Today we start a series of conversations with my friend Dianne!
Dianne has been a powerhouse in the field of addiction for decades, a warrior of a woman who knows this family disease intimately from many perspectives. Yet, she always maintains a willing heart of a teacher. I’m sure some of that has to do with receiving the gifts other people in recovery shared with her and knowing the power of continuing to pass them on.
Through these conversations, you will hear from Dianne about her recovery as a double winner, her experience with addiction in her story, her family’s story, and her Native American community’s story.
See full transcript of episode below.
This is the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. A place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host Margaret Swift Thompson
Intro: Welcome back. Today I have the honor of introducing you to my friend Diane. A powerhouse in the field of addiction for decades, a warrior of a woman who knows this family disease intimately from many perspectives, and she always maintains a willing heart of a teacher and I’m sure some of that has to do with receiving the gifts other people in recovery shared with her and being willing to continue passing that on. So, let’s join Diane
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret: I’m going to take my drink and wet my whistle because it does make a difference. So Dianne, I am thrilled to have you. It’s kinda weird to be in this situation ’cause we’re so used to being next to each other.
I usually start with everyone I chat with an ask them who their qualifier is? And I’m aware of your story so I’m going to try really hard to pretend I don’t know it, so that I ask the questions I think our audience would want to know.
Dianne: My qualifier. So I’m the mother of an addicted child.
Margaret: I’m also aware that you come from quite a history of addiction in your family are you willing to share a little bit about that?
Dianne: Yeah absolutely. So, I am Irish on my father’s side. I’m Native American, Ojibwe on my mother’s side, and the genetic predisposition as well as cultural predisposition pretty much had me screwed before I ever picked up my first drink and drug.
Margaret: So, when we talk about this being a generational family disease is that something you feel is accurate?
Dianne: Absolutely and you know I’ve seen where it skips a generation or two, but I think that, and I attribute the intergenerational addiction in my family to be a direct result of historical trauma in Indian country. And so, with that ,that issue I think that’s why we don’t tend to skip generations, we just go from one to the next.
Margaret: I think for our audience ’cause I’m guessing there’s a lot of people out there who don’t have an understanding of what you just said, as sad as that is. So if you’re willing to share a little bit about what you mean by the trauma and not skipping a generation. What’s your experience with that?
Dianne: So historical trauma refers to the effects of colonization on indigenous people here in the Americas and I mean we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of years of colonization and federal policies from the government that have gone every direction from extermination to removal.
Especially with addiction is that, it was the boarding school period of colonization that really did the damage that it did in Indian country because this was over 100 years of forced boarding schools for kids. I mean literally they came to reservations and kidnapped these kids or ripped them out of their parents’ arms and sent them sometimes across the country to these schools that were either paramilitary type or faith based boarding schools. And so, these kids were punished for speaking their language. They had their hair cut. They weren’t allowed even to talk with siblings if they had brothers and sisters that were in the same school. So that boarding school system very effectively changed the way indigenous people lived. So for those years because those kids that went to boarding schools, they lost the language they lost the culture they didn’t learn, they didn’t grow up hearing those stories or how we parent children even, and then when those kids came home many of them were broken and lost and some of the abuses that happen to them in boarding schools like sexual abuse, and physical abuse were brought back to the reservation, and they parented the way that they were parented in those boarding schools. Which was basically none at all but just a lot of Corporal punishment for them.
Margaret: I will admit coming from Bermuda limited exposure. To Wisconsin, tribes surrounding me and again an exposure through the helping profession in Wisconsin began to have an appreciation for how much I didn’t know, and still don’t. The piece that baffles me is how the average student ’cause we’ve had a conversation you and I with two young people, my daughter and a friend. how little is still taught about the history of Native American people. How does that play into what you’re describing as the trauma is it re traumatizing?
Dianne: Well, it is because it’s not acknowledgement of what happened.
Margaret: Who doesn’t want their true story to be validated right. I mean when we tie it into addiction it’s the same meeting people many times over who go to a family program and say out loud what they’ve been living and everyone in the room is nodding their head and they feel finally they’ve been validated for their experience. Is that something that you see within your community the two come together? Is it hard for people of of your ancestry to find treatments that is caring for that aspect of their history?
Dianne: Well, it’s gotten much better now. I think just with the way that treatment is done. I know there were many native people who went treatment during that time where the philosophy was we have to tear this person down, get in there, you know just breakdown all of their defenses in order for them to get sober.
