To the editor:

Kudos to your recent reporting about the heartaches and hope displayed by the courageous Cullinane and Wood families, and the good parenting work of Bonnie Harris.

Although eons ago, I now can all too easily still identify with Amy Wood’s very lonely, extremely stressful, high stakes journey. As I took my troubled loved ones on more then one occasion on such trips, my desperate gut screamed out “Get us to the hospital now!”

I took those crises and turned them into a 37-year career as an addictions therapist, along with 35 years of volunteer first responder work. By going public the above-mentioned families are helping to break our culture’s on-going shaming conspiracy of silence. By shedding light upon the skeletons in closets and terrifying elephants in living rooms, these “been there, done that” profiles in courage are validating the countless human experiences of people now suffering alone. In the pioneering recovery journey, the power of we is formed, a power that will find solutions, person to person, one day at a time.

As a former treatment provider, I’d watch in horror as the addiction steam roller crushed passionate beautiful people with a bright future like Ryan. I’d often be at a dead-of-night fatal 911 scene trying to put a dead Ryan in a black, very black, rubber body bag. Then I’d soon be in my therapy office as an eye-witness to an extremely anguished mom and/or dad who was just beginning to fathom a parent’s worse nightmare… “I’ve out-lived my troubled, yet very lovable kid!” At those gruesome times, my physical human presence was critical along with a safe place to search for the very elusive words to help validate the pain shared by all parties present. And at such times it wasn’t the language of the mind, but that which comes from compassionate hearts in loving kindness. And nowhere was this more important than in the cases of suicide, where the shame of it ties everyone’s tongues.

Nowadays naturally curious kids live in a culture filled with an ever more dangerous candy store. “Here, try this!” is now the lure that often is fatal, for with those toxin drugs out upon all of our streets, it can be “Try one … and you’re all done!” or the lure quickly becomes the hook of a very persistent addiction, like with heroin. For the survivors and their families who reach out, often there is no treatment or it’s a long wait, very expensive and/or grossly inadequate, for our culture is too busy building new liquor and drugs stores, along with new jail cells.

Yet there are solutions to be found with all crisis. But we all must come together to talk and listen closely, for in these spiritual human connections there await answers and new ways to be in life. The very courageous Cullinane and Wood families have been creating a map for the rest of us to learn from, a map forged in their own hell.

Mike Beebe

Lyndeborough