Latest news with #substanceAbuse
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Mama June shrugs off calls for her to be axed from reality TV after stealing daughter Alana's money
Mama June Shannon has shrugged off calls for her to stop profiting from reality television after she stole over $30,000 from daughter Alana ' Honey Boo Boo ' Thompson - insisting she now simply ignores all the negative comments. The matriarch, 45, sparked outrage last year when she admitted she had spent thousands of dollars of Alana's money on living expenses, including manicures and household bills. Joining in the studio for an exclusive interview last week, June was asked for her response to those who don't want to see her on their television screens again following the scandal. Along with her daughter, Alana, 19, she was also pressed on whether she still keeps an eye on the comments from social media users. 'I used to fight like everybody when I first started this adventure years ago, because I wanted to go after everybody that was talking bad, but now I'm just like, okay, it makes my views go up, argue in the comments if you want to,' she said, referring to being trolled. June, who has a history of substance abuse and was charged with felony possession of drugs in 2019, said that much of the only abuse she is subjected to is due to her past addiction and Alana's money. 'The biggest thing I get is the money, the drugs, or "why is she talking so loud?" I'm like, if you've been around, if y'all want me to get real loud, I'll get real, real loud,' she continued. Nowadays, June isn't engaging with the trolls. 'I just say, watch the show, thank you for commenting, thank you for putting us on the algorithm, thank ya'll for your concerns,' she added. 'I just answer it and go about my business.' June argued that she will always be subjected to criticism no matter what she does, and she has reckoned with this. 'If I move a certain way or I say a certain thing… like I know tonight when I go live on start talking after the show airs, they're going to talk about that,' she said. 'They're going to talk about that a year from now. It's just like they keep flogging that horse and you're just like, that's already been dealt with.' In April 2024, June admitted she spent $30,000 of daughter Alana's money on 'life expenses.' Alana was so distraught by the news that at the time she stated she was considering legal action against her mother, who had attempted to talk her way out of the confrontation. Speaking exclusively to at the time, June said that she had only spent Alana's Dancing with the Stars paycheck and did not steal her entire life's savings. 'I did not spend 12 years of money. It was only from one show [Dancing with the Stars],' she said. 'Alana has money in a Coogan account [a special blocked trust fund account for child stars] that she is choosing not to touch – and it is in the six figures. It's like is over $200,000.' Alana's total fee for Dancing with the Stars amounted to $60,000, but after Californian taxes, June claimed all that remained was $35,000. 'It is really only $30,000,' she continued. 'That's not a lot of money. We paid the bills with that, it went on whatever her needs were, whether it was getting her nails done or her lashes done or whatever it was. 'We also stayed out in California back in 2018 when she was on Dancing with the Stars and that did cost. 'Unfortunately, I didn't have a ton of money myself. I used that money to reinvest in her and support us through that time because we stayed out in California for almost a month after she got off Dancing with the Stars. 'So that's the only money in question. It's not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was only the money from the one show, and I put the recommended amount of money, which was 20 percent into her savings. 'And, you know, this may sound rude, but legally I don't have to pay or give any money back.'
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
LaFrance administration aims to set up 24 'microunits' in Anchorage pilot program for homeless
May 26—Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's administration told members of the Assembly that it hopes to have a new pilot project providing homeless residents substance abuse treatment in a small community of "microunits" by October. "This could be unrealistic," special assistant to the mayor Thea Agnew Bemben said of the tight timeline. "But we're just gonna give it a whirl." Bemben detailed the plan to members of the Assembly during a Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting Wednesday. The goal of the "Microunit Recovery Residences" pilot program, according to Bemben's presentation, is to "create immediate access to transitional living and treatment for people experiencing homelessness with substance use disorders." To do that, the administration aims to put 24 tiny houses on a piece of municipal land, potentially near the U-Med District in the area of Tudor and Elmore roads. "These are small structures," Bemben said — around 100 square feet per unit. "Inside you just basically have the basics for one person. So it's a bed, some storage, a fridge, a microwave, a window." Outside the single-person domiciles are bathrooms and, potentially, on-site showers as well as a communal indoor space. [Town Square Park, Anchorage's troubled downtown centerpiece, is set for a major overhaul] The municipality had been studying the idea of using tiny homes as a partial solution to homelessness since 2023, she said, and it was looked at separately by members of the Assembly too. For several months the administration has consulted locally with a similar initiative, In Our Backyard, which as of last year had six small units for seniors set up on the property of a church in Fairview. They also took lessons from different tiny-home projects in Atlanta; Corvallis, Oregon; and elsewhere. There would be two components: operations and treatment. In the plan Bemben presented to the Assembly, the Anchorage Community Development Authority would oversee physical components of the pilot. That would mean purchasing or building the tiny homes, developing the selected parcel of land and connecting the site to utilities, including electricity and water. The Anchorage Community Development Authority is a quasi-governmental municipal entity that traditionally has overseen