family support, improve recovery, reduce relapse

Podcast Transcript: InterAct LifeLine The Case for Family Support Intro Hi, I'm Carolyn Bradfield and I'd to welcome our listeners to our audio journal series from InterAct LifeLine InterAct LifeLine is a technology service focused on helping addictions treatment and collegiate recovery programs keep individuals connected to treatment, to community and to their families to improve recovery and reduce relapse. Today our focus is making the case about the importance of keeping families connected as a critical factor to relapse prevention and recovery. Years ago, my 15-year old daughter Laura became a danger to herself as her drug use escalated out of control. I got professional advice, enrolled her in a wilderness therapy program, followed by a long-term commitment to a therapeutic boarding school. Right after enrollment in the school, 20 families gather for our orientation. It took us 4 hours to go around the room, introduce ourselves and share why are child had enrolled. The room was full of emotion. We were all heartbroken that we had failed to keep our child safe, that they were using drugs, and had to be stabilized in wilderness. As I thought about how we could have been more prepared and less traumatized, it became clear that none of us had received any family support or guidance during the wilderness programs. We were totally unprepared emotionally to leave our child in the hands of others to finish out their high school experience. That insight led me to create Phoenix Outdoor, a licensed adolescent wilderness program in North Carolina. The first order of business was to create a family support program that soon became the gold standard in the industry and later incorporated into most wilderness therapy programs. I'd like to share why family programs are critical when it comes to supporting a loved one who is either in treatment or managing their recovery process. Families are undereducated about addiction It's very easy to focus on the behaviors that have disrupted your family life. From my own experience, I was angry and frustrated when Laura snuck out, took the car on a joy ride, didn't show up for school, and began to steal things. I knew she was using drugs, but had no idea that her drug use had initiated the onset of the disease of addiction. My situation repeats itself in most families. We get angry, think that our loved one has more control over their actions than they do, and fail to understand the science behind this brain disease. Family support programs should provide an education on the condition so families better understand how it develops, progresses and can be treated. Families are traumatized by the experience. There is nothing worse than the fear you feel when your child is missing, is putting themselves in harm's way, or is threatening you. I experienced many sleepless nights when Laura was unaccounted for, knowing she was with a dangerous crowd, and not knowing how to find her. Add to that the shame that I felt when my friends talked about the accomplishments of their children knowing that my child may not make it through high school or even make it home at night. Being traumatized lowers a family's ability to understand the situation, know how to make good, rational decisions in support of their loved one who is struggling and how they can take care of themselves. A family support program gives them an opportunity to share experiences with other families who are struggling, get counseling and develop a way to move past the trauma. Decision making has become much more difficult I shared that it took 4 hours for 20 families to introduce ourselves through our tears and sadness of sending our children away in order to keep themselves. Without a family support program to help guide us none of us were really prepared to make such an important decision. We didn't have the support to explore whether our child come home under different circumstances, if a shorter-term stay would have worked, or what other options we had in front of us. The bottom line is that in order to make good decisions on behalf of your loved one or with your loved one, having family support to guide that process is critical. The family system may not be functioning well Having an addicted family member can weaken or destroy even the most healthy of family systems, but in one that is already weak, dealing with addiction can be catastrophic to the family. In my own case, I was divorced, newly remarried, starting a new job where I traveled and dealing with raising my two teenagers without the involvement of their father. When Laura became compromised, it not only put my marriage at risk, but made it very difficult on my teenage son, my parents and other family members who stepped in to help. Had we worked on our family system, changing the way we managed our communication, structure and accountability for Laura, and helped her understand and manage her disease, the family system would have functioned much better. Create an environment for recovery Someone who has undergone treatment for addiction may very well either return to live at home or reconnect with their family. Families who have gone through and continue to go through a family support program learn the do's and don'ts about how to support their loved one so they create an environment that supports recovery. They learn how to hold that person accountable without blame. They learn how to communicate openly about what they struggle with. They better understand wellness strategies and how to implement them for the entire family. Incorporating the family into treatment and into the recovery process does not begin and end with a 1-day visit to a treatment program or the occasional Al-Anon meeting. It requires on-going education to understand the disease and how to treat it. Families need to get healthy, move past the anger and trauma, and become good decision makers for themselves and sometimes for their family member. They need to stay connected to others in their situation for support, strategies, and guidance. Without family support, it's much harder for the addict to stay in recovery, begin to regain a sense of who they were before substance use, and to reconnect to the family. InterAct LifeLine is dedicated to helping improve recovery and reduce relapse through our technology services used by collegiate recovery and treatment programs. A key component of our programming is family education, family support, and an automated way to help programs keep families connected. I'm Carolyn Bradfield and you've been listening to the InterAct LifeLine audio journal.

