My son, Toobe, was a rock star.
Started off out in the night life, everybody's giving him
free drinks.
Then it went to weed, then pills.
We got signed, I was doing a lot of cocaine.
It destroyed him.
He quit the band in 2004.
By 2015, he was doing heroin.
Now, Toobe is a homeless heroin addict.
Even though I kick him out, I'm a mother
and I let him back in.
I don't want to see my son pan handling,
so I give him money.
My son's issues consume my mind all day, every day.
I find myself sitting at home crying.
My son's destroying his life with drugs
and he's destroying my life, too.
Toobe's girlfriend, Stephanie, enables him.
I gave Toobe $300.
She will give him money to keep from being sick,
to have him around.
I've allowed Toobe to come home a couple days a week
to see his son.
Wake up, dope's first, even before I take a pee.
Dope, dope first.
(cries)
I'm sorry.
I think Stephanie and I are suckers for him.
Do you get what I'm saying
that what you're doing when you give him money,
comfort, food, housing, clothes, whatever,
is enabling him to continue the lifestyle of a drug addict?
Yes.
We do.
I've wrote some things down from all of you
and here's some things that jumped out at me that you said.
Stephanie.
"He has ruined my life.
I don't know how we can move past it all.
I lost $25,000, my car was repossessed, we were evicted
from the apartment, I owe rent, my credit score was ruined,
I had to take bankruptcy, I had to sell my horse."
Tina.
"My son's issues consume my mind, it is so depressing.
I am miserable, I cry all the time, drug dealers know where
I live, he puts us all in danger, especially himself"
Alexis, you say, "My brother's on drugs,
has ruined our lives, ruined my reputation, I quit school
because of him, I lost friends, he's stolen from me,
caused their stepdad to drink due to stress four years ago
and died of Cirrhosis of the liver."
Okay, so you guys have a great excuse.
He's ruined all of your lives
and even killed your stepfather.
To a degree, yeah.
If he gets better, what's your excuse gonna be
for your lives not working then?
Thank you very much.
Thought I'd come out and say hey, hey.
Hey!
Well, busy day today.
I hope you all get my point about what I was saying
with this family before I brought Toobe out here.
Anytime there is a chronic disease, and drug addiction
is certainly one,
when I went through my training, there are different types
of areas of psychology,
just like there would be in medicine.
This clinical psychology, which deals with neurosis and
psychosis, and those types of things, that's what you
usually think about when you think about a shrink,
but there's also something called behavioral medicine
and I completed both of those course.
And behavioral medicine is the point at which psychology,
physiological functioning,
and physiological functioning merge and interact.
And they influence each other greatly.
And one of the things you have to deal with is how
chronic disease affects overall functioning.
And so when you have a chronic disease in family
it can create depression and anxiety
and disrupt relationships and all sorts of things,
particularly if it's a terminal disease.
And you can see what's happened here.
I think you probably thought I was being a little harsh
on these ladies, I don't know,
but they really were using him to blame everything.
They even blamed the death of the stepfather on him.
That's his fault?
But you heard them say at the end, when he's going away
to get treatment, they were saying, whoa, what now?
We're gonna have to pick up the pieces.
It really does take away when you spend all of your time
worrying about something, I would see it sometimes
with people that had a chronic disease if it got resolved
and they had spent all of their time at the doctor's office
or rehab, whatever, and all of a sudden it wasn't there,
it was like, what do I do now?
Their identity had become that of a patient and they didn't
have to do that anymore and had these vast amounts
of time and they were lost.
And that's what I was saying is gonna happen
with these three because they were so consumed with him
that now that's not there, the silence will be deafening.
They don't have anybody to blame and they don't spend all
of their time thinking about it.
They will get depressed and find themselves lost.
You heard her say, I was just thinking,
what am I gonna do now?
So, you have to deal with that.
So, if you're in that situation, think about it.
It does take some planning.
I'm glad he's gonna be away for a long time
because that's gonna take them awhile to readjust for sure.
But listen, if you have someone in your family that is
abusing a substance, and right now, the opiod epidemic
in America is an epidemic by the way.
There are enough prescriptions written for opioids
right now for every man, woman, and child in America
to have their own bottle.
Think about that.
And Robin and I were just on Capitol Hill.
We were invited to testify before bipartisan committee
about opiod abuse and
you have no idea what a problem it is.
Your chance of being addicted at one year was like,
what 30, 40 percent?
30 or 40 percent, yes.
Yeah, if you refill it one time, and that means it's
seven days, your chance of being addicted is like
one in three or four.
It's unbelievable.
So, it's a very dangerous thing
so this is gonna be a problem.
So, just watch, be thinking about that.