And you already had a population of people that were so broken, and when they went through that kind of rock’em, sock’em approach. They were named called, they were shamed for some of their behaviors especially the women, and so it was it was devastating. Because we told those people treatment is going to help you, and that wasn’t the case. It’s gotten so much better now that there is a more client centered approach and you have more and more indigenous people getting into mental health and substance abuse counseling. So, when those people go to those places, they see brown faces and it makes them comfortable and there is so much more incorporation into mental health and substance abuse work in indigenous communities that is cultural, that is healing. Which is happening, and we see that all across tribes across the United States, is that healing from, from the devastation.
Margaret: So, you mentioned your son as your qualifier. At what age did you have that first, oh boy, inkling, awareness that there was a problem? At what age was he?
Dianne: Well, he started to research his disease when he was 16, and it’s crazy because when that happened, I had been sober for 14 years myself and I had ten years in this field as a substance abuse, and that denial was so deep. Like it just shut down that part of my brain that would ever even admit that it was getting as bad as it was getting. People tried to tell me things and I would just say “oh you know not my baby, he’s never even been around alcohol, never in his home”. Then with the certain people that he was hanging out with that’s like any other parent with a child, I defaulted to them. You know if he just didn’t hang around with those kids he wouldn’t be getting in trouble, and he’s driving for them because he doesn’t want any of them to have a car accident. I mean just the insanity of how this disease impacted me on the family side was amazing.
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Margaret: So, I want to go back in case someone didn’t hear you. When your son started doing his research you were sober how long?
Dianne: 14 years.
Margaret: You were in your own recovery for addiction, and you were also a person working in the field of chemical dependency?
Dianne: Yes
Margaret: And I want to just, you know put the fine point on that for all those people who don’t have the wealth of experience personally in their own recovery journey nor professionally as a clinical person, to see the humanity in that. That it doesn’t matter when it’s your loved one, it doesn’t matter the booksmarts, it doesn’t matter the life experience. The disease still manipulates any one of us the same way.
Dianne: Absolutely.
Margaret: So, at first the denial, you know looking at the friends is the problem. Seeing what we want to see ’cause we love someone and don’t want to see the worst or the problems. Where did it go from there?
Dianne: People that I trusted even family members would say you know Bucktail did this or Bucktail did that. That was my son’s nickname when he was growing up in my family. And so, I started to do the questioning you know and, and ask him I don’t know how many times repeatedly, repeatedly, I would ask him are you high? Have you been drinking? And he would get so angry with me, that of course it pushed me back and would shut me down, and so that continued.
But probably when he was in his early 20s, he started to have these arrests and a couple of them were traffic stops. And then one he had a possession charge I think when he was 21 or 22, and of course he told me that it was somebody else’s and he didn’t want them to get in trouble. That went on for a while until it was just, just this can’t, this is it. And so, when he was 20 years old, he actually stopped drinking and he went to treatment. He went to a Native American treatment program in northern Minnesota and that kind of planted that seed for him.
But he, it took him almost dying to get there. It was in January, and it was his birthday is in January and he was at a party with friends and they were driving him home or driving them, there were several of them in the car, and he started to get into a fight with one of the guys and they kind of just like dumped him out on the road. And reservation roads are very rural, and this is like you know 3/4:00 o’clock in the morning and it was bitter cold, 20 to 20 something below zero with the wind chill and so, and actually the person who found him was my uncle. My uncle was driving, and he saw him, and he tried to get him in the car and he said, “come on Bucktail let me give you a ride” and Mike said “no, no, no I’m OK, I’m OK”. And then he just kept walking, and walking, and walking, and then he got cold. And he said he just laid down ’cause he was tired, which means he was dying. He was, you know, hypothermia was setting in and then somebody else saw him on the side of the road and called the ambulance and took him to the hospital.
But the God message in all of that was that part of my job at that time was to do on call for the County substance abuse program and I happened to be on call and was carrying the pager and got a call from the Sheriff’s Department and said you need to go to the hospital to do a consult, they just brought somebody in. Which was very normal part of being on-call. So, I went to the hospital and I it was sectioned off, the ERs are sectioned off by the curtains and so that one of the nurses said he’s in there and she pointed to this curtain, and I started to walk towards that way. A nurse came out and she said you can’t go in there and I said I’m on call. The Sheriff’s Department called me and she said it’s your son Dianne and I had no idea what the status was or you know what it happened to him even, and so they kept him in the hospital for the night. And the doctor actually told me that had he been out in the cold for 1/2 hour or more he wouldn’t have survived, that he wouldn’t have made it and so for him that really kind of was the turning point for him, it was kind of his aha moment. And so, he went to treatment and then after he went to treatment, he went to a Native American halfway house and he was there for about six months and absolutely loved it. And was staying sober, and that was kind of where that started Mike’s journey in language and culture because my aunt and uncle actually founded the halfway house that he went to, and my uncle was one of his first language teachers. And so that kind of just flipped a switch for him but then he stopped drinking but then went on the marijuana maintenance program.
