Adventures with the Michigan Mama

Last month I took you on a trip down memory lane, back to high school in the ‘90s with ridiculous slang about going postal. Then I told you why we should not have made fun of such a serious matter. This month I want to go back again. I want to discuss the horrid insult of calling someone a crackhead or accusing them of being a crack baby, and why addiction is no laughing matter.

I found this book on Amazon . Read the description. This is only part of the stereotype we all heard while we were growing up; how drug addicted mothers brought suffering babies into the world. These children were “broken” and destined to repeat the cycle of drugs , neglect and poverty.

Why is it that we as a society choose to focus on a minute portion of a problem, in this case crack cocaine, and ignore the bigger picture, the lack of addiction counseling, governmental focus on punishment over treatment, etc. ?

That book was written in 2017. It focuses on the social aspects of growing up with a parent who is an untreated addict. I found an interview from 2011 on NPR that gives more information about the science behind the crack baby panic and how we got it wrong.

… if pregnancy was a cure for addiction, we could just go out and get all the female addicts pregnant, and, hey, no more addiction. But it’s not a cure for addiction – Mary Barr, former user of cocaine while pregnant

In 1973, doctors explained Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and warned mothers not to drink while pregnant. By the 1980s we knew that babies exposed to alcohol while in utero were born with low birth weights, poor coordination and speech delays. As they grew, these children had noticeable learning disabilities such as hyperactivity, poor memory, inability to pay attention and significant trouble with math.

In the 1980s, doctors assumed that since cocaine is a stimulant it would improperly stimulate a fetal brain and cause ADD, hyper aggressive tendencies and a generation suffering from manic depressive disorder. TIME magazine ran a cover story about the expected problems. All of this was based on the report of one doctor in Chicago who used a sample size that included only 23 babies.

Are you kidding me?!? Aren’t we taught that for something to progress from hypothesis to theory or fact, it has to be able to be tested multiple times and show consistent results? This is middle school knowledge, yet somehow we believe the media when they use scare tactics and science to try to make the masses conform.

It wasn’t until 2016 that NIDA published a report saying that the “crack baby” fears had been blown out of proportion. That doesn’t mean drugs are safe to use, especially not during pregnancy. It is just clarifying that our society does not have a generation of impaired, broken brained, underachieving “crack babies” roaming around.

I am not a “big government” person, mostly because I think the government spends our tax dollars on the wrong things. I’m all for helping the world, but we should fix our issues at home before we start telling others how to live. We need to learn from the crack baby crisis and focus more tax dollars of the opioid epidemic effecting our country today. I am 43 years old and have never been a drug user, yet I can name 4 friends who lost their lives due to heroin addiction.

• Becky was beautiful. She was a model. She was a mom of 2 little boys and an angel baby girl. She turned to drugs to numb her grief. Blaming the addict and trying to bully her into sobriety was the best treatment society had to offer her. In 2015, at the age of 36, she lost her battle with addiction, leaving behind 2 orphaned sons.
• Matt had the ability to make everyone around him smile. He had an amazing bond with all 3 of his daughters. He and his wife looked like the perfect Malibu Barbie couple. For a time they lived 2 doors down from me. I never suspected that behind closed doors he was battling addiction. I had no clue until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics pronounced him dead. His eldest daughter is in high school now, and has his smile. His other girls only remember him through pictures and stories they’ve been told about him.
• I knew Lauren her entire life. Our parents went to high school together. We all went to Catechism together. Lauren was about to become a mom again. She had lost custody of her son a few years prior due to heroin addiction. Everyone was optimistic. She had worked her program and was considered in recovery. Then 1 week before her scheduled c-section, her fiancee came home to find her and their baby girl deceased, with the needle still in her arm.
• Damian was a goofball. He grew up with a pretty unstable family life. As a kid, he acted out by starting fights. When he got older, he turned to drugs, starting with pot and progressing through cocaine, acid and then finally heroin. His girlfriend was a user as well. They tried to get clean when they found out she was pregnant, and for a while they did really well. Then the stress of sleepless nights, and money problems started to cause fights. In order to escape Damian started using again. His daughter was 4 years old when her daddy died of an overdose. Thankfully Mommy found help and is still with us.

I’m only one person, and these are 4 stories. I looked at my high school alumni page that lists the names of those we have lost and I can see even more names of people with drug overdose listed as their cause of death.

If I was some fancy doctor and knew a reporter, maybe I could start my own panic. How does “Orphaned by Drugs” sound for our next media panic?

Addiction is not a joke. The children, families and friends of addicts suffer, often alone, due to the stigma we have in society. Think of how we treated mental health ailments 50 years ago. The addict suffers too. They may want to get clean and not know where to find resources. They may blame themselves and develop feelings of worthlessness due to a relapse. They may think that they have disappointed their loved ones so much, that they can never be redeemed.

30 years after the scare of the crack cocaine epidemic, we have not learned enough. Words hurt and real help can be hard to find.

Let’s go forward with love and hope our society can find a better way.

Kristie