casino in West Virginia that's only about an hour from her home. And I noticed because I get notifications when stuff was spent my card she there's a $200 withdraw, which would be normal because she's going to the casino, it's okay to take our cash, but then it's at a gas station. That's like halfway between what would be the casino and Baltimore, and that's where she used to buy heroin and I kind of call her and be like, hey, why did you take out cash there? That's like not even how you would go to the casino. She says, Yeah, we Brandon messed up and we're gonna Going up there and he went this way. And we just took out cash
Brenda 36:05
and your spidey sense must have just gone off the charts.
Andy 36:08
Exactly, If you've been there with someone in addiction you know when they kind of they will spin you the most amazing story but you know, in the back of your head, but she had been so strong so green addiction, I cautiously said okay. And she that what had happened was they literally just went right to Baltimore bought $200 worth of heroin did it and she was now back into addiction periodically apparently she would he would come by drop off stuff for the next like two weeks and she would use and I began to notice the kind of the telltale signs of someone using again you know, she's sleeping more she's her moods can be very swinging. And she's going out of her way to like hang out with this guy again when it was just kind of a one off thing.
And by Christmas again, it's it's obvious we all know she's using again, you know, it's She's not even trying to hide We asked her to, you know, please go back into treatment. She agrees to try to go back into that full initial inpatient again at the facility she did. She signs herself out after a day she's like, I can't do it. I'm not ready. And then she ends up, basically overdosing the house twice. She, the kids are on her home. And she's in the bathroom, and then I hear her. I heard basically her body just drops. So I calmly put the kids into their room and close the door. So they're playing, they can't see anything. She has locked the door to the bathroom. I essentially have to kick that down. And she's there passed out turning blue we don't have nor con at the house. So I literally just slap her across the face, like three times and that brings her back and I'm holding her she's like, wow happened, you know, explained. I was like, I mean, this isn't okay, you can't do this. We say like you need to figure out a new way to get help, like You can't sustain that you just that's not okay at the house.
So she basically just decided, well, I'm gonna leave with Brandon and the most heartbreaking moment of my life is she had been asleep in bed for three days trying to detox herself because this was her way like, Oh no, I can do this. And then she can't take any more she texted him to come pick me up. Let's go pick it up. And at this point, the girls my twins are in school, it's just on an i home. We're sitting in the kitchen. And she comes out of her room after sleeping for two days. And he comes up mommy, mommy like happy to see her. And she acts like he's not even there. She just kind of slowly goes past him he kind of reaches out for and she doesn't even look at them and just walks out the door. The car pulls up, she takes off. And I the moment for me was so heartbreaking, but also like just the perfect cusp of how insane addiction is to a person because that I just seen a year of her being back to being the most amazing mother, loving spending all the moments with your kids cherishing especially playing with Owen to he she just walked past and like he wasn't there because she had to go get her fix because she had been a couple days without it. And that crushed me.
I found out later, my daughter in school a couple weeks later, we made them known. We told them that what had happened Eileen was no longer with us she kind of fell back into addiction. So the school was aware of the situation just because the kids were upset but they were again used to her not being away and we found out Quinn had told her teacher that she saw mommy use a needle in her arm, which is horrifying to this day Quinn vividly has that memory and that kills me that she does. But thankfully the school because Eileen had no longer been living with us for a few weeks. They were aware of that they they didn't do the child service investigation. They knew Eileen wasn't living with us and it was okay and safe for the kids to be at home or the That would have been another horrible ordeal to have to deal with. Um,
Brenda 40:05
I was gonna ask if that was something just you know, as as this drags on, were you getting worried that you're gonna lose your kids because that's I would imagine a pretty real possibility.
Andy 40:17
It was concerning. Again, I would say I was glad that we were so open with the school about the situation when she left. And then this she told her teacher this about two weeks after Eileen had moved out in the school was aware of that. So yeah, she at this point, she's in full addiction again. The kids are very upset and traumatized because you know, she had left again after that was her longest stint of being home and normal, so they were really upset that she was gone. And she the one thing I will say she was always really good about when she was using or inactive addiction. She stayed away because she knew it's not fair to the kids to come in back and forth. And the but sadly this was the one time because we were she needed money we refuse to give it and support her. So she showed up at the house randomly one day and instantly grabbed the girls was please you know I'm here I'm not leaving you and we were like you can't stay here you're you're using again. She's the kids are just devastated because we're telling her to leave. The kids are screaming at us. No, no, no stay. Mommy has to stay. It was awful. And I ended up having to just pick the girl's up, bring them back to my room, tell them l love them and finally, like we'll give you some money. We'll take you I'll drop you off the metro. You need to leave and she agreed just because she was in active addiction. She wanted money. That was the I said the most traumatizing moment for the kids because they still also remember and don't quite get why we couldn't just help mommy and that's always a crystallizing moment for them like she was here. And you guys made her leave Why? You know as much as we can Were always very honest and forthright with the children about, you know, mommy was on bad medicine. Now the girls, they're almost nine. So we can say heroin as much as we can we try to tell them as much information so they can build on that and process it better as they get older.
