ACTION AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Mountain Brook resident Liz Read is fighting the national drug epidemic through her product, clearMINDnow, and putting people before profit.

By Ashley Tiedt | Photos by Patrick McGough

While this statistic from the Alabama Department of Public Health is staggering, this number does not count those who are in active addiction and haven’t sought help.

The National Institute of Mental Health describes a substance abuse disorder as “a mental disorder that affects a person’s brain and behavior, leading to a person’s inability to control his use of substances such as legal or illegal drugs, alcohol or medications.”

Symptoms range from moderate to severe with addiction being the most severe.

Substance abuse affects nearly 50 percent of all families in the United States. Roughly one in eight children under the age of 17 lives in a household where at least one parent has a substance abuse disorder.

For families struggling with a substance abuse disorder, admittance and acceptance are only the beginning and far from the most complicated step in the process. A common misconception is that when someone comes home from treatment, they are “cured,” and everything will immediately be back to normal. Families affected by addiction may also believe that the person with a substance abuse disorder is the only person in the family with a problem to fix.

Liz Read will be the first to tell you that none of that is true, as she found herself in this situation. “I knew we had a raging drug problem in this country, but I didn’t have any experience with it, and I thought it was something I would never encounter,” she says. Liz discovered that her loved one was suffering, and immediately, everything she thought she knew shifted.

Liz will tell you that when you learn your loved one is suffering from a substance abuse disorder, everything in your life changes. “I was having a conversation at the kitchen table with my loved one. We knew coming out of treatment that there needed to be some level of monitoring to help in restoring trust, but it was such an uncomfortable and awkward conversation,” Liz explains.

She also discovered that while her loved one had things to work on, she also had problems of her own. “One of the most important things for us in the process was realizing that we all had our work to do. That was very humbling for me. I had to come to terms with some enabling, codependent behaviors that were a part of the problem,” she admits.

One of the most difficult positions for a supporter to be in after treatment is feeling like he has to police a loved one or those coming home after recovery. In conjunction with therapy, monitoring can help families begin to regain some of the trust that was lost.

“When my loved one came home from treatment, we agreed that monitoring was a tool that would be impactful for us. I began to do the research. I was determined to help my family find a way forward, but I quickly learned that the options weren’t convenient or cheap,” Liz says.

At the time, Liz’s options were having her loved one visit a lab, which is expensive and time consuming, depending on the wait time at the facility,