Addiction, debunk, Mental Health, program, Recovery, Treatment

Podcast Transcript: Every president since Bill Clinton has tried to tackle the question of how to improve healthcare in America, but the government can't seem to find its footing with a solution that pleases everyone. But quietly, private enterprise has been advancing the ball in medical care by introducing new insurance models, concierge medicine and technology solutions to make access to healthcare more streamlined and cost effective. These advances, driven by the private sector, are dropping the cost of accessing primary care, allowing people to get connected from the privacy of their home, and making it less likely that they will readmit after a stay in the hospital. Unfortunately, the world of mental health and addictions treatment has not yet taken advantage of technology in the treatment process. Addictions and mental health patients just don't have access to the same digital experiences that streamline treatment, lower cost, and reduce the chances that they will readmit needing more acute care. In this audio journal, we will take a look at the drivers in the mental health and addictions treatment world that make having a technology strategy essential and not optional as we go into 2020. Let's look at what is going on in the marketplace that make incorporating technology into treatment an important trend. Number one is a severe shortage of treatment professionals. The shortage of mental health professionals in the United States is a huge and growing problem, especially as the country continues to move towards realizing the importance of mental health treatment. In the U.S., nearly 1 in 5 people have some sort of mental health condition, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. A 2016 report released by the Health Resources and Services Administration projected the supply of behavioral health workers to be approximately 250,000 people short of the projected demand by 2025. The bottom line is there are just not enough people to treat those that need it. Technology has the potential to make the professionals that we do have more efficient and better able to treat more clients using solutions like telehealth appointments. Unfortunately, the opioid crisis is driving demand The need for more effective and accessible substance abuse treatment has increased with the opioid addiction epidemic, specifically in more rural areas. The numbers are alarming. It is estimated that over 10 million people in the US currently abuse opioids with 130 people dying each day from overdose. And the crisis is more acute in remote areas that have many residents who been come addicted and need to be treated. Unfortunately, those areas are less attractive to treatment professionals. However, connecting to patients remotely with telehealth appointments or other virtual options allow the professional to be anywhere and have a conversation with a patient that needs their help, even in harder to reach areas. Some patients just can't get to a treatment professional. Patients who have been treated and are recovering at home, patients who are not mobile because they lack adequate transportation, have lost their license, and who live in rural, remote areas often can't make it to their appointments. As long as a patient has a way to connect to the internet, telehealth enables them to access therapists, recovery coaches and support groups. There is definitely a need to reduce stigma and increase privacy with some patients. While there's a broader acceptance that addiction is a disease that requires treatment and other mental health disorders often come with the landscape, stigma is still a problem for some patients. Often, the shame and stigma associated with the disease is more crippling than the disease itself. Access to treatment through telehealth solutions can offer patients more options to ensure their privacy is protected. Weekly therapy appointments or group support meetings could be done over the web from home or after work hours so patients can maintain their privacy. Staying connected reduces relapse. It's a fact that the relapse rates after an in-patient rehab stay are 85% in the first year, often in the first few months following treatment. We would never accept these poor results for any other medical treatment, but it's become the norm in the world of addiction treatment. Although there is not a consensus about why so many people relapse, one statistic is clear: the longer a person stays connected to the program that offered rehab treatment, the lower the relapse rate is. Technology offers the opportunity to automate the extended care process, keep patients connected longer and improve outcomes. Offering technology solutions as treatment options makes it easier to produce outcome studies. When someone comes out of a 30-day rehab, they look healthy, have drugs out of their system and start the recovery process. So, ask a treatment program how that person is doing a year from now, the true test of treating a chronic disease successfully, and most programs will not be able to tell you. If programs were able to extend treatment, follow their clients, and use technology to measure how people are engaging and recovering, then measuring the effectiveness of the treatment would be easier. Technology provides the opportunity for data driven solutions to understand patient outcomes. Takeaways The addiction and mental health industries can no longer afford to ignore the technologies that are transforming medical healthcare. There are too many patients and not enough therapists to keep up with everyone that needs help with technology being one of the best solutions to create efficiencies to treat more people with less resources. Beyond that, patients need better ways to access treatment remotely, reduce the cost of treatment, maintain their privacy, and keep connected to treatment longer.