Brenda 42:15
Were you feeling…because I think I've been talking with a lot of parents and I would imagine it'd be the same for you did you have moments where you felt like this was sort of a movie that this was playing out in somebody else's life because it's, you know, you see these things on TV and you see it in movies, but it doesn't happen to like just normal people. I'm just wondering, what was it like for you over so many years and you and your kids and how are you processing this in your brain?
Andy 42:45
It was insane. We had the craziest moment where I honestly thought that. So this was when she had relapsed. This is just after Christmas 2016 before she left She'd finally agreed to go up to my parents. My parents, obviously, were all upset about your four years, whatever thing happened. She was embarrassed and was ashamed of what she'd done. And I finally convinced her, it's okay. Like my parents now kind of understand addiction and are better and they will be fine. So I convinced her to come up to visit my folks. However, she was also sadly now using again. So one night, we put the kids to bed, she was like I really need to get I need to get a fix. So her and I drove into West Baltimore, which is like the most dangerous part of our country. And we're in like a big black suburban, which is also the worst car you'd want to be in the worst neighborhood. We're driving through and I leaned like now it's fine. Like it's okay, like I'm here all the time. It was like we're in a $80,000 SUV and we're two white kids. You don't do this. Normally, this is bad. But she insisted and she needed a fix. So you know, and this is Part of the enabling process that's horrible. We, you know, I drove her and she picked it up. And that was that she was okay now for a few days. So yeah, that that moment to me was just like, what am I doing? I'm in like having grown up watching the wire on HBO like I'm literally in those neighborhoods driving around now,
Brenda 44:17
right, there has to be a camera somewhere
Andy 44:19
Yeah, what is my life, what am I doing?
Brenda 44:22
I think it's interesting for people to understand that because it can look from the outside looking in it can look so insane. And also, when you're inside of it, sometimes it can look so insane but you only do what you know how to do and you know, parents worry all the time about enabling and you know, I had never really thought about the perspective of, you know, a spouse doing that and feeling the same way of like, what am I doing this is crazy, but that it applies it. It doesn't matter. I think who it is it's it's if you love somebody who's in the situation, you just Do what you do.
Andy 45:01
It's it's crazy and then you know you go into it especially when they're in that you I I'm not going to enable you I'm not going to give you you know this or, I'm not gonna you know, acquiesce to that but you know they're throwing a fit you've got to try to manage and I was like okay do I want to have an all out? brawl have a fight right now because I'm telling her No. Or do I just give her 50 bucks and I can have a normal two days like that that's your life. And it's insane right and it's it haunts you after because you know my god, what if I held strong and then what if I didn't enable her maybe that would have been in that that stuff. Those moments really stick with you and that's that's been difficult, since she's passed have to try to deal with that. It's, it's a it's an insane life and I think I would say now, having you know, she's deceased. And that's it.
That's something that I would love to see more support for, you know, the families and the because we go through this and it's the crap you get dragged into the fear that terror of knowing that like, you know, she's you know on day two of detoxing yourself and when she wakes up she's gonna be miserable and having to explain to the kids like oh, mommy's just sleepy today and it's just it's horrible. It's it's a terrible life
Brenda 46:30
yeah, the the support. You know, did you have like, what was your support network like, or did you have anybody that was kind of alongside with you during this?
Andy 46:41
I had a few friends that that would put up with me. I felt like I was almost just a broken record talking them about this insanity. I've had one of my best friends that you know, was really good about just being he just sent me a lesson. It was okay to talk with. But outside of that, like even family, they would just all be like, what are you doing? Or it's so horrible. You know, her mother was really great being a resource, but at the same time, Eileen would tell me everything. So I knew the worst details of you know what she was going through and I couldn't share that even with her mother. So it was almost suffering in isolation for a lot of it that really was a challenge. I would joke because I'm an only child. I think I was raised to be able to handle the situation and be alone but there's there was definitely times where it was just, you know, I'd be stuck at home with my kids for weeks. And I barely had an adult conversation with someone it would be horrible.
