It was three weeks before Christmas 2004 when my whole world changed. My son, Samuel, and I worked together for the same internet-based company. Each Tuesday morning, the entire company held a conference call to ensure we were all up to date with the happenings within the company. This Tuesday, Samuel did not join the call. As he was normally one of the first on, making jokes while we waited for others, I found this highly unusual. As the call progressed, I attempted to contact him by cell phone and by instant message. He didn’t respond and subsequent attempts to contact him throughout the day went unanswered. I started to worry and that evening, when my fiancé came home, we went to Samuel’s house.

He lived in a three story townhouse. When we arrived the house was dark except for the room on the bottom floor where he worked and watched television. We tried to look through the blinds but couldn’t see anything. I could hear the television but no one responded when we knocked on the door. We went home to get a flashlight and returned to peer through the window blinds again. With the aid of the flashlight, I could see he was lying in his green recliner with a quilt draped over the top of him and then I saw movement. I went back to the door, started knocking and he finally answered. When I tried talking with him he only cried and I couldn’t get any information from him. Feeling frustrated and helpless, I decided to leave him there, alone, but letting him know that I was there to listen if he wanted to talk.
The next day we spoke and he agreed to contact a counselor for help. Everything seemed okay until the following Thursday morning. I had just finished with my acupuncture appointment and was heading home when my cell phone rang. I picked it up and it was Samuel.

“I need you to come and get me and take me to a different hospital,” he said. I was confused. I started questioning him and he finally explained that he had attempted suicide the night before. After taking several handfuls of pills, he realized what he had done and called 911. He had spent the night in the hospital and now needed to move to a different hospital for inpatient psychiatric treatment since there was no space available in that hospital. I was stunned.

The next few days were a blur. I held myself together by sheer will and know I may have seemed aloof to others about the whole situation. I was afraid if I had let any emotion through, I would have collapsed. Samuel spent four days in the psychiatric ward and then, in high spirits, returned home. He stayed the first few days in our home as he was not yet comfortable spending so much time alone in his home. The day after his release, he began to see a counselor and a psychiatrist for medication to address the causes of these events. Through this, he learned it was severe depression he had been dealing with as well as ADD. Life began to move on and he seemed essentially okay. As for me, I could not shake the sense that any day I would receive a phone call and his life would be over. I had long ago learned to listen to my intuition and this time it included a sick feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.

Several months went by and Samuel’s behavior became more erratic. Usually he would be extremely energetic and he’d attribute it to coffee. One day in August he called me and asked if he could come over and talk. He told me he’d taken methamphetamine over the weekend with some new friends he’d met. We talked a long time and he told me he didn’t intend to do it again. In the midst of the conversation, he admitted to having abused his medication after becoming addicted to its effects. It was this behavior that led to his experimenting with methamphetamine, since chemically, they were very similar.

With this added layer of drug use on top of the earlier attempted suicide, my fears for Samuel’s life increased. Since we worked online, I always knew what time he became available for work. I watched this time and saw the variations. Any day he was late online, my fears increased. And the days he didn’t show up at all, I felt sheer terror.

My fiancé and I spent Labor Day weekend working in the yard and doing projects around home. This is normally a joyful experience for me when I can just relax and enjoy the outdoors. But this day was different. I could not shake Samuel from my mind. I became fearful for my own sanity as I obsessed over him. There wasn’t a moment when I didn’t think about him and the sense of panic increased by the moment. Tom, my fiancé, suggested I call and invite him over for dinner on Sunday evening. I called and left him a message. He didn’t return the call. I emailed and attempted to call him again, but there was no response. Monday was pure torture as I feared the worst had happened. Sometime Monday afternoon he finally called and apologized for disappearing. He told me he would come by Tuesday and we could talk. I felt relief and deep sadness at the same time.

When he finally came over he acknowledged that he’d spent the weekend on a methamphetamine high and the subsequent low. He had used several times over the course of the weekend and knew he needed to do something to change. We talked and he agreed to go back into counseling. In counseling he learned about the affects of methamphetamine and how it creates a pattern of extreme highs and lows following each use. During the lows, users typically feel the need to use again to get out of the low. This knowledge helped him understand the emotional roller coaster he was experiencing and helped him to move through it rather than falling back into another round of drug abuse.

Over the next few weeks, Samuel began to improve. He realized he had been lying to himself and to others about many things and decided lying could not longer be a part of his life. With this decision came the choice to sever relationships with many of his friends who he had learned had been lying to him. Some of these same friends were also using drugs which increased the importance of the steps he was taking. He continued in the counseling and opted out of medication this time. He finally reached a point where he was calmer and more grounded than I had seen him in years. Sometime in the fall, I realized the dread I carried for almost a year was gone. When I thought of him during my day, I no longer had the feeling I’d be receiving that final phone call at any moment.

Recently he lost his job and was given notice to move out of his townhouse all in the same week. I watched as he handled it with grace and more confidence than most adults. He took the needed steps to find a new job and make needed decisions about housing and the direction his life would take. What I observed was a confident young man who had grown a long way from the troubled individual he was when he first tried to take his own life. I am incredibly grateful for the power of good in his life and the strength of character he now has. I know life will still hold challenges for him and he may falter from time to time, but I believe he has learned a set of skills that will assist him in making strong, healthy choices as he moves forward. And, yes, I will always stay tuned to my intuition for any hint of trouble.