Experience of having a child addicted to meth

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Experience of having a child addicted to meth

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It's a scary thing when your child is using any kind of drug, but my experience with my son being addicted to meth-amphetamines was very, very scary. The first thing that I noticed; he was a great 'beat-talker' so he talked in rhyme, but what was happening was I started to hear a difference when he was doing that rhyming, he was doing it all of the time. That was a clue to me that there was something going on. If you can't speak except in rhyme, then there is definitely something going on. He started to talk a lot about mathematical equations, and that was another thing that was outside of my way of thinking, and not an experience that I had had with him before. So there was all this talk about mathematical equations, there was all this rhyming going on and so I'd began to think that something was very, very wrong. He was indeed in a psychosis, he started to have his own world and not connect. For those who haven't experienced someone who is in that place, it's very scary, because when you look into their eyes, they're not home - or at least they are not in the same reality as you are. I can remember trying to find a way ... How do you find a way to connect with somebody who is not presently in the same reality as you are; and trying to bridge that. When he was in a full psychosis and he was talking mathematical equations; infinity and beyond - I'm not a mathematician, so I needed to find a way to connect with him; I ended up finding somebody who gave me a math joke, so the next time that I saw him, I was able to give him this math joke and it went something like this : 'Son do you know what the equation Pi r squared is?' Of course I got his attention because I was talking in a language that he was very much involved in and he looked at me and said 'Yes,' and I said, 'Well, pie are not square, pie are round; cornbread is square' at which point he start to laugh. Once I knew that he laughed; in that moment we were in the same reality, and as long as we were in the same reality, I figured that we could build from there, and that's exactly what happened. We were able together to help him find his way back.

View Shannon Crossbear's video on Experience of having a child addicted to meth...

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Shannon Crossbear

Native American Elder

Shannon CrossBear is a beautiful, powerful, spiritual Ojibwe and Irish woman. Shannon is an enrolled member of Fort William First Nation of the Lake Superior Ojibwe, which is located in Ontario, Canada.  She has lived on the shores of Lake Superior for the majority of her life and currently resides within the boundaries of the United States in Hovland, Minnesota. Wabagoness, her given name in Ojibwemoin, is a daughter, sister, mother and grandmother. Shannon has been a story teller for an audience of relatives and friends for many years.  As a columnist for the Cook Country News Herald she wrote over 200 hundred article under the heading Mino- Biimadizawin (the good path/life).Her purpose is to demonstrate and promote gentle healing. She expresses her commitment to healing through her business Strongheart Resource Development. Conditions within Ms. CrossBear’s family of origin and community cement her commitment to improving conditions for children, their families and communities.

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