Brenda 47:43
Ah, so you said that she is now deceased. Can you sort of close the loop on that and then I have a couple of other questions for you.
Andy 47:53
Of course. So she we kicked her out the end of January 2017 after she did to get to stay in treatment, she saw herself out. Then she progressed to really fall into a very bad active addiction. And what sucked was she when she was in an a meeting, she met an older individual. He had been an active addiction for years and had been sober for a few years. But he was very enamored by I mean, you know, she's this amazing, beautiful woman. And he was in his late 60s, it was like, just enamored with her. So they apparently relapsed around the same time and he was a very wealthy individual.
So they started, he would just rent them hotel rooms, and they would drive out to Baltimore every day and get all the heroin. And then what turned into crack cocaine that they wanted. They were spending $1,000 each day on heroin crack. This guy had an unlimited budget. I mean, he was worth millions of dollars. They ended up realizing that why are we driving into Baltimore every day, let's just get an apartment. So they got an apartment up in Baltimore. And were just doing crazy amount of drugs. We we’re trying to help Eileen, we keep in touch but it was you know, we go a month without hearing from her and that was torture, you know, not knowing if she overdosed, you know, going to the city did she get killed? Did you get attacked like we wouldn't hear from it. It was torture, not knowing we would try to get her when she won't help that fall.
You know, we tried to get her in a few rehabs, but that was also really hard and torture us because she ended up doing a version of heroin in Baltimore called classic which is like mixed with these horrible chemicals. And apparently it's very cheap and it gives you a very powerful, quick high. But these chemicals, when you inject it also start eating away your skin so she would have like three inch long, massive gashes down to her bone of just open wounds from injecting this and that ended up she had that for over these moons over a year because she can never get them she never stay in the hospital. Get them treated. She was just tortured by this because when we were trying to get her in treatment programs, they because of these wounds, they would say, well, we can't that's a liability. We need to go to the hospital and get those taken care of. And then we can bring you in.
And so it was this horrible cycle of you know, she would be gone for a month or two reach out to us. I'm ready, we would try to get her into a treatment center. And then we would literally it would take forever to get her there. We would drive out to Baltimore getter, drive her to the treatment center, and then they would deny her when they were doing the initial screening intake, because she had these wounds, and it was just this awful cycle for months. At the end of 2017, we finally got her into Johns Hopkins because she was so just destroyed over a year of just I mean, like I said it was $1,000 of heroin crack day that that that is an insane toll in your body. She finally got was ready to get help. I took her to Johns Hopkins, she admitted herself. She was getting treatment for the wounds, but the individual that's funded this kind of crazy For her, he was obsessed and didn't want to stop and knew if she got help, he would lose her. So he would call around to every place he could define where she was at. And then because she was getting treatment for moons she wasn't in the rehab center. He could go in and visit her. And he found her at Hopkins just after Christmas brought crack into the room and basically gave it to her then and say, hell come back tomorrow when you come back with me and I can give you more and he did so we went from being all excited about Christmas 2017 thinking he was in treatment she's gonna get better to her just disappeared in the hospital one day and then really fell in more crazy addiction that year.
Brenda 51:44
It's it's amazing to see the sort of just the sequence of events and just the sort of randomness and I think that's something that we all feel when you're when you're loving somebody in this is the smallest thing can be the biggest thing, you know, the, the thing that you would never suspect is going to tip somebody over because the vulnerability when somebody is in treatment or just out of treatment, or even three or four years out of treatment, they're so vulnerable still. And it's hard to understand that, as you know, as a person who's watching, but then I think also for them, you just never know what that's going to be.
Andy 52:28
It's just a crazy cycle. In one sense, you're glad that they're not there with you day to day so you're not in that kind of horrible grind, but then you're worried terrified, you know, what's, what's going on? What's the worst?
Brenda 52:43
So she left the hospital and yeah, did you see her again? Or what happened from there?
Andy 52:49
Yeah, so you know, again, she would disappear for a bit. The gentleman that was funding everything, he got his money cut off by his partner, she guess finally got control. his finances and locked down all the accounts and he had no money. So they started going from, you know, this insane, endless supply to they would have to ration his VA monthly checks. So she would start calling us they would go to the grocery store, buy all the food, restock everything in their apartment, then spend the rest on all the drugs and they would be good for about a week.
