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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Harvard and heroin
I coasted to an Ivy League degree as a drug addict, but forever damaged the bond between mother and son.
By Seth Mnookin
[08/27/99]

Emotional handicap
What do you do when your normally sweet, loving child wholeheartedly rejects his suddenly disabled, wheelchair-bound grandmother?
By Diane Lore
[08/26/99]

Wild Thing
Is hell satisfied?
In keeping with their authors' dark histories, "The Iron Giant" and other children's tales by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath tell ominous fables about ambition, despair and people's disregard for nature and one another.
By Polly Shulman
[08/25/99]

The dark side of Disney
There's no escaping the commodification of childhood.
By Samuel G. Freedman
[08/23/99]

Disney rocks!
Forget the long lines, the schlocky toys and the canned music. Disneyland will always be the Magic Kingdom for this lifelong Mouseketeer.
By Lisa Moskowitz
[08/22/99]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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But Seth was not drawn in. He went through the motions of getting help but never seemed to feel the problem was as serious as we thought it was. He continued to use drugs and to lie about it. The worst was when he blamed us for his drug use, saying the inflexibility of our rules had forced him into experimentation. Though the therapist didn't buy into this -- "Did they hold your head back and force the pills down your throat?" -- the question of responsibility haunted us. Had we been too strict, or too lenient? Not present enough, or too involved? Was there a time when something we could have done differently might have changed the course of his life?

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"You can't go through my drawers!" Seth hisses, the skin on his cheekbones flushing.

"I can go through your drawers if that's where you're hiding drugs," I say.

He is taller than I am, and stronger. He stands in front of the door, blocking my way out.

"I'm going to my room," I say. "There is nothing more to discuss right now."

"Oh. Yes. There. Is."

His voice, low and even, sounds like a parody of menace, a gangster in some third-rate movie. But it's not a parody, and I feel the threat.

Now we're fighting over whether I can walk away from danger. Trying not to cry, I ask him to let me by.

As I retreat to my room, he kicks the radiator. "If I can't keep drugs in my room," he cries, "can I keep them in the car?"

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Although Seth was bright enough, and manipulative enough, to function quite well, occasionally the world caught up with him: Friends became distant, he lost his position on the school paper. When he won a scholarship to travel to Tunisia for a summer, we told him he couldn't go unless he stayed completely out of trouble. When he was sent home from the newspaper drunk, we made him call and decline the scholarship. But he finished high school a semester early and was accepted early decision into Harvard. College seemed to offer the hope of a fresh start, a place where he would have new friends and challenges. Maybe this would be what he needed, we told ourselves, to get back on track.

When he was living away from home, we tried to believe his drug use was under control. College, though, brought its own pressures, as well as the opportunities afforded by less parental supervision. By Thanksgiving of his sophomore year, he told us he was entering an inpatient treatment program for drug abuse. I wish we had been more surprised.

We brought Seth to the hospital and stayed with him while he filled out the intake forms, in triplicate. We stayed while they unzipped and emptied every compartment in his blue backpack, checking for drugs, and we stayed while the intern took his medical history. We left as he launched into a laundry list of drugs he'd taken.

The night outside was clear and cold, a perfect fall night, the sky opening out to display a fanfare of stars. We had answered the doctors' questions, and now we would go home and celebrate with our families, gathered for the holiday. Before we got to the car, we stopped on a hill above the parking lot. We held each other and cried.

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Seth wants to wear his cowboy outfit to the first day of kindergarten. "The cowboy clothes are for dress-up," I explain. "You're supposed to wear your own clothes to school."

But he is adamant, won't take off the plaid flannel shirt, the fringed chaps, the wide-brimmed hat. I don't want him to be late for the first day of school.

"OK," I say, "but just today," and he gets up from the floor where he has been staging his strike and starts to buckle on his holster with the two plastic guns.

"No," I say. "You can't take the holster."

"But I need it," he says. "I've never been to school before."

Next page | Wouldn't you be anxious if you were using heroin?