parking lots, garages and meters but has increasingly helped connect public and private resources for redevelopment projects in the municipality, particularly housing. Bemben said the administration wants the Assembly to approve a plan to use about half of the $2.4 million the municipality currently has from a legal settlement with opioid manufacturers that it believes can be spent on the program, since it is geared toward people in treatment and recovery from substance abuse. Though the exact amount is still being fine-tuned, Bemben said they think $1.2 million of the settlement passed to the authority will be enough to hire a contractor to construct and install the microunits and get them set up for tenants. "I just want to double check my math here," said Assembly member Zac Johnson, who represents South Anchorage. "$1.2 million for 24 units to have them built and connected to services, I mean that's about $50,000 a pop —" "$47,000," Bemben interjected. "That's pretty good value," Johnson replied. The second component of the pilot is drug and alcohol treatment as a requirement for eligibility. "This is designed to be a very low-barrier way of getting people into treatment," Bemben said. "In order to remain there you would have to remain compliant with the program." The municipality would not be the one funding treatment and operating costs. As early as June 10, the administration could submit a measure to the Assembly that includes a request for $500,000 for startup costs to help a third-party health care provider get a treatment program established in the recovery residences, Bemben said. The Anchorage Health Department will be in charge of selecting a provider that is qualified to charge Medicaid for behavioral health services to residents. Creating a program that can bill the federal health care system will be essential to making it financially sustainable, Bemben said, something they'd learned from looking at treatment provider peers in Wasilla and Fairbanks. Assembly member Daniel Volland, from the downtown district, asked how standing up a community of two dozen tiny homes compared to the municipality buying an apartment or hotel building to provide shelter and treatment, an approach to homelessness and addiction the municipality has pursued with varying degrees of focus for several years. Bemben told him the city should be working on both. "The advantage of this is it can be done quickly," she said. In the ideal timeline, Bemben said, the Assembly will approve funding for the pilot program in June, a contractor will be selected in July, and work begun in August or September so that tenants are able to move in in October, before winter hits. Developing the treatment program with a health care provider would happen simultaneously on a parallel track. A location for the tiny homes has not been selected, but the prime candidate is a municipal-owned parcel near the Tozier track by the intersection of Tudor and Elmore roads. Bemben said the site had a lot of what the city needs to make it successful and cost effective like paving, fencing and proximity to utilities. "This one's the most promising so far," she said. Assembly Chair Chris Constant pointed out that the municipality owns that particular parcel in a land swap that was part of a redevelopment plan that imagined adding more permanent housing, a new Health Department building and a grocery store to the area. Bemben responded that one of the draws of a pilot program was that if it didn't work, then the microunits could be moved elsewhere or scrapped entirely. "We have choices after that two-year period," she said. Erin Baldwin Day, who was elected this spring to represent the area, told Bemben that neighborhoods around that land have had a lot of experience with homeless encampments in the area. She asked the administration, if the parcel is ultimately selected, to commit to holding town halls or community listening sessions to inform residents of the plan and build support for it.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Wyoming health insurance agency investigates alleged illegal kickback schemes
CHEYENNE — In the middle of winter, two people from a California drug recovery center paid a visit to the COMEA House and Resource Center, a homeless shelter in Cheyenne. They offered free airfare and scholarships to shelter residents for substance abuse treatment at the facility in warm, sunny California. But something about the offer felt extremely off, COMEA Executive Director Robin Bocanegra said. Why would someone from California, a state with a massive unhoused population, look to recruit unhoused people from Wyoming? Robin Bocanegra COMEA shelter executive director Robin Bocanegra. 'Right away, we saw red flags,' Bocanegra said, adding that she immediately turned them away. 'They were a little bit pushy, wanting to come in and really tried to do this sales pitch on how great it was.' An alleged health insurance fraud scheme has been taking advantage of people with drug addiction, and it recently started happening in Wyoming, according to at least one health insurance company. The Wyoming Department of Insurance posted a public service announcement this month, warning people to be on the lookout for 'body brokers' and health insurance scams. 'Body brokers' are people sent out to different states to recruit victims — often vulnerable adults with a substance use disorder — and send them to fraudulent treatment facilities. Scammers running these facilities bill insurance companies for services that aren't actually being provided. The epidemic of substance use disorders has correlated with an uptick in health insurance fraud, according to a 2022 article published by the National Library of Medicine. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges against a defendant for filing $6 billion in fraudulent claims to federal and private health insurance organizations for opioid-related treatment. This included $845 million for substance abuse treatment and more than $30 million for illegal opioid distribution, according to the article. 'Patient brokering … is a common unethical practice in many states,' the article said. 