And then they would go detox themselves for a week because they resolved the money didn't have anything. And then when they could finally get out of bed after that, we would start getting calls from Eileen being okay, could you send me I just want to get some groceries. Could you send me money or I really want to buy a pack of cigarettes. Could you send me some money? And then that was the cycle for a few months. She was really struggling. Do you know because she had done so much drugs and at that crazy level, her addiction drive was just insane. So she fell into having to steal having to do things as a woman. who's an addiction we'll do. And, again, her curse of when we would talk, she would tell me everything so I would be burden with her in describing horrible things that she would have to do for money. It was bad, and we would beg her to get help. We thought, you know, maybe this is the bottom one is the bottom but you never know. It's scary how low they can go.
So then by the fall of 2018, she was certain that she was a shell of herself. She came down I was like, why don't you come back for the day and I'll try to help you look up rehabs cuz she was like, I need help. Her mom ended up coming home that day early from work installer and it was shocking because that was the first time we had really seen her in person for six months. she'd lost so much weight. She looked like she had aged 10 so she was she was in really rough shape. She ended up having the wounds had still progressed the move terrible, and it's up. We got her into rehab just before Thanksgiving, of 2018 she got better. She was in there for a few days but sign yourself out again. I went up the week after Thanksgiving to try to help her and salvage her to get her to do some help. She was in such rough shape. When she got in the car, she smelled awful. I ended up getting a hotel to sue she got a shower because she just moved. It was horrible. Try to take her to John Hopkins. She refused because she had been there so many times. That experience that I spoke about when she was the nurse and talked down to her when she was in hospital for the finger. And so she had been in for addiction. So many times the the staff was so dismissive of people with addiction when they're in the hospital, so she hated going. So that was even a further barrier to try to get her help.
So she I spent that that night with her trying to get her to be better. Try to get her to the hospital, but she didn't have to she wouldn't have it. But she was in this weird calm state. You could tell she was not well, she was really sick. She was coughing horribly. She was in the kind of weird manic episode. She was not hurt she was so far gone from the person I knew. It was depressing is horrible. But I now look back and treasure that night with her because he knew we laid in bed held each other and it was just this like almost a final moment I got to have with her.
So because I noticed she was coughing really bad, but we ended up now know was her infections that she had from those open wounds. It spread to her major organs and she had a horrible infection in her heart. So two weeks after I had had that last night with her. She got admitted to the hospital because she was having trouble breathing. She could barely move and ended up being she was having massive organ failure because the infections from her wounds had spread to all of her major organs. The guy that she was living with he called us called really early center needs to take him to hospital. She's in the ICU, she's not well. So her mom had gotten got the call from him. She told me before the kids woken up, we agreed that let the kids go to school and her and I will go up together to the hospital. We get up there she's she's completely she's on a ventilator. She's in full, every machine hooked up to her.
The old person that she was in addiction with the old guy who was underneath and he was sitting there he had introduced himself as her fiance’ so that the staff would treat him normal. That was disgusting. We got him to leave. But you know, the prognosis was not well, she she wasn't. They're going to try everything. And after a couple days, nothing's responding. Nothing was working. They just kind of said, like, what we've done everything we can to help - she's...we have to take her off and let her pass. We agreed that was the best bet.
So this was she went on Tuesday. This was Friday, that Tuesday, if she went in, we brought the children up to say goodbye without telling them goodbye. But we told we prepared them. We want we wanted them to be able to see her. And that was really important to me. Because the kids didn't see her at all for those two years, the kids never saw her again. I didn't want them to just have, we told them, “Hey, mom died,” I wanted them to see that we're trying to help her. She was in the hospital getting help. And I wanted them to kind of have that moment. I knew that'd be really rough for them because they were still so young, seven and six years old. But I thought later on in life, they would be okay.
By this point. They were seeing a therapist, she agreed. So we brought the kids into the ICU one of the time. That was really hard for them, the staff, the nurses were all crying as the kids kind of sit there, how much they loved her. It was really, that that was awful. But so in hindsight that I was really happy to have that moment with her Friday, the doctors told us, you know, they've done everything. She's not going to make it agreed to, you know, let her pass so they move her up to hospice. I'll bring a little levity this moment when we brought her into hospice. Her mom had never left the hospital during that whole week. So I said why don't you go get some air, go get fresh and I'll oversee her getting into hospice and checked in and then I'll let you know when she's in the room.