Audio Journal, Podcast

The Power of Gratitude You may be struck that the topic of this audio journal is gratitude, especially in the midst of the opioid crisis, the deaths of 70,000 people each year from overdose and the ravages of an addiction pandemic. After the loss of my daughter Laura to overdose 2 years ago gratitude has been the one thing that has helped me through what could have been an unbearable loss.  I am grateful for the time I had with her, for the lessons her disease taught me, for having the insight to use my knowledge of technology to create a new company to take on the opioid crisis and for my friends who have reached out, stayed in touch and have been supportive. I belong to Facebook groups focused on addiction and the loss of loved ones to the disease and one overarching theme is that grief has sucked people into the deepest and darkest of holes that they cannot seem to crawl out of.  Not only have they lost a loved one, but they've lost marriages, friends, jobs, and most tragically themselves.  If you are struggling with addiction yourself, trying to create a recovery plan, attempting to  help a family member who is trying to get clean and sober, or trying to cope with the loss of someone you loved from overdose, here are some reasons to consider a shift in focus to appreciate what you still have vs. what you have lost,  Here is how gratitude is helpful. Being grateful makes you a happier person.  Research reveals that if you just spend 5 minutes a day writing down what you are grateful your feeling of long-term happiness will go up and sustain itself over time. Gratitude reduces your feelings of jealousy.  When my daughter starting using drugs at age 14 and spent most of her teenage and young adult years in and out of treatment, I found myself feeling jealous when I watched my friends shop for their daughters' prom dresses, teaching them  to drive or contemplating where  they were  going to college.  However, I was blessed in having several young ladies in my life without their mothers that allowed me to do those things that I couldn't do with Laura.  My gratitude at having those opportunities and experiences did wonders in making those jealous moment disappear. Gratitude makes us less self-centered.  When we face challenges, it's natural to focus on how bad we feel and how those challenges affect us.  Being grateful by its very definition causes us to start thinking about others which can be very healing.  For me, I tell Laura's story repeatedly in an effort to offer insight and help to other struggling families making me grateful that I had the opportunity to help. Gratitude helps you exert and regain more control over your life.  Addiction is a disease by its very nature that causes one to lose control over choices.  If you have an addicted family member, you understand how little control you have over getting them to stop using and stop taking risks.  Studies have found that gratitude increases people's self-control, and it increases their ability to wait.   According to the researchers, gratitude is like a self-control buffer helping you be ready to resist temptation and do the right thing. An attitude of gratitude promotes health.  Dealing with addiction takes a toll on your health Research shows that grateful people are generally healthier, so it's good to get all the help we can. So, knowing that gratitude makes you happier and healthier and has a range of other benefits, how in the face of overwhelming challenges can we start to develop gratitude in our lives?  The secret is to start small, and over time, gratitude becomes part of who you are. Start by focusing on what you have, rather than what you don't have. When you struggle with addiction yourself, have a family member that is struggling or experience the grief over the changes in your life or the loss of a loved one, it's easy to focus on what you have lost. Practicing gratitude is all about being thankful for what you have versus focusing on all the things that you don't have, which makes you feel negative, jealous and angry. Honor the progress you or others around you have made.   Recovery is a series of small victories that combine into lasting change.  Don't beat yourself or others up when there are setbacks, rather be grateful for the steps forward. Appreciate the small things.  We are surrounded by a host of small things that improve our lives, give us pleasure, or make us smile.  Take time to think about how good your first cup of coffee tasted, how pretty your rose bush is, the cardinal that landed on your window or just the feeling of sunshine on your face. Sometimes it helps to write things down in a gratitude journal so you can look back and remember things that made you smile. Make it a goal to give to others daily.  Teaching someone how to solve a hard math problem helps you be better at math. Being generous with your time by extending yourself to others is a big part of practicing gratitude. There are plenty of ways to give back in small ways.  Pay for the Starbucks coffee for the person behind you.  Help someone bring their groceries in.   Lend an ear to someone else struggling.  Over time those small acts of kindness add up and increase your sense of well-being. Learn how to meditate. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the present moment without judgment. Some people practice mindfulness by focusing on a word or a phrase, but it is also possible to focus on what you're grateful for (the warmth of the sun, a pleasant sound, a favorite food). Takeaways I lost my daughter Laura just before Christmas, so coming into the holiday season could be a time of regret, loss, and sadness.  Although I have those feelings, I also take this time to reflect on what I still have, be grateful for those gifts and recommit to be of service to others who struggle with their at-risk teenager who they just caught with pills, their spouse who is on their 3rd treatment  program and how they are going to pay for it, the student trying to manage their recovery in college....and  the list goes on. Gratitude has helped me acknowledge the goodness in my life, the ways I can continue to make an impact through InterAct LifeLine, and the strength I've been given to turn grief into purpose.

