Context

Before I continue, I must address one constantly bellowed critique. It’s a cliché one, the core argument bellowed from judgmental souls who would do well to look into themselves before throwing stones at others: 

There is, obviously, an individual’s choice that plays into this matter. 

Of course, had Preston done what was statistically nearly impossible, at the beginning of his suffering, he might have had a better chance at avoiding the depths of addiction into which he was plunged. 

Clearly, personal responsibility for one’s actions is an agreeable notion that most humans acknowledge; it’s the basis of every fundamentalist’s argument for the last 2 millennia. One should not consider themselves special, nor especially intelligent for bringing to attention these facts oft-repeated by opponents of perspective.  

Instead of judging this man though, allow yourself to journey with me into the mental state of a fellow human. None of us have the ability to experience his genetics or past trauma firsthand, some of which we’ll discuss later. However, allow yourself to accept that addiction hurriedly morphs from a choice to an obeyed instinct. With one decision, one puff, one hit, one line, one shot, a brain can be rewired, turning the one-time user into an addict; no longer a free human, incapable of making a choice benefitting anything outside feeding their addiction. 

True, many of us have overcome this beast. But the key to understanding is to empathize. And to empathize, we cannot solely look at the matter from our own perspectives. No, we must look at it maturely and exhale away the judgments that cloud our eyes; instead focusing all of our efforts on feeling this from the subject’s point of view: from Preston’s point of view. 

For at no point in Preston’s life if you had asked “Do you desire addiction?” would he have giddily exclaimed “Yes!”. No one wants to be a slave. Therefore, it is there but for fortune that we also go.

Many reading this will still imbue their own thoughts onto his experience. That’s OK. Our ability to decide whether to empathize is the most human of traits. 

In such case, forgive me for failing to make his torment relatable. It was an honest Autist’s earnest attempt.

His name was Preston. He was a network engineer at day, and an addict around the clock. Pills were his life. He was one of the first victims of the Opioid epidemic. Back pain from sports-based injuries and criminal over-prescription of narcotics dulled his mind and made it hard for him to focus on his role. 

It wasn’t long before Preston’s addiction metastasized into other needs. This is the highway that all addicts drive on their way to a personalized Hell of existence. It started with pain pills. Then, when Preston didn’t have pain pills or wasn’t able to function on them, it continued with Adderall; stolen from Lindsey’s older half-brother Dustin. 

Dustin had a prescription, but Preston paid him $20 at a time to keep quiet about the theft. For those of you born later, that was a lot of money to a teenager in the early 2000s. Despite Dustin’s silence, Kim began to notice his pills were missing. As a result of her assumption he’d overtaken, Dustin had to endure a lecture forewarning him of the dangers of irresponsible drug use… from the man responsible for the drug abuse.

It’s easy to see why Dustin would hate Preston. One might assume that such chicanery would foreshadow the eventual lifelong hate a stepson would have for a stepfather. Yet, when I speak with Dustin this isn’t the story he tells of Preston today. “Preston had honest and good intentions, but he just couldn’t…” The tone of his statement carried the trauma and years of coping required to forge it. “I don’t believe he wanted to hurt anyone, that’s just how it happened- He was very strict though… and he could have gone about it a different way.” Dustin admitted that those times were some of the most difficult of his life. That he does not hate and has dealt with his upbringing is nothing short of a miracle. Yet, if Dustin can come to forgive Preston with time, so should we.

Still, before time and maturity eclipsed the pain, Dustin did resent his stepfather for all of the above. If the hypocrisy wasn’t enough, the emotional manipulation and hyperstrict control birthed from an addict’s paranoia certainly tilled and seeded the ground for upheaval. Although Lindsey didn’t get to experience much of this firsthand, the anger, fear and anxiety from a parental figure in trauma can permeate a young child’s mind. 

Now it behooves me to highlight the impact that “minor” trauma can have on a child, even when they aren’t the target of it. My own daughter can tell when my partner and I have had a fight. Even if they could not witness it, and we’ve done everything in our power to mask the effects, they’ll ask if everything’s OK. 

It’s almost as if they can sense it, through some sort of emotional osmosis; a nonlinguistic conduit metaphor. When my daughter was younger, she’d act aggressively after my partner and I had a fight; even if she wasn’t in the house at the time it happened. She somehow just knew we were stressed.