They brought her up to the hospice ward. It was just me. And the nurse there was like, Oh, we have this great musician here. She she'll play beautiful music in the room for you. During this moment, if you want and I'm in my head. I'm like, why would I want some random person sitting in a small hospital room as my partner is dying? Why would I want that person? But I thought the nurse was like, so in love with this program. I thought it was so great. I was like, I want this nurse to take care of Eileen in her last moment. So I'm going to Yes, of course, bring her in. So I get him in the room. I'm in the room now and he's getting settled. There, you know, getting her in. And the musician comes in and she asks what kind of music does Eileen like? I was like hip hop? Music like that? Like, you know, not really an acoustic guitar type venue. The girl looks very puzzled and goes okay, well, Uh huh. I'll see what I can do and she pulls up the chords to the Fugees, “killing them softly” which I don't know if anyone if you or your listeners are familiar with the lyrics but I mean it is literally strumming my guitar as I kill you softly as you die. Those are the lyrics she started playing that song and you could tell she doesn't really she does she doesn't know that song because as she's saying this lyrics you can tell she's getting a moment of panic. And I'm I'm looking around the room thinking this is this is a terrible prank, right What is going on? I'm dying. I'm internally dying. Because I now I'm, I have a terrible sense of humor, I can find laugh and the worst moments. So that problem I made in that moment. That was just the most inappropriate. Um, but you know, her mother, me, mother's fiance, her uncle and another relative for all their brother. We were all there. And we got to, you know hold her.
And those last few hours, and yeah, she passed peacefully. And you know, because it was so dark so bad at the end, I was glad she was free of that life. That's how we kind of looked at it and had our system. So this was right before Christmas. And this was Friday evening, and I knew the kids had already gone to bed. And I knew I would have to go home. And then when they woke up, I would have to tell the kids that their mom died. Right, I couldn't sleep. That to me, was almost worse than her dying was knowing. like God in a couple hours, my kids are gonna wake up and I'm gonna shatter their world. My son woke up first. He came in the room. I just have to almost kind of be just everything's normal tools, concerts or wait because I can't tell him first. And then he's going to be losing it. And finally, they all wake up. I bring him out in the living room and I just kind of I bring it to them jeopardy. They're devastated, but they handle it so well. Because, you know, we've, again, it sucks, but they were almost used to her being gone, in a sense not not not not to say they weren't devastated that she passed. But if you can prepare a child to lose their mother, I feel like we did everything you possibly could to help them with that leading up to that movement. So, it was devastating, but that was I would say that that was probably the worst moment of it all having to tell them you know, their mom. Yeah.
Brenda 62:30
It's just it's so heartbreaking. And you know, I can hear the pain in your voice. And I just, you know, I'm realizing that this is really recent, this is not like 10 years ago, this is this is very recent, and how are you? Are, you're obviously a very strong person, but how are you getting through? And in managing with the kids, when this is so kind of still fresh in the past?
Andy 62:58
Yeah, well, I have this thank their school they were such an amazing resource. They they were really there for helping the kids I I think I just kind of buried myself in working I A week after she passed I end up getting an amazing position that is like ideal for my industry like one of the top things you can do. So I am in this horrible, you know, I just lost Eileen, but I'm happy that in a sense, she's past that horrible life because it was so dark at the end, but now I got this great position. And it was I think I just poured myself into that and didn't really process it properly because the first few months I was okay. And then I definitely is the six month point after her passing board on that. That was when I felt like it really hit me and I scheduled two trips because I didn't travel at all I took care of the kids. I was looking for a lot of hurt this whole episode.
So I wasn't financially able to go do vacations, but I had now been working. So I took two trips, I went and saw one of my best friends in Seattle. And I'd always wanted to go out there and that was that trip was everything. And then two months after that, in May of last year, I went to the Grand Canyon, and I saw that is kind of my, my personal thing. So my buddy got married Scottsdale, we did the wedding. And then the next morning, I drove up to the Grand Canyon. And that was everything to be It was so beautiful. And my my whole goal was I wanted to be there overnight, to see the beautiful sky and there's no light pollution at all. So you get to see the stunning stars in the Milky Way and all that beautiful and everything. And then you got to see the sunrise of the Grand Canyon. And I looked at that as the dawn of chapter two of my life.