'In many cases, patients are referred to facilities regardless of whether it is the best fit for their needs.' Wyoming appears to be the latest target in this criminal scheme, according to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming. BCBSWY Executive Vice President Kris Urbanek said Native Americans and adults with substance use disorders have been victimized by fraudulent health care filings. There was a 106% increase in major mental health/substance use disorder diagnoses from 2023 to 2024 under BCBSWY, which resulted in an extra $15.1 million in costs. Kris Urbanek Kris Urbanek 'The fraudulent enrollment is bad,' Urbanek said. 'But the real tragedy is that these people are being trafficked into locations that do not provide the health care that they need, and in a lot of cases, are not providing any health care at all.' Based on stories collected by the insurance company, Wyoming victims are showing up in treatment centers, most of them in California, but are not receiving any actual treatment. Amy Scharaswak, who works in population health for BCBSWY, said a pregnant woman at a Wyoming homeless shelter is currently stuck in California after she fell victim to one of these scams. 'When she went to California, her whole premise of going is she was pregnant, she was using, but she wanted to quit for her unborn child,' Scharaswak said. The woman was dropped off in a compound, which is a residential area for patients of substance use treatments, such as an apartment or dormitory. But when she saw her roommate had crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia, she realized something was wrong, Scharaswak said. 'Because she was not willing to stay, the facility in question said, 'We won't buy you a plane ticket to get home,'' Scharaswak said. ''We can't help you if you're not willing to stay, and we can bill your insurance company for your stay.'' Targeting Native Americans The most impacted population of health care fraud in Wyoming has been its Native American residents. Urbanek said there's been a 'dramatic uptick' in out-of-state residential treatment center utilization and enrollment in Native American plans. Average annual enrollment jumped from 300 to 1,300, he said, which is 'well beyond what is normal.' As of March 2025, internal reports indicate BCBSWY's Native American enrollment is up 500% in 2025. In addition, the health insurance company's Native American claims experience is up more than 1,000% in 2025. Overall, mental health and substance abuse disorder claims have increased over 300% in 2025. 'That was the red flag, right there,' Urbanek said. 'We had an influx of calls in the call center — claims utilization was out of whack.' As more stories started rolling in, staff at the insurance company began to suspect enrollments in the Native American plans were not legitimate, and that the claimed services were not actually being provided to members. Urbanek said Native American health insurance plans have year-round enrollment, and there's a 90-day period to verify whether an enrollee is an actual tribe member. It is unclear at this point if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is monitoring this requirement. This makes it easy for scammers to take advantage. 'You can just say that you're a tribal member. Nobody's looking and asking questions for three months,' Urbanek said. Addressing the issue When the BCBSWY legal team began investigating the alleged fraud schemes, it found a number of civil lawsuits and federal criminal cases and indictments related to illegal kickback operations. Most of the cases were filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which indicates this is a criminal enterprise, said BCBSWY Vice President of Legal Services Rocky Redd. 'This is a network of fraud that's happening, and we're not sure how connected it is,' Redd said. 'Whether all of these actors are connected, or whether the scheme has just been patterned and copycatted over and over again.' BCBSWY has been in contact with a Blue Cross plan in California, and discussions between the two agencies have been productive, Redd said. This has been an ongoing issue in California for several years now, and the state has entire departments and teams investigating fraudulent facilities. 'They use very sophisticated software. One of those is called Fraud Shield, that can go through and identify potential areas of fraud that might be occurring,' Redd said. But even with the large number of staff and use of sophisticated software to identify fraud, this type of investigation 'takes years,' due to how intricate it is and how difficult it is to track people down, he said. Part of the difficulty is thumbing through falsified documents, including fake utility bills and forged letters from shelter home directors. Bocanegra, the director at COMEA, said she was shocked to see a forged letter from her shelter with her name on it. 'It was a little disturbing,' Bocanegra said. While the FBI has been investigating this issue for years, it's a new problem for Wyoming federal law enforcement officers, Redd said. 'This is a very novel thing for them,' Redd said. 'We have been doing the things that we need to do, which is reporting the fraud through their proper channels, having discussions with investigators, but that process just moves very slowly.' BCBSWY is also partnered with the Wyoming Department of Insurance to investigate the health insurance scams. In addition, the health insurance company has contacted all three of Wyoming's members of Congress to work with CMS to rescind coverage payments, and the delegation has paid 'special attention' to this issue, said BCBSWY Government Affairs Principal and Privacy Officer Kelsey Prestesater. 'The federal government is very slow moving at times,' Prestesater said. 'We need a more immediate fix, and so we're hopeful that our Department of Insurance and (members of Congress) can really help us get in the door with CMS.' Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., said in an emailed statement to the WTE that she found the 'alleged actions of these fraudsters' to be 'egregious.' The Wyoming congresswoman confirmed her office is 'fully engaged' with the state DOI to hold bad actors accountable. 'Not only are they damaging the insurance system, those individuals seeking help could suffer for the rest of their lives because, in their greatest moment of need, they were victims of crime instead of beneficiaries of care,' Hageman stated. 'I will always stand in the gap for those unable to advocate for themselves.'