Audio Journal, Podcast

Audio Journal Technology to Take on the Opioid Crisis When I look at my iPhone or open up my laptop, I'm like most people going to Facebook.  But unlike most people, I'm not spending very much time checking in with my friends or searching for the latest products I can't do without.  I'm watching the posts of families in Facebook groups that I belong to that are expressing profound grief, sadness and despair over losing a loved one to overdose or their own personal struggles with addiction.  I belong to those groups because my daughter Laura overdosed and died two years ago after struggling for 15 years battling heroin, opioids and meth. Addiction, driven in large part by the opioid crisis, is killing many of our young people at an alarming rate, decimating rural communities who lack access to treatment, costing our economy over a trillion a year, and ruining the lives of millions of families nationwide.  After processing my grief over the loss of my daughter, I decided to do something about it using the technology my company built over the last 8 years that has served countless businesses who sell services through independent sales agencies. In my business career, I've become aware of technologies that are transforming medical healthcare making it easy and affordable to monitor patients in their home, have telehealth doctor visits and transmit vitals to the cloud.  I decided that it was time to see if my company's technology could also transform addiction and mental healthcare and change the trajectory of how we extend care, monitor people struggling with the disease, improve how people recover and start to reduce those rising death rates. The treatment industry has to find a way to make a shift and leverage technology the same way that medical healthcare has.  There are too many patients and not enough therapists to keep up with everyone that needs help, patients need better ways to access treatment remotely, the cost of treatment needs to go down, patients need to be connected to treatment longer and our understanding of the disease needs to change. So, this year I created InterAct LifeLine, a technology company that partners with treatment providers to accomplish all of those things.  Beyond that, we support the very successful collegiate recovery communities so they can automate themselves and serve the growing number of students that need their help.  In a little less than a year, we've been able to transform the technology we have used in the business marketplace and launch successful pilot programs in collegiate recovery and addiction treatment.  Here is what we are doing and why it is works. InterAct keeps people connected longer.  The research is clear.  If you stay connected to a treatment program for at least six consecutive months, the chances are that relapse will go down.  Why is this critical?  The relapse rate after a 30-day stay in rehab is around 85% in the first year often in the first couple of months.  There are a lot of reasons for that alarming statistic, but the main one is that although addiction is a chronic disease, but we treat it like an acute one.  That means that once the patient looks good after rehab, we release them without a good way to have the longer-term treatment plan that they really need. So how does InterAct's technology keep people connected?  Technology provides programs with portal technology that automates many of the processes that staff would be required to do to run an extended care program.  Let's take a look at how that works. First, we help programs provide structure and accountability for their clients once they have left a residential setting.  When you go to treatment, your day is planned for you.   Your meals, therapy sessions, group meetings and even down time is scheduled, and frankly, there is a lot of comfort and security in not having to make those decisions when you are fighting to get healthy.  But when you check out, that structure goes away leaving the person to make those decisions, fend for themselves and lose the accountability that is so helpful in staying healthy.  InterAct's technology offers personal calendars where the program or the individual can add commitments like meeting with their sponsor or recovery coach, going to an AA meeting, or showing up at work.  Text reminders are sent multiple times before each calendar event and the system can ask for the person to "check in" so they know that the program cares and is holding them accountable.  Having a schedule seems simple, but for someone trying to recover, this level of structure is often quite difficult. Our technology promotes connections to community.   Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most successful and long-standing group organizations in the world.  Collegiate Recovery Communities produce higher GPA's & graduation rates and astoundingly low relapse rates among their participants.   Why is that?  The answer is that being connected to support communities is a vital component for addicts to stay healthy.  Knowing that, how does technology make it easier for programs to keep their participants connected?  There are many times people just can't or won't make it to a face to face meeting.  The live too far away, don't have the right transportation, or may be overly anxious about meeting others face to face.  That's where technology comes in handy because all you need is a connection to the Internet and a smart phone to get connected to community.  InterAct provides virtual support groups with guided discussions over webinar technology.  