Brenda 64:50
That's just unbelievable. What do you do you think that as a as a man as a dad as a, you know, as a guy? How do you think your experience is different, or maybe the same as other people. You know, I tend to focus with moms just because I am a mom, I don't know what it's like to be a dad or a father. You know, our husband, but what do you think the sort of this either the stigma, or just the way that you were treated or felt during this was was like is from the guy's point of view?
Andy 65:29
I would say it's always isolating. I think you're, there's very much the machismo thing in our culture of, you know, just toughen up or you got to put your head down. Then once that helps, because you just got it, there's no other choice. I'd you know, I looked at it like, Okay, I've got my three kids to raise. I have to, I have to do this. So I didn't really have a choice to stop and dwell on it or be sad but it it's very isolating. I think there's as much as there's a few resources for families that go through this. I think there's even fewer for, like male partners that go through this with their spouse. There's I've searched for groups, the biggest thing for me is I tried to find information for my kids, in terms of, you know, what it's like to be what what things do kids suffer from that don't have a mother growing up. And there's so much information out there for kids that don't they grew up without a dad, you know, behavioral things to watch, you know, you know, triggers, there's so much research on their category, there's almost nothing on kids that don't have a mom. And that's been my biggest struggle of just trying to find, you know, because my kids see a counselor, they see I want to give them all the tools they can because I know they're gonna have issues with this, but how can I as much as I can limit that and give them the tools they need? And there's so little information that's been my biggest frustration is there's just it's such a small rare thing. So it's very difficult to find anything to help them.
Brenda 66:56
Are there any resources or books I know you said that there was You know, some documentaries being a research guy, you found that but is there anything if there if there is that other one a million? Well, it's not one a million but the other dad who might be listening or the the spouse, is there any either recommendation you would give or did you find any resource that you would like to share?
Andy 67:20
I would say the best thing I wish I knew the name of it. But was that that NPR Doc, they did in partnership that came out about two years ago with the safe project us. They did that in tandem and released it it's about 45 minutes. That to me was the most comforting because it got so detailed into the what a person goes through when they're in addiction, brain chemistry wise and not just the emotions in it. It helped me feel so much more assertive in my choices because like I said, you know, most people don't get it. They don't get why you're sticking with a person or might Why can't they just stop and to me that was so cathartic and it is felt like I found a great answer to give when, you know, people were like, how can a mother do that to your children? Seeing and seeing that there's so many other people that go through this that suffer in silence, it's comforting to know there are others out there and then to try to find and seek them out.
Brenda 68:15
Well, you're, you're an amazing person. And I think people will really, people who listen to this, I think, will get a perspective that they probably didn't have before. And, you know, a certain amount of empathy for those people that you see. Because you do see, you know, you see people who you can tell are hurting and just to know that there's, there's a circle of people around that, that kind of raggedy looking person on the street or in the motel that you know, somebody loves them. And just to sort of hear it from you and hear your your voice and your perspective is so important. So I just I can't thank you enough for taking the time and sharing this with us.
Andy 68:57
I thank you. It's the opportunity scenes like this are also so helpful to just be able to discuss and, you know, tell the story. As we talked about, it's so insane. And it's like a movie. So it's comforting in a sense to be able to share.
Brenda 69:13
Thank you. I appreciate it. Wow, I have to tell you that conversation with Andy was just so powerful and so emotional. And I just can't imagine the amount of pain and worry and frustration and an anger that he must have felt through that entire experience. And I'm just so grateful that he was willing to share it with us and sort of relive all of that for for you to hear. And maybe it brought a new perspective to you on some of the things that dads and men go through in this really, really difficult battle. If you would be up for doing me a huge favor and helping more families find hope stream, you can leave a review and rating on whatever podcast app that you listen from that just helps sort of bump upstream up in the ratings for parenting and teen related and addiction related podcasts. And if you're a mom, and you are needing some support for the struggle that you might be going through with a child who is either misusing drugs or alcohol or is in a an active addiction, you can meet us in The Stream, which is our online space. for moms in particular, you can go to BrendaZane.com/thestream, and you'll just find a really supportive tribe of fellow mamas who know what you're going through and are there to support you and lift you up in this hard time. Thank you so much for listening on this Father's Day, Happy Father's Day to all of the dads out there and I will We'll meet you back here on Wednesday for the next episode of hope stream