New York Times
18-05-2025
- New York Times
The Role My Parents Never Expected: Raising My Sister's Kids
My parents put off suing for custody of my sister's children for a long time. Shy and artistic, my sister was a straight-A student who played soccer in college. It wasn't clear what came first — the drugs or the depression or the terrible men — but when she dropped out in 2011 as a freshman and spiraled into addiction, having four babies in less than two years, her dissolution was shocking. We'd known, vaguely, that the disease ran in the family — my grandmother warned that most of her 11 siblings dealt with substance abuse. But we had never seen the fallout up close. For years, my parents held out hope that my sister would get clean or sign over custody willingly. My dad often said, 'The idea of shaming my daughter, of standing in a courtroom and listing all the ways she's failed as a mother, makes me feel physically sick.' But eventually it sank in that nothing was changing. My sister, L, was 30. The older two children were 8 and 7. The twins were 6. They had been living with my parents for nearly five years. It was time. So when L was reachable — stuck in jail for a few months in 2023 — they served her the papers. On the day of the hearing last year, my sister and her children's father showed up to the courthouse in Winston-Salem, N.C. Each was physically present, anyway. The father, a man more than 20 years my sister's senior, seemed high and slept through most of the proceedings. My sister was alert, if strung out, casual and modest in a sundress and a jean jacket. My parents presented their case to the judge, the primary facts being that L hadn't lived with her children for years and had been in and out of jail for a decade. She had left or been kicked out of so many treatment programs that it was hard to keep track of how many — eight, maybe, including private and state rehabs. The big picture was clear enough, but as with every story of addiction, the more intimate details throw the chaos of daily life into perspective: She brought fentanyl and needles into the house. She impersonated my mom at the bank, using her Social Security card to withdraw money from my parents' account. The children's father consistently sabotaged her attempts at sobriety, and hit her with a car the night before my wedding, so she arrived halfway through cocktail hour with a broken wrist and road rash. When it was time for my sister's argument, she took the stand. Despite the overwhelming evidence against her, she gave a spirited defense of how much she loved her children and how hard she had fought to stay alive for them. But the judge granted my parents sole custody, no visitation rights. Later that night on the phone, my dad described my sister on the stand: 'When she first started talking, she sounded really smart and put-together. I was proud of her. I thought, Wow, she could have been a lawyer!' Not for the first time, I was struck by the brutal emotional dichotomy at the heart of my parents' whole endeavor. Raising a child is an inherently hopeful act, but when it falls to a grandparent, it's often because something tragic has happened. Or in our case, is happening. It's not just sad or dramatic moments that are permeated with this complexity; joyful moments carry their own weight. When the grandkids were babies, my mom would get excited every time they hit a new milestone. Then she would think about why she was witnessing this, and not my sister. She'd ruminate on what she could have done differently. She would wonder what she could say or do, right then, to bring her back. My parents' situation is becoming more common. At the kids' small church school alone, there are a handful of children being raised by their grandparents. 'Grandfamilies' are a fast-growing but often invisible demographic. Last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2.4 million children were being raised by grandparents or other relatives. The opioid epidemic has only exacerbated these numbers — evidenced by the fact that many of the states with the most grandparents raising grandchildren are also those with the highest opioid prescribing rates. But it's impossible to know the exact number, because many grandparents never formally legalize their relationship. For parents like mine, doing what's best for their grandchildren can feel like abandoning their suffering child or, at the very least, choosing to prioritize the younger generation. And this says nothing of how it affects their other children — my three 'healthy' siblings and me — who have learned to ask for less, because there is simply less to give. Less time, less money, less attention. We all recognize a new hierarchy of needs. The children take precedence. The sister I grew up with, whose eyes I would find across the table when my dad started on one of his nerdy tongue twisters, has not been around for a long time. Addiction scrambled her life and, with it, our family dynamics. Roles have been challenged and responsibilities blurred. It's confusing and guilt-inducing for everyone, trying to do right by everyone else. My mom and dad have had to relinquish the notion that any 'ideal' outcome is possible — for them, for their children, for the grandchildren. As artists and dreamers, they've had to let go of aspirations that they had for the rest of their lives. I'm pregnant with my first child now, and watching my parents, I have found it impossible not to wonder how much sacrifice is inherent in this lifelong errand. They are still grappling with what it means to be parents. But they're also upending old narratives about happy children and lives well lived, in ways that we never could have predicted. Before all this happened, one word I might have used to describe my parents, Jane and Michael Dodds, was 'innocent.' They were — and still are, at their core — trusting, idealistic people. My mom is a writer and painter, whose father, a pastor and theologian, moved his family around the country while he taught at different seminaries. My dad is an academic and violinist who grew up in the Peruvian jungle, where his father was a missionary doctor. My parents were raised outside mainstream American culture, and when they met in college, they recognized a similar Christian worldview and an all-consuming love of the arts. They didn't plan to have five kids. The pill gave my mom chest pains, so they used other methods, and five (different!) failed forms of birth control later, there we were. Four girls and one boy. I'm the oldest, 36 now, and my youngest sister is 23. As they had children, it seemed as if they did their best to fold us into their pursuits and passions — making us part of the 'project' — the way their parents did with them. My mom home-schooled us for most of my elementary-school years, putting on theater productions with the neighborhood kids, giving still-life drawing lessons. We moved to a plot of wild land on a dirt road in Texas for three years, living out her dream of a country life. She took us to museums to sketch sculptures