Margaret: So those are two things they want to touch on, ’cause you’ve given us a lot. So going back to that moment which I can imagine as a parent of being there and not being able to see your son and the impact that had on Mike as a turning point. One of the things we know happens for family members is playing the role of higher power for their kids trying to manage everything. In that moment or around that moment were you able to utilize the tools of Al-Anon, to know that was a terrifying thing to go through but a gift because it shows you the evidence that he had a higher power? Was that even on the radar at that point for you?
Dianne: Yeah, absolutely and this was, you know, this was something that when I started to know this was going to be a problem. I mean every time he left, I would just ask the God of my understanding take care of him ’cause that’s all that I could do. He never did a lot of the things that other kids did as they started to journey down that road which always fed my denial. Like my sister had to sleep with her purse locked in her car and her keys under the pillow because her son would take the car and credit cards and money, and my son never did any of that. He went to school, he played basketball. So he had all of these things that that fed my denial that made me think this is you know he’s, he’s not that bad, and it’s you know again it’s just these people he’s hanging around with. But I knew then when he was in the hospital that this was, it was kind of like every bit of my denial was gone and then it was fear and panic and how do I keep him safe.
Margaret: You had the experience of your own recovery. You had the experience professionally of training. When did you know you needed a 12 step recovery for family members?
Dianne: So actually, it was my AA sponsor and Mike was probably maybe 18 or 19, and it was it was getting to the point where it was consuming me. I would kind of want to work that stuff out with my, AA sponsor and that wasn’t appropriate. So she’s the one that said you need to go to family recovery and I really push back against that I said no I don’t I’ve been sober for so long I know this disease I don’t need to go to Al Anon. and then you know as I say all the time with this is that she was absolutely right because working through my son’s addiction wasn’t appropriate for me to do those in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had to go where those family members had walked where I was walking, so I could say I can’t, I can’t do this anymore.
Margaret: Was that how you got to the point of turning him over every time he left the house? Was that one of the things they taught you in that program?
Dianne: No, actually I had I had started doing that before I went to Al-Anon and I think just because of some of our cultural teachings is, is that I know that when, when there is something that’s you know disturbing, I mean I know a way to take care of that. And even just my own recovery with repeatedly turning things over it just, just ,he just got added to the list.
Margaret: And you mentioned that the preoccupation had gotten so bad. Can you parallel your experience with your preoccupation with your own use to how preoccupied you became with your son when he was down his path?
Dianne: Oh yeah, yeah so, and he knows that I used to do this too, so when I started to want to check him out you know and see what he was doing like I was, with the job that I had between the tribal substance abuse and the County substance abuse programs had done a lot of work with law enforcement. I mean we had to do welfare checks, they brought people into hospitals for us to do consults, so I knew all of them.
I was asking them you know just kind of keep an eye out, and this is the license plate and where do you see the car? Coming out of that, and working in recovery it’s like what was that? That need, that effort to control and then they would tell me things like they saw him here they saw him there. Then I would say something he’s like “how do you know all of this” and of course then too with people in the schools. I told my spies are everywhere and they were working for me. (laughter)
Margaret: You had a real-life GPS tracker.
Dianne: Well, they didn’t have them back then.
Margaret: (laughter) Right so you had the people instead of the actual device.
Dianne: Yeah, we didn’t have cell phones otherwise you bet there would have been a life 360 on it.
Margaret: So, for me I’m a recovering person and also a family member and for me the obsession and preoccupation with the person was no different than the preoccupation with food. Is that true for you, do you relate to that?
Dianne: Absolutely. I mean just, you know, when it when the door closed, and he was out the door is just that anxiety and that stress and especially after he had already had that near death experience. It was that and then he you know with switching to marijuana because nobody ever died of an overdose, and it’s natural, it’s the herb, it’s from mother earth. You know every excuse.
Then looking back then stopped playing basketball, and he stopped doing some of the things that that were important to him and kind of gravitated towards those kids again that had the same behaviors that he did.
Margaret: So, the getting in trouble with alcohol seemed more debilitating or damaging at that point versus early days of the marijuana use?
Dianne: Right
Margaret: So, like any other drug at this point did you see the progression and the consequences grow as the mother watching?
Dianne: Yeah, absolutely
Outro: The power of this disease never ceases to amaze me. Though Mike grew up in a sober home, he still developed the disease of addiction. Though Dianne was in long term recovery, and a substance abuse counselor she was manipulated by the disease as any other mother would be. This is an equal opportunity disease.
Join us again next week where Dianne goes further into her story of recovery through Al-Anon, while her son found his way into recovery from substance abuse disorder. I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story.
Please find resources is on my website embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time please take care of you!