Of course, parents in the 90s were not privy to the mass of information, research and studies on child psychology that we have available today with a couple taps on a smartphone; hence why my Autism went undiagnosed until adulthood. Lindsey’s parents could have greatly benefitted from this knowledge though; all of our parents could.

My initial conversation with Kim had driven this point home. When asking what Lindsey was like as a young child, before I met her, Kim replied: “She was just a pissed off baby, since the day she was born! Always so angry at the world. Couldn’t wear diapers without throwing a fuss. Eventually got to where I hired a service to bring clean cotton diapers, the re-washable kind.”

Hearing this was a vinyl-scratch-stopping moment for me. “Did Lindsey have problems with tags on her clothes? Or with wearing certain items of clothes?” my request transformed into a demand, leaving me nearly breathless. Kim would pause a moment before continuing, “I can’t remember about tags, but yeah there were some things she wouldn’t wear if it was a certain kind of material.” I could tell I was reaching her memory’s limit on the topic. It was devastating to hear.

Kim could have been describing my daughter. She exhibited the exact same symptoms. Defiance of authority, anger, overall irritability. It wasn’t until we got her examined (at the corrupt cost of ~ $2,500) that we were told she is a high functioning autist, like me, with a comorbidity of Sensory Processing Disorder. Her doctor compared the experience like walking around without skin; searing pain occurring from the wrong shifts in movements or certain types of touch. Essentially, she had a very advanced IQ alongside a highly underdeveloped EQ.

When my daughter began the recommended treatment for this (Occupational Therapy, Wilbarger Protocol, etc.), it took her from a place of urinary incontinence in situations of extreme emotion to recognizing her emotions and dealing with them healthily. The process took around 3 months to notice the most drastic of changes, at a cost of about $2,500 per month out of pocket, not including what insurance covered. I asked the Child Psychologist we were working with at the time, “Was the industry capable of diagnosing me as a child?”

She replied, “The odds of us recognizing a high-functioning autistic boy back then would have been nearly impossible. At best, we might have been able to diagnose you with Asperger’s, but that’s a now-defunct term under the ASD. But, without any of the physical presentations, I can almost guarantee you we wouldn’t have.” 

I continued, “What about a girl?” 

The psychologist actually laughed, “Recognizing a high-functioning autistic girl at an early age is almost impossible, even now.” 

“Why?” 

“Because girls are more emotionally intelligent at early ages and don’t show the same symptoms. We’re lucky that so much research surrounding ASD in girls has been published in recent times. If your daughter hadn’t been born in the last few years, I can safely say she would not have been diagnosed. The facilities wouldn’t have even existed when you were a kid.”

I couldn’t fight the somberness overcoming me; THAT could have made the difference. If Lindsey’s parents had the knowhow to travel up to New York City, or Chicago or San Francisco in search of a child psychologist; if they’d known that these tiny symptoms could be indicative of something larger; if they’d had some kind of freak accident that would have placed them in the office of an expert at the time, it would have swayed her course. 

Of course, I’m not diagnosing Lindsey. I’m just saying the right therapy would have changed her outcome.

Later Lindsey would disclose to me, unprovoked, that she had multiple food sensitivities. Different foods couldn’t touch on the plate, only a tiny list of items were edible for her as a child: Mac and Cheese, spaghetti noodles in butter sans sauce, sweets, etc. It made me think of the Pablo cartoon show, the episode discussing food issues- a show that discusses Autism and instructs kids on how to handle its related symptoms.

I wonder how many of my peers whose lives we’re celebrating were also dealing with such issues, how many could have been saved with the right schooling system, the right experts; one willing to provide IEPs to each student. A school system whose administrators cared more about the kids than appealing aesthetics or grandiose nothingness. A school system that was honest with the parents.

I wonder how Lindsey’s parents would have known this? They were just trying to get by, paycheck to paycheck; like over half of us in this country. How many of the people written in sharpie could have been saved with more help? We’ll never know, but it’s a question worth trying to answer.

Of course, we can’t change Lindsey’s situation now, but if given that information or that assistance at the time, Kim would have certainly done something; if only she had known. Unfortunately, Kim wasn’t given the opportunity or the foresight. She made ends meet, made sure her kids were fed and had a roof over their head and went to sleep at night. 

And despite Kim’s efforts, Preston was getting worse.