and cemeteries to make rubbings on the gravestones. Making art was the best way my mom knew to cope with life's challenges, and she poured that knowledge into us. Still, nothing was easy. Money stress was a constant drumbeat. My mom started taking portrait commissions when I was in elementary school, and my dad got a weekend job. He's 59 now and has worked two jobs for 25 years. He's a full-time professor at a state arts school and a half-time music director at a Presbyterian church. Not coincidentally, for 25 years he was also working on a book, which was finally published last year by Oxford University Press. It tackles, as the first sentence reads, 'one of the most elusive questions in music history: the nature of the transition from the Renaissance modes to the major and minor keys of the high Baroque.' My dad is a perfectionist, but he finally made real progress on the book when my youngest sister was in high school and the pressures on him and my mom eased. He composed and conducted a symphony, which became the subject of a documentary. My mom started writing and illustrating children's books, trying to get an agent. They were moving into a new, less encumbered chapter. But around that time, L and the four children — two toddlers and twin babies — were living in a house nearby that my grandmother bought for them, and things were starting to feel out of control. There often wasn't enough milk or baby formula or diapers. It was clear that L and the kids' dad were still using together. He was in and out of the house, increasingly violent. One night, L took the kids and fled to my parents' house, afraid for her life. They stayed with my parents for a while, and she went to meetings. She was sober for a month. But then she began to disappear, going to get high with the children's father. After a three-day disappearance, she returned and told my mom she wanted to take the kids home. My mom said she didn't think it was a good idea. My sister began disappearing more. And then she was just gone — for three, six, nine months at a time. For my mom, those first years with her grandchildren were plagued with doubt that she had made a mistake, that she should have let my sister take the kids home. It seemed unsafe at the time, but my parents' ensuring the children's safety also enabled my sister to use with fewer consequences. My dad, meanwhile, struggled with his instinct to view the situation in legal terms. 'These are their children,' he would say to my mom. He was uncomfortable mandating what my sister could or couldn't do with her own kids, even if she had abdicated her responsibilities. Wasn't she allowed some lapses in judgment as a mother? On top of their concern for my sister and the children, they were just desperate for the situation to end. Early on, the chaos felt interminable, unsustainable. All four kids were still in diapers when they moved in. And while all babies cry, traumatized babies cry a lot, and these babies wailed at the slightest provocation. They were all so close in age that they moved in a blond mob, playing, fighting and screaming as they whipped through the house, destroying one room after another in fresh and inventive ways. My parents couldn't really afford help, but they tried hiring a few different part-time nannies. In interviews, my mom would warn them: 'These babies cry a lot. Like, more than normal. And there are four of them.' None of the nannies lasted very long. Around 5 p.m., my mom would have panic attacks, knowing what was coming. At dinner, all the children insisted that she sit next to them, and if she didn't, they'd start screaming, their fragile sense of security shattered. Desperate to keep the peace, my mom would spend the meal moving back and forth across the table. During bath time, my parents traded off, each wearing my dad's chain-saw earmuffs to muffle the hysterics. Getting all the diapers and pajamas on was a battle, and my sister had been giving all four of them bottles during the night, at different times, so none were on a steady sleep schedule. For a long time, there was an otherness to the children, who, in their short lives, had already experienced — what exactly we didn't know. What they had not experienced was clear: normalcy, stability, a parent who wakes up in the morning, a reliable intermediary between them and the world. They must have sensed, in those first days, weeks and months that my sister was gone, the confusion over who, exactly, was steering the ship. Everyone was out to sea before they even realized they were leaving the harbor. 'With your own children, there's a comfort level,' my mom told me. 'I've heard people say, 'Your children are just you, basically — or they're an extension of you, at least.' But the grandchildren know their parents are out there, these idealized parents who are not us.' My dad says the ongoing struggle for him is letting go of the story he told himself about life. 'You grow up, go to college, get married, have a profession, raise a family, your kids graduate, you spend the next 20 years before retirement at the height of your career, maybe traveling and saving for retirement, and then you enjoy your grandkids and you grow old and die,' he said. 'Well, that's not happening for us. We will have been raising children from 1989 through 2034 — that's 46 years of continuous parenting. Sometimes I do have panic attacks, I'll say that. I wake up and think, I can't sustain this.' But one day at a time, they did sustain it. Days turned into weeks turned into years, while my sister seemed lost to time, trapped in the progression of her disease. And things began to shift. It became harder to imagine a reality in which L could recover enough to resume responsibility — at least, not for a long time. Most of her longest stretches of sobriety were when she was in jail, and when she got out, she slipped away again, surfacing when she got arrested, ended up in the hospital or asked my dad for an Uber ride or grocery money. My parents began settling into painful acceptance. And the more they accepted, the more the children came into focus. The more the children came into focus, the more it became clear that it wasn't enough to merely accept the situation. Living with sacrifice was passive. Children need to be wanted, with the boundless devotion of parental love. My nephew is the oldest, and he spent the most time with his parents before things went fully sideways. He's 10 now, and his sense of abandonment is acute, his feelings explosive. He is constantly testing the depth of my parents' commitment to him. He's very smart and analytical; he can beat my dad at chess, and when he sets his mind to solving a problem, he can almost always do it. But he has a speech delay, which makes it hard for him to communicate. He struggles to control his anger, which can twist into rage toward his sisters or my parents or, worst of all, himself. One night last year, my nephew became upset after getting caught doing something he wasn't supposed to do. It wasn't that big of a deal — my parents can't even remember what he did — but he refused to apologize. He shut himself in his room and moved his mattress to one side, then gathered up all his carefully curated possessions and piled them up on top of it. When my parents came in, he told them to 'give it all away,' his face buried in a pillow. 