Portals have offer online discussion forums for people to ask questions, share solutions, and get help.  And for collegiate recovery programs, we are building a national directory of program alumni so they can get in touch with each other, no matter where they live. Our technology automates the processes of reaching out and checking in.  The staff at any program don't have enough hours in the day to sit down and call everyone, text them or check in one by one.  That's where InterAct's technology comes in.  Our portal system can send out reminders to login or show up for meetings automatically.  We create simple questionnaires that people can respond to that let a program know how they are doing.  The technology can even score those responses and alert the team if there are issues that need to be addressed.  And that brings us to education.  It is so vital that people understand not only the disease but the ways you can maintain your health.   If you have heart disease, you are educated to modify your diet, your exercise and change many things about your lifestyle.  Do those things and your chances of dying from a heart attack drop dramatically.  The same thing applies to the importance of education in addiction.  Once you understand the disease, you can create a nutritional and exercise plan, use mindfulness and meditation to reduce anxiety, and learn how to treat other disorders like depression that often go hand-in-hand with the disease. InterAct is built for education.  We have created an extensive online content and education library, with information collected from the best resources out there, carefully organized by subjects to make things easy to find.  Every program that works with us has a portal that is connected to the library for a continuous feed of great information.  And portals don't wait for people to come look.  The system automatically alerts you when there is an interesting article to read, a video to watch, or an e-book to download with links to go right to it. And then there is help for the family.  I'm particularly passionate about this because having a family that's involved, educated about their role in the recovery process and healthy themselves after being in a battle they didn't choose dramatically improves how their loved one and the family recover.  Our technology delivers a robust family support program that is turnkey for the program that has our solution. Portals provide education not only for the patient, but for their family.  Virtual support groups and discussion forums keep families connected for ideas, strategies and help.  InterAct partners with telehealth organizations to provide connections to family therapists or psychiatrists so families can start to heal and repair their family systems.  And we're partnering with professionals to create an online family assessment tool to give that family more insight into where they need help. So, how will we know if this is working or not?  Technology can help give us the answers.  So many programs don't have the time or resources to follow up on their patients to understand how effective they are.  Keep a patient connected longer-term and you have a much better understanding of your results.  Our technology is data driven.  We record how often you visit the portal and what content you interact with.  We know if you checked in to appointments, how you answered your questionnaire, or if you read your messages.  That data can be compiled and used to produce outcomes studies so programs can adjust and get better. And it doesn't stop there.  We are now working on a partnership with a well-known fitness tracking company to take data continuously out of wearables that track your steps and your vitals, scrub that data, and use it to monitor your recovery health.  Imagine being alerted if someone is going into overdose, knowing where they are, and getting help in time.  Imagine understanding your stress levels and proactively being able to reduce them.  Or what about monitoring your sleep patterns so you can get the rest you need.  All of that data is out there, and we will repurpose it so we keep people safer and healthier. In 2020, we will use the same technology with its monitoring and tracking capabilities, power to connect people to community, educate them, and the ability to detect overdose and launch SafetyNet, a prevention program for parents and adolescents.   1 in 10 students develop the disease before they leave high school, but it's entirely preventable if you are educated, know the risk factors and take steps to prevent it. Takeaway Technology alone can't solve the opioid crisis, but it can make a profound difference.  We believe in partnerships and providing this important weapon to the programs and treatment professionals that are in the fight every day.  Look at the impact technology has had on medical care and just imagine what it can do for people trying to recover from addiction.  Then ask yourself:  What if we can provide treatment to more people and keep them connected longer?  What if we can bring families into the process and help them heal at the same time?  What if we can monitor your vitals and better protect you from overdose? I ask those questions every day and wonder what if I had had those tools for my own daughter.  Perhaps she wouldn't have been one of those statistics and she would be at our Thanksgiving table and opening her Christmas presents.  InterAct is dedicated to make sure that more families can spend the holidays together so it's a time of joy and not one of grief and regret.

