Thank you again for this forum and chance to speak out about addiction.

There cannot be enough comments on addiction. Those of us who love or have loved an addicted person (I try not to use the term “addict” because of the visual images that that term imprints on our psyche – the disheveled, low-life loser criminal that we’ve too long associated with that word – I prefer to call them addicted people, which I think is a little less degrading) must continue to speak out anywhere we can about this disease that is taking far too many lives each year.

Addicted people have a disease, a chronic, relapsing brain disease, and they need help, just as any other person afflicted with a disease needs. They already castigate themselves enough for their disease, we, as a society do not need to add to their despair. As my son always told me, “Mom, nobody wakes up one day and decides to be an addict.” Indeed they do not. Nobody chooses addiction. They may choose to do drugs but they do not choose addiction. Addiction is a horrible side effect of the unwise choice to do drugs or to self-medicate.

The Teen Brain is definitely different from the mature brain (anyone who has ever raised a teen can tell you that,) because their brains have not fully matured.

I’m on the Parent Advisory Board of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and they have a lot of wonderful information on their site (www.drug-free.org) about the Teen Brain. I copied (with their permission of course) a whole article on the Teen Brain from their site for my second book, Slaying the Addiction Monster.

My passion is reaching out to the younger kids – the ones in 5th and 6th grade and up. Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly to those who work in addiction) we have to reach these kids at a younger and younger age, before the Addiction Monster has firmly taken over their brain.

My third book, which is my first children’s book is called The Addiction Monster and the Square Cat. This is geared toward 5th and 6th grade and up and talks to the kids about not only drugs, but addiction. I believe this is what we have to focus on – the fact that anybody can become addicted on their very first line of cocaine or crystal meth or heroin or Oxy ot whatever. It can happen. My own son did not believe this, even after constant admonition from my husband and I and after many family discussions about drugs, until on his 17th birthday a band mate laid out a line of cocaine for him as his birthday present – some birthday present! and he was immediately addicted, and could not get enough of mind altering drugs. He told me they made him feel like what he thought “normal” people felt like. The tragedy of that statement is enormous and heartbreaking.

The Addiction Monster and the Square Cat is a fictionalized version of my youngest son Scott’s struggle and death. It is told with humor and pathos by the sassy but lovable family cat.

I always tell people I did not write this book for money and it’s a good thing I didn’t, because that’s not what my goal is (a nice side effect to be sure but not the goal). My goal is to reach these young kids and make them sit up and take notice. I’m trying to get this book in the libraries, if not classrooms, all across the country.

I hope you’ll forgive the promotion of this book here in your forum but I feel so passionately about this story (the book is consistently on Amazon.com’s Best Sellers List in Substance Abuse) and I want to reach as many kids as I can. No parent should suffer the heartbreak of surviving their child and I will do all that I can as long as I’m alive to deliver the message to young kids about alcohol/drugs addiction.

Thank you for providing this form to read about and to learn about addiction. We must keep going until the stigma of a drug-related death is erased. We must understand the disease.