'I'd never seen that kind of deep self-hatred in a child,' my dad said. A few months later, he heard his sisters asking my mom about a friend of theirs at school, who also lives with her grandmother. Child Protective Services had removed her from her biological mother's care, and now the mother was suing for custody, wanting the little girl to testify in court about whom she wanted to live with. This was a terrifying prospect for the girl. My mom was explaining the situation, and as my nephew listened, he grew increasingly angry. He ran upstairs to my parents' bedroom and started throwing things around. ('Though,' my dad said, 'I did notice that he wasn't really throwing anything hard enough to break it.') When my dad tried to calm him down, he yelled: 'I get it! You don't really want us here. The only reason you're taking care of us is because the police are making you do it!' When my dad emphasized how untrue that was — that my parents wanted him and his sisters so much — my nephew's body slackened, as if the fear were seeping away, and he let my dad hold him. Moments like this were part of why my parents decided to sue for custody. Aside from the practical obstacles of parenting without legal rights — basic tasks like registering them for school, traveling or taking them to the doctor required tenuous workarounds — they felt that establishing their legal relationship with the children would enable a sense of emotional permanence. Even if the kids didn't know the specifics, my parents did, and it helped them wrap their minds around the future. 'I realized at a certain point, there is no halfway,' my dad said. 'You have to be all in. And for me, that's been the biggest change. Maybe four or five years ago, my anger was volcanic. I fixated on what had been done to me. But at some point, I just had to say: I can't have it both ways. I can't love them unconditionally and hold on to the anger, because then my love would be begrudging. We choose to raise them and to love them, period. The best way I can resolve the conflict between my roles as father and grandparent is to love and care for my daughter's children when she can't. In doing that, I am also loving her.' There have been moments over the years, when L is sober, that she has expressed gratitude for what my parents are doing. But usually, she exists in a reality of her own making. Either she can't remember events clearly, or they are simply too painful to deal with, so when she is confronted with her hurtful actions, she gets angry and refutes facts or recasts blame. After the custody hearing, L was especially furious with my mom, accusing her of lying because she said that L hadn't been present enough to care for the children or make decisions about their lives. What about that time she had toured the kids' school with my mom? It must have been unbearable for her to fathom all the life that happened without her, the countless hours of care that occurred in her absence. Recently my mom found 'The Anger Workbook,' by Les Carter and Frank Minirth. 'They say that feeling rejected is one of the main reasons for anger,' she told me. And with the grandchildren, my mom said, 'feeling rejected has been a big part of this whole scenario.' My nephew especially, she said, 'feels rejected by his parents, so he makes me feel rejected because I'm trying to replace his parents. There's all these layers.' When I was growing up, if we were disrespectful, or did something my mother saw as immoral, her wrath was hot and vicious. She could shrivel you down to size with a few words. I distinctly remember being called 'evil' once as a teenager, which would be funny if it wasn't such a loaded word in our house. Now, though, when people see her with the grandchildren, they often comment on how unflappable she is, an immovable anchor in the storm. 'With these kids, I've realized that for their emotions to be regulated, my own emotions have to be more regulated,' she told me. 'When the grandkids get unregulated, it's huge compared to what you all were like. I've realized I cannot push their buttons, and when I do, I need to back off and let them calm down. So they're sort of teaching us how to do it differently.' My dad has said that for him, one of the gifts of raising the grandchildren has been a liberation from expectations — both for his own life and the children's. None of this looks the way it was 'supposed to,' so why hold on to old ideas about what will make him happy or what makes a happy child? He's better at being present than he was when we were young. He has told me that when we watch old home videos, observing his younger self is painful. He can see how distant and distracted he is, weighed down by whatever ambition he was falling short of. I can see the lost moments on those tapes through his eyes: L, 5 years old with a lisp and strawberry blond curls, shrieking with laughter as we take turns getting in the plastic car, while the rest of us rock it over on its side, and then upside down, spilling the person inside onto the grass. 'When you were kids, we never really worried about addiction or the future,' he said. 'We had really high expectations and hopes for you. And with the grandchildren, it's not that we think they're less gifted or that they can't achieve the same high things. But our idea of what makes a meaningful life is different. It isn't about accomplishment or achieving some career benchmark — teaching at an Ivy League institution or whatever. My idea of what constitutes a good life has gradually shifted. Using your gifts to serve others, having close relationships, living free of addiction. That's success.' Expectations are an odd thing, because you don't always realize you have them until they fall apart. At least, that's how it has been for me and my siblings. My youngest sister, Sylvia, was 16 when the grandkids came to live with my parents, so she went from being the baby of five to a kind of older sister to four babies. Looking back now, she says: 'I think Mom and Dad kind of stopped parenting me when the kids moved in. They supported me, but they stopped really telling me what to do. It was like the kids were their own team, and I became part of Mom and Dad's team.' Sylvia has never been one to make a big show of feelings, but she recalls a few times when she went to the counselor's office and cried for two to three hours. 