Audio Journal, Podcast

If you listened to the last Audio Journal, we focused on what it takes to coach your family through the Opioid Crisis with a game plan, a playbook, an understanding of your opponent and help from your "assistants" when it's called for.  This episode will focus on what every successful college football coach knows and understand, that it's much easier to play offense vs. always be on the defensive. Football coaches don't start preparing during the game; they start way in advance by scouting the competition, evaluating their players, understanding what plays produce results and just committing the time to do their homework.  Your child may or may not ever use drugs or get addicted, but the reality is that 1 in 10 high schoolers will develop the disease of addiction before they even leave high schoool and that child may be yours.  We're going to start the Parent Playbook by understanding how you can play offense before you have to play the much more difficult game of defense. Playing offense in the game against substance abuse begins with a good prevention strategy.  It's hard for parents to get motivated to execute a prevention strategy when their child is a good student, a girl scout, an athlete and an all-around good kid.  All of those things applied to my daughter until she started using drugs at age 14, became addicted and was in for the fight of her life, only to overdose and die after a 15-year struggle.  I never played offense, so I spent 15 years playing the tougher game, defense. Here's how to execute a good offensive prevention strategy. Start your game strategy by understanding the risk factors.  The disease of addiction runs in families so understand if it's present in yours, your spouse's or your extended family.  Developing the disease requires a genetic link that kicks off the propensity of one's brain to respond in overdrive in the presence of drugs and alcohol.  Children that find it difficult to regulate their emotions, who have been bullied, who have had learning differences are all at higher risk.  And think about children who have experienced other changes or difficulties they struggle with like managing through a divorce, a move to a new neighborhood or school, enduring stressful situations or trauma. They are statistically at much higher risk than other kids, so evaluate if this applies to your family.  InterAct LifeLine has been collecting great content and education and making it available in online portals to help parents understand the risk of addiction so they can be better prepared. All you have to do is visit rethinkthefamily.com and there is great information waiting for you. Next, talk to your kids and educate them about the risks.  Executing an offensive strategy is most successful when you prepare your team to understand the game they are playing. Start early and have conversations about substances in an age-appropriate way.  Kids learn science in school, so give them a science lesson on what might happen to the brain when they drink or do drugs.  Help them know what drugs are out there and what they need to do to avoid them.   In addition to helping parents understand the risk of addiction, InterAct also gives you the help you need to use the right words to begin the conversation with your kids at any age. Consider proactively and randomly drug testing your middle or high schoolers. Don't think of drug testing as a punishment, but rather as a gift.  Your kids can now blame their crazy parents when they choose to turn down the chance to smoke pot or take pills because they can tell their friends they are being drug tested and are sure to be caught.  Drug tests can be bought at any drug store and are cheap and easy to use.  Your child may try and fool the system, so you have to make tests random and take countermeasures to make sure that the tests give you the right results. Trust but verify.  My daughter would tell me that she was at rowing practice, with a friend, or engaged in a school activity.  But that wasn't the truth.  She was not where she said she was and engaged in activities that she didn't want me to know about.  Back then, I didn't have the same technology tools that parents have today.   You have the ability to find my iPhone or install technology on your kid's phone or laptop to monitor their keystrokes and messages.  Our company InterAct LifeLine is going to help parents out with our 2020 product release, SafetyNet to use the smart phone coupled with wearables to help you geolocate your child and ask for check-ins to prove they are where they said they would be.  Coach from the field not from the stands.  If you are going to play offense, you have to know the players on the field.  Volunteer at your child's school, meet with the teachers, and understand the environment by talking to other parents. Know your child's friends, have them over, meet their parents, and understand what their environment is like if your child goes out with them or over to their house.  There is nothing that compares to being right in the middle of the action vs. being in the stands, having your child tell you what is going on through their filter. Takeaways Addiction is a chronic disease just like diabetes.  Once you have developed it, you will always have it and have to manage it to stay healthy.  You and your child will always be playing defense instead of offense.  That's why a good offensive strategy focuses on prevention and includes understanding the risk factors and helping your children understand the risks.  Playing offense may include proactively drug testing your kids to give them an excuse to still be cool and blame everything on you.  You should try and communicate that while you trust your child, today's deadly drug environment requires you to verify.  And no game is won if the coach is not totally involved. Had I been educated and prepared to play offense with both my son and daughter, I might have been able to prevent or delay Laura's drug use giving her brain a chance to develop so it was less vulnerable to the substances that kicked off the disease.  Instead, after Laura began using drugs at age 14, I stayed on the field playing defense for 15 long years, a very difficult game that unfortunately I didn't win as she overdosed and died 2 years ago.   So, let's commit to prevention and playing offense because nobody wants to play the same game as I did.