Holding onto hope: One mother's struggle to cope with her children's addictions

April 29--Malinda Mackenzie had a good family life, good kids. What's happened over the past decade isn't something she saw coming.

Her three children played sports -- soccer, football, baseball, basketball -- they all had dirt bikes, they all skied. Mackenzie was a homemaker and youth leader; her husband had a good job and coached sports in the community. Her children were loved and well-cared for.

"We were a very intact family," she said. "So for our family to fall apart, you just didn't expect that."

Despite their storybook upbringing, Mackenzie's three children -- Ian, 30, Danielle, 28, and Gordy, 23 -- all have fallen prey to opioid addictions over the past decade -- something they still struggle with as active users, sometimes toggling between heroin and meth.

"They were really active kids, so it's so interesting that this happened to our family," she said. "When I say addiction took everything from me, it did."

Although from Southern Indiana, Mackenzie and her husband raised their children in the Seattle area.

'A FAMILY DISEASE'

Daughter Danielle was the first to develop a drug problem, Mackenzie said. They found out when she was still in school and remortgaged their house for the $50,000 needed to send her to a special school.

A few years later, still working to help her daughter, she got a call from her oldest son, then 23, with news for which she wasn't prepared.

"He had his own apartment, car, doing what I thought was really great and he called me up one day and said 'Mom, I think I'm in trouble,'" she recalled. "'Can you come get me?'"

Mackenzie said she thought his car must have broken down, but it turned out to be much worse. He confided that he had been smoking Oxycontin.

"He said it happened that quick," she said, snapping her fingers. "This kid who was my straight arrow ended up losing his job, apartment ... it spiraled so quick."

When she found out her youngest son was using meth, she said it nearly killed her.

"I thought, I'd been so busy with the other two that I didn't see my little guy -- because he was so quiet and shy -- I didn't see he was struggling," she said.

Since then, they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on addiction treatment, hospital and court costs for the three siblings, who are still actively using.

"It becomes a family disease," she said. "It's not [just] that your loved one is addicted, but it becomes a family disease. Trying to hide it, trying to deal with it, trying to find help."

The kids have sought treatment in different types of both inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities. The youngest has even spent two three-month stays at the Betty Ford Clinic and relapsed the day after he got out. Although insurance covered 100 percent of the $10,000 first-time stay, the amount covered goes down each time.

Mackenzie talks openly with her youngest about his addiction, and his health. When his veins collapsed from the intravenous drug use, he started shooting into the muscle, causing abscesses his doctors said would kill him. Out of other options, he switched to smoking heroin, which he admitted to her made for a weaker high than injecting.

"When I would talk to him, I could just hear his respiratory was failing," she said. "He just sounded so sick and weak." She said she reached out to close friends. "I said, 'I'm calling the saints; pray for my boy. Heroin has taken his soul.'"

She recalls police officers showing up at her door to ask about items that were reported stolen. She found the pawn tickets in her son's car.

"I had to say to the officer, as I'm crying, 'I'm sure these tools were for a man who probably makes a living to provide for his family,'" she said. "I not only worry about my kids, but the people that are being affected by my child; I feel responsible."

Through part of her own path to understanding, Mackenzie talks with other families and addicts struggling with drugs.

"Heroin is such a terrible drug," she said. "There's so much shame -- they're embarrassed, they're dirty ... they hate themselves and people don't realize that."

FINDING HOPE

Mackenzie, who is now divorced from her children's father, moved back to Indiana several years ago to care for her mother.

Although drugs have chipped away at her family, she retains strength and for the first time in a while, she's starting to feel some hope.

When she visits Gordy, they go to dinner then shop for things he might need -- razors, vitamin drinks, food that is easy on his stomach. They talk a lot.

"Today, I can tell you I'm hopeful," she said. "There is a process to getting help; some people refer to it as rock bottom, but anyone struggling with addiction, you get to these points. And Gordy is very close. I try not to be naïve but I'm hopeful for the first time."

Throughout her own process, Mackenzie has gone to therapy -- learning about how addiction works on the brain, working through guilt she carries as a parent, learning that she has to have boundaries -- no matter how strong the urge to run to her children and do anything to make them feel better.

She now has her own mantra -- one she uses when speaking to other addicts and families broken by drugs, one she uses to remind herself every day: "I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I can't change it," she said.

"You want to do everything you can to rescue them," she said, adding, "I have to keep praying and having an open dialogue with them."

___

(c)2017 The Evening News and The Tribune (Jeffersonville, Ind.)

Visit The Evening News and The Tribune (Jeffersonville, Ind.) at newsandtribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.