(Based
on an episode from the show, “Intervention”, 2008)
She waited, with
impatience, by the roadside, for her usual ride. There was very little traffic there at 5 am in
the bitter cold, but she was determined.
The few people who happened to pass her by saw a very young girl
standing there, smoking a cigarette, and nervously waiting for someone. They didn’t give her a second thought after
that, as they sped onward towards their own destinations. Finally, at about 6:30 am, a man stopped by
the young girl and asked her if she needed a ride somewhere. She said something to the man and got into
the car.
At home, the
young girl’s mother, Samantha, was just waking up. She went looking for her daughter, Alicia
(Ali) in order to rouse her too, but instead, found that she was gone. Hoping that Ali would come home soon, her mom
anxiously waited for her. Samantha had
been worrying more and more about Ali recently.
Suspecting that her daughter was into drugs, but not sure what kind, all
she knew was that Ali had a habit of disappearing for as much as a day at a
time, or sometimes just a few hours.
When Ali would mysteriously
reappear, she would either be extremely irritable with a hair-trigger temper or
coming home just wanting to sleep. At
times like that, she would seem to be too tired to even just want to make small
talk with her mom, or to make any more than a minimal attempt at
conversation. Samantha was truly at a
loss as to what to do about her daughter whom she loved very much.
Ali was barely
17 years of age, had just scraped by in Grade 10, and showed absolutely no
initiative to do anything productive with her life. She seemed to be in a rut from which she
couldn’t (or wouldn’t) extricate herself.
Samantha had discussed the situation with her husband, Steven, who was
Ali’s stepfather. Steven thought that
Ali was in need of the kind of help that she was either unwilling or unable to
ask them for. It also didn’t help that
Ali wasn’t being cooperative in the least in terms of volunteering any
information of her own about what she did need.
Both Samantha
and Steven loved their daughter and they wanted very much to help her, but
since Ali did not seem interested in cooperating with them, there was very
little they could do. They would
frequently ask themselves what they had done wrong and why Ali seemed so set on
self-destruction – because there was little doubt that that’s where she was
headed. However, it would be sometime before
the whole truth would be known.
Meanwhile,
Samantha began to notice that little things would go missing around the
house. She would ask Ali or Steven what
had happened to the item in question. It
might be a fancy ashtray or a lovely China piece or a watch. It was usually something fairly small that
most likely would have been overlooked, if you weren’t always using it or
actively looking for it. Whenever
Samantha asked Ali about the missing item, Ali would shrug and say that she
knew nothing of its whereabouts. Samantha
suspected that Ali was taking the missing items and selling them, using the
proceeds to buy drugs. Meanwhile, Ali
continued sneaking out of the house at ungodly hours to do god-knows-what.
One morning,
Samantha resolved to follow her daughter to find out exactly what Ali was up
to. So, the next time Samantha heard Ali
get up and go out, she got up herself, hurriedly dressed, got into her car, and
went looking for Ali. Samantha had to
look for quite a while before she found Ali loitering at the local corner store,
smoking a cigarette. Samantha sat there
surreptitiously observing Ali standing there, wondering what she was going to
do next.
After a while, a
car stopped by Ali and she leaned into the passenger window to ask the male
driver something. At first, it was unclear
to Samantha what their conversation was about, so she assumed that Ali was
asking for a ride some place – until Samantha heard Ali utter the word “date”,
but heard nothing else that she said. It
wasn’t clear what that word meant without a context of some kind until Samantha
could see that Ali would get into the strange man’s car only if the stranger
nodded in response to Ali’s question.
Finally,
it dawned on Samantha that her beloved daughter couldn’t be into drugs as much
as she was into picking up men for sex! Her
daughter was a prostitute, selling herself for sex! And then, at the same time, Samantha realized
that in using the money that Ali had obtained by selling those missing household
items and engaging in illegal sex acts for money, Ali was also financing an
illegal drug habit! Not only did she
have a dangerous drug habit to struggle with, she was also putting her life at
risk by having unprotected sex with strange men! Couldn’t she see the dangers?
In addition, Samantha
thought that Ali must have been dealing with feelings of low self-esteem and
self-revulsion at having to engage in dirty, unprotected and very dangerous
sexual behaviour with total strangers.
To complicate matters, it seemed obvious that she was using the proceeds
from prostitution to finance a drug habit that could easily destroy her. Samantha needed to know what kind of drugs
Ali was using as soon as possible.
One day, when
Samantha was still following Ali in the early morning hours, she saw Ali make
contact with a strange man, this time for a different purpose. This time, Ali leaned into the passenger
window, gave the driver some money (Samantha presumed it was money), and
the driver then left without taking Ali with him. So, she wasn’t prostituting herself this time. What was she up to?
At that very
moment, Ali looked up and happened to see Samantha sitting there in her car
looking at her daughter, and she knew that the jig was up. Walking reluctantly over to her mom’s car, Ali
seemed to be glad to see her mother somehow, relieved not to have to hide her
drug habit any longer. She opened the
back door and quietly slipped inside.
When Samantha asked her what was going on and that she needed to know,
Ali finally admitted everything – the prostitution and her drug habit. She was hopelessly addicted to crack cocaine
and had been unable to kick her addiction to it. Her thefts and prostitute were simply ways to
make some quick money for the drugs.
Unfortunately,
while it was a great relief that everything was now out in the open, Ali needed
a “hit” right now. Samantha had to
decide what to do – turn her daughter in to the police (as she knew she should),
help her get another “hit” (as she knew she should not), or get some
much-needed help immediately from an interventionist (counsellor). This last option seemed like the best idea.
She had seen the
show, “Intervention” (on A&E TV), many times and knew that it had helped
some addicts deal with their drug habits when their entire families got
involved in the recovery process. After
giving the matter much thought, she and Steven decided to get some help from
the show’s counsellors and see how much it would help Ali. One thing was certain, Ali needed real help
from knowledgeable people, not the kind of enabling behaviour that family
members often did in the name of “help”.
If she did not get the real help she needed to overcome her addiction
and stop the prostitution, it would soon be too late.
A week later,
Ali was on her way to a “detox” centre in California where she would stay until
her detoxification was complete. Then,
she would go to another place in Arizona where she would stay for three months
minimum, learning how to deal with life in new ways that did not include
drugs. The reasoning was simple: if she didn’t need drugs any longer, then she
also didn’t need to prostitute herself for drugs. Once she was out of that dangerous way of
life and in a safe environment where she could get lots of support, it would be
possible for her to recover and start life over again. Ali would have to be the one choosing to do
this program and she would have to be the one who did the main work of her own
recovery, with the love of her family and support from counsellors. It would be a long, tough road for her to
travel, but the destination of a life worth living would be well worth it.
published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier. All rights reserved.
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