'Like full-on meltdowns.' She had a scholarship to an all-girls private high school, where most of the students came from 'perfect, cookie-cutter families.' She had a lot of shame about the situation with L and the kids and didn't tell her friends about it. At home, she says, 'I remember sitting in my room trying to do homework, and the screaming every night was just deafening. Like even with headphones on.' Now Sylvia is finishing college in Los Angeles, studying acting, and my parents make it out to her plays every semester. But money is tight for them, and she works the opening shift at a Starbucks to pay her rent. My brother Owen is 29 and finishing a doctorate in piano on Long Island. My parents come up for his big performances when they can. But it's hard for them to travel regularly. Both Owen and Sylvia have talked about a tension I know well — the flashes of guilt that come with living far from home, the weeks that go by without thinking about what our parents are going through. We call and hear the news: L is in or out of jail, in or out of detox, asking for money, showing up unexpectedly, promising to go to rehab, disappearing with my mom's car and phone. My parents are struggling to find a children's therapist who takes Medicaid. 'I don't really tell Mom or Dad anything crazy or concerning that goes down, because they already have so much going on,' Sylvia says. 'I don't want them to worry.' Owen tells me that for him, 'I guess the hardest thing is that there's no solution. That's something I come back to every now and again. Like, there must be a solution. So I'll flip things around in my mind, but I can never actually find one, because I mean, this is the solution. This is as good as it can be.' Perhaps the one sibling who has benefited from living in a 'grandfamily' is my sister Julia. She's 33 and has an intellectual disability. Now that the rest of us are grown up and living far away, having the grandkids around keeps her close to the silly, gentle spirit of childhood. And when she's not working in the cafeteria at my dad's university, she helps out with the cooking and babysits; it gives her purpose. There are many birthdays in our family, and we celebrate most of them with homemade pizzas, crafted by Julia. 'On nights we have frozen pizzas,' she told me, 'the twins always say they like mine better.' As the oldest, I have probably struggled the most with how much I should be helping my parents, and how much I can expect them to help me. I always imagined that after I gave birth, my mom would come stay with me and my husband for a while to help us navigate the challenges of new parenthood. But now that she's raising four kids in elementary school, it feels like a lot to ask. We talked about it and agreed that she'll come for a week when the baby is born. Still, I can't help feeling that the experience of being a new grandmother will be less exciting for her and more like the same caregiving work she does every day. She and my dad have told me how revelatory it has already been to feel all the joy without all the worry. But she also said something that made me wonder how much I was trying to press myself and my parents into a mold we never would have fit, even if none of this had happened. 'I guess maybe I haven't had the luxury of other grandparents who waited a long time for this and it being like the highlight of their life,' she said, 'But also, Daddy and I have our own projects and interests, so our daughter having a child is not the center of our world. You'll be the same way with your kids.' There was something about this that stung, but it was also freeing. For a couple of years during the pandemic, my husband and I moved to North Carolina to be closer to my parents. Much of this decision came down to a gnawing confusion over my own responsibility. But our time near my family revealed the limits of my capacity or willingness to shoulder the load of care in any consistent, meaningful way. We would pick up the kids for school occasionally or have them over for a weekend every couple of months, but I was protective of my time to work and create. I realized I could love my parents and support them emotionally, but I didn't want to raise my sister's kids. And no one was asking me to. So we moved back to New York. There is a part of me that still sees this act of self-determination as a moral failing. But another part feels as if I'm choosing a life my parents raised me to live. This past Thanksgiving, I was with my husband's extended family in West Virginia when I began getting frantic dispatches from home. L had been bailed out by the children's father after a month in jail, and my parents had agreed to let her stay at home for a night under the premise of leaving for rehab the next day. But one night turned into three, and by then all the meds she'd been on had worn off, and she became erratic. My dad asked when she would be ready to leave, and she flew into a rage in front of the kids, went up the street to my grandmother's house and used fentanyl in the bathroom. Knocking and getting no reply, my 84-year-old grandmother kicked open the door, found my sister unresponsive with a syringe in her hand and called 911. All of this happened while my dad was on his way to the airport to pick up Owen and his girlfriend, who was coming to meet the family for the first time. A few days after the overdose, my sister had a court hearing. The judge gave her the most generous possible sentence: one month in rehab, instead of five months in prison, if she paid the $900 she owed in probation fees. My parents hadn't bailed her out in years, but they were so buoyed by the sentence that they paid the fees. Everyone celebrated. Then, that night, my dad found her passed out in the basement with a needle beside her and texts from the kids' dad saying he was outside with an eight ball. Most rehabs don't accept opioid patients who haven't detoxed, so this triggered a weekslong cycle. Once my sister had used, she needed to find an open bed at a detox center. Once she had detoxed and was set to go to rehab, she would pack and repack, obsessively, for the better part of a day. She would come up with more and more tasks she needed to complete before leaving and blow up at my parents if they rushed her. Then she would relapse. My mom sat with L for many hours at detox facilities — all night, at one hospital — waiting for beds to open up. At the last one, my mom waited with her for a long time, then had to take care of something at home, so she left my sister on her own. 'I still regret that,' my mom said. L left the hospital and disappeared. My parents were badly shaken by the whole ordeal. When I arrived for the holidays soon after, my dad was particularly despondent. It was the first year he didn't allow my sister to come home for Christmas. He told her that if she wasn't in recovery, having her in the house just wasn't safe for everyone else. 'Grief with an addict child is complicated,' my dad said. 