The Road Out Blog

Caleb was a young teen living in an affluent area of a major California city. Although he is quite young, Caleb has shown himself to have remarkable talent in acting and singing, has starred in middle and high school plays and even a few television commercials.

I first heard of this young man from his aunt who attended a parent seminar I gave at a high school in another part of town. The aunt told of her increasing worries over drugs and alcohol abuse among the crowd with which Caleb (Not his real name) was hanging. She said that although he was talented and quite handsome, his judgment was poor and he had more courage than sense. She gave me the family’s name and numbers and I tried to reach the family but got no response.

All drugs of abuse, but especially the more addictive drugs set up in the mind of the addict an entirely new set of priorities, desires and very selective attention spans. While a normal person is alert to responsibilities and required activities, even as basic and eating and sleeping, the addict is following another set of commands

The drug addict is running on automatic, in a very real way. What you say and what they hear is not the same. Normal communications are filtered through the altered perceptions of the drug haze and come out differently, sometimes completely different.