'We grieve what has actually been lost, and everything that might have been, while also fearing future losses, like our daughter's death. You just learn to live with this overshadowing your life. Loss and hope are all mixed up together, making the future impossible to predict or make peace with.' The one positive — if you can call it that — was that after my sister disappeared, the children seemed to recover quickly. There were some emotional outbursts, but far fewer than there used to be when she would come and go. They went back to school and swim practice and ballet class. They went to friends' birthday parties and made Christmas lists. My nephew wanted string lights for his room; my nieces wanted gel pens and digital cameras. They took their allowance to the dollar store to buy gifts for the family. Life as they knew it moved forward. People have asked my mom: When you had five kids, didn't you think something would go wrong with at least one of them? She told me this incredulously, her eyes wide. It doesn't matter how many children you have. When you grow a baby in your own body, watch her take her first steps and say her first words, you don't fathom the odds that her life will become a nightmare. No one can live that way. But now, with the grandkids, my parents do fathom the odds. They know what the kids are up against — having two parents with addictions, all the trauma of early-life insecurity and abandonment. 'If any of the children end up struggling with addiction, we just want them to have all the tools and love in the bank to prepare them for the fight,' my dad told me. 'So that's what we're focusing on now. They've been given to us for a time, but it's a very short time, really. I mean, in our span of life, it feels like a lot. But in their lives, it's a very short time. And then they're going to choose their own path.' It's the kind of insight I'll try to hold on to, as I become a parent. And even though I wish, desperately, that everything were different, there is something oddly comforting about raising a child at the same time as my parents. They haven't been given the luxury of settling into old age, letting their views and interpretations of the past harden like fossils. They are in the thick of it, asking the big questions all over again: How do you raise children to be brave? How do you teach them right from wrong, or danger from safety, without filling them with fear? How do you make them feel special but not better than anyone? How do you push them to believe in their own potential without setting them up to fall short of expectations? How do you love them into loving themselves? But in the end, if there's one thing I've gathered from watching my parents raise children, it's what a crushing, life-giving contagion hope can be. In recent years, my dad has talked about that I Corinthians passage everyone reads at weddings. And now, these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 'Love is the big one,' my dad says, 'but people don't pay much attention to hope. Even though it's there all the time, right behind love.' As of this writing, my sister has been clean for almost two months. She's going to multiple meetings a day, is deep in her 12-step work with two sponsors. It's the most progress she has made in years. When this stint of sobriety began, my parents kept saying, 'She really seems willing this time.' But I confess that I didn't have much hope. I was frustrated, so tired of watching them suffer. Then, as I was getting ready for a baby shower my friends were hosting for me, I got a text from an unknown number. It was L. My stomach twisted, waiting for the hammer to drop. But she didn't ask for money, or anything else. She just sent a meditation from a Native American elder on women being the givers of life. 'The Earth Mother gives songs to the Woman to sing. These songs are about life, about beauty, about children, about love, about family, about strength, about caring, about nurturing, about forgiveness, about God.' And there it was — a spark, hope catching. It does burn fast, if you let it.
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Man, 23, develops shocking 'dropped head syndrome' after battling addiction to one habit for years
Shocking images have revealed a little-known, devastating effect of heavy drug use — a terrifying condition known as dropped head syndrome. The pictures, published by doctors at the Alzahra hospital in Isfahan, Iran, show a 23 year-old man with an extreme bend in his neck, which developed after several years of substance abuse. The dangerous combination of drugs had caused significant rounding of the spine until the neck could no longer support the head. Dropped head syndrome—also know as floppy head syndrome— is characterised by severe weakness of the neck muscles, and is most commonly associated with neuromuscular disorders, such as motor neurone disease. But doctors now say that the syndrome could be caused by substance abuse. The medics reported that use of amphetamine (also known as speed) triggered what they called a fixed kyphotic neck position, where his chin fell to his chest for long periods of time. He also experienced chronic neck pain and paresthesia—the feeling of tingling, numbness, or pins and needs—in his arms. Whilst the patient had no history of severe neck trauma that could explain his symptoms, he had a significant history of depression and the use of amphetamines, opium and heroin. The doctors noted that prior to this history of addiction, there was no malalignment in his neck. Dr Majid Rezvani, co-author of the case study, said: 'We discovered that drug abuse contributed to the uncommon development of severe complicated cervical kyphosis [excessive rounding of the upper back].' 'The drug does not have a direct effect on musculoskeletal changes', he explained. 'Instead there is an indirect effect: when the patient uses the drug, they remain in a certain position for a long time, and over months this results in musculoskeletal changes that led to kyphoscoliosis'. According to the report, the man suffered with symptoms for over 15 months, which he attempted to treat using herbal remedies, before seeking professional help. Despite this, cranial nerve tests, muscle strengths tests and tests of his autonomic nervous system—which regulates involuntary processes such as heart rate—all came back clear. A CT scan revealed that he had a severely deformed spine. Initially, the patient was placed under general anesthesia, and doctors noted that this appeared to be enough to reduce his neck deformity. However, doctors were unable to correct the patient's neck into the desired position, so a surgical approach was selected. In order to re-adjust the position of the neck, doctors decided to remove the deformed bone and used a locking cage to support the neck. The surgery was successful and no neurological symptoms were observed. His limb strength was also 100 per cent. The day after surgery the patient was able to walk with the support of a hard collar, which he consistently wore for three months. The 23-year-old attended therapy and rehab after his surgery, which has enabled him to overcome his drug addiction. He has since had a follow-up appointment at the hospital in Iran and doctors are satisfied that the correction of the spine was effective. Doctors working on the case have now proposed the term 'intoxicated syndrome' for patients presenting with these symptoms. Those affected by the issues raised in this article can seek confidential help and support via Talk to Frank.
