The Ballad of Lexi S.

Tuesday, August 13, a man named Joe informed a friend of mine, Kim B., that a little girl named Lexi S. was 14, pregnant and living in a crack house.  He found out because Lexi’s mother and his ex-girlfriend with whom he has a child Lisa S. had been posting this information on Facebook in a money raising scam.  You will find out that Lisa S. has a lot of kids.

Immediately, Kim B. asked what I thought should be done.  I said a little prayer to my Higher Power asking for guidance.  The answer was clear: if she’s addicted, this is a 12 step call and we need to go chase.

The first rule of recovery is rigorous honesty.  People who are not honest do not stay sober.  People do not stay sober end up in jails, institutions, and death.  You can usually tell that someone is about to relapse when the lies add up.  The first person I have to be honest with is me.  This is a 12 step call and not something to be avoided.

Some might ask why I didn’t call the police.  As friends of the family, we really don’t hold that right.  When the police are called, they first appeal to the public before doing anything else.  I have learned over time that lighting up social media can be a great help in these matters.  I did in this case and it was.  I received support from not only addiction counselors but also folks in the child protection services industry, both public and private.

Since I brought them up, it could be asked, why not call an addiction counselor?  This is where those of us in recovery have to do a better job relating to others what our experiences are like.  Even the best addiction counselors do not 12 step people.  They certainly are present in the rehabs and detoxes, present in the out-patient programs and present in private practice but they are not the folks who bring you in.

Many of them are in recovery themselves or have family in recovery.  Therefore, they get the rules.  They would never take someone’s inventory who was not a patient of theirs.  Because there are no detoxes on Aquidneck Island, we have none with more than 15 years of service.  Utica has McPike so they have some longer serving folks.

In any 12 step program it is the afflicted that are commanded to “Having had a spiritual awakening a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts and practice these principles in all our affairs.”  On page 164 of Alcoholics Anonymous’ Big Book, alcoholics are told to “Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.”  I ask both in my morning and prayers and my evening prayers.  My Higher Power normally answers that prayer and on this day the answer had a name: Lexi S.

One other thing was going through my mind.  Lexi S. is only 14 and pregnant.  If she is already addicted to crack, she doesn’t have any money.  She will soon need more crack.  How many sexual experiences with how many men do I want her to have before something proactive gets done?

Now that the decision was made, it was time to pray again.  I do not control outcomes.  Often in these situations the outcome is not what you want and you can do nothing but practice acceptance.  Yes, I have interrupted two suicides this year.  I also lived through the story of the young man who 12’d, go to the hospital, he was there for 4 days, refused to go to a rehab and got hit by a car while drunk within a week.  In January, I helplessly watched someone stroke out.  Not die, but stroke out.  Those things are not easily forgotten but must be accepted.

I knew before I got to the area where Lexi S. was that I would pass two fellowship meetings.  At the first one, I asked fellow sisters in addiction for prayers after briefly describing what was going on.  They gave me that “yes, we know this is crazy, but it’s you and we know you must” look before agreeing to lead the prayers.  At the second meeting, besides prayers I wanted to gather some intelligence.  There are many crack addicts in recovery at the second meeting, I am a crack alumnus, and I was hoping they had heard something.  They had not, but some people I look up to spiritually agreed to pray.

As you approach an area in a situation like this, you prepare yourself.  In ivory tower AA, you are usually in somebody’s house prepping them for rehab.  Your role is akin to that of a best man at a wedding trying to get the groom to go down the aisle.  In low level AA, you might have to pull somebody off the street, you never talk to anyone in a bar since you are prohibited talking to them while they are “on the spree”, but that is not so bad.  Even working with the homeless in a homeless encampment, a lot of my work with Occupy Providence was like that, you are only truly worried about broken glass.

If it is Opiates/Mollies/Bath Salts/Meth you are up against, searching those places is quick and easy.  Those dealers do not let their customers hang around – they prefer cop and go – so it goes by quickly.  Most folks going through withdrawal on those drugs are pretty harmless.  It is in the preparation for withdrawal that addicts of this type do all the whacky stuff you hear about.  Dealers of this type are only afraid of rival gangs stealing their stash so sometimes the gun is actually in another room and not on them.

The crack house is a horse of a different color.  The folks doing the drug often do it on the premises. This is why in rehabs you often hear the story of “Remember that time we all crawled around in the floor at dealer’s house??  We all figured somebody dropped a rock and it had to be under the couch.  No one has ever thought of that before . . . .”

The dealer knows exactly what people on crack are like so his gun is on him at all times.  You hope you run into a dealer over 30 while looking for someone because that person has more than likely been in NA and/or AA.  Once you explain that you’re not the government, this person is pretty cool.  They may even apologize if the person you’re looking for has already scored.

The dealer under 30 is a stereotype.  If you’ve never had a gun pointed at you before, find a crack house with someone in their 20’s in charge.  First, you are dealing with a hot head.  Second, you are dealing with a hot head probably on crack.  Biggie Smalls released his “10 rules for crack cocaine” almost 20 years ago and nobody follows rule number 4 in this age group.  The rule also prominently figures in the movie Scarface and it still gets ignored.  Your young crack dealers do not maintain their weapons so while the weapon is being waved around in the air, you can hear the metal rattle.  Fortunately, they also cannot aim.  Impersonating their rap video heroes is more important than actually engaging a target.  This is why drive-by’s often result in the death of innocents.

If this were Providence or Newport, most of the dealers have a clue as to who I am, the older ones would know me as a customer, so I could do a pretty direct search.  This is Utica where I am not as well known yet so we are going to keep it to the sidewalks.  If we see her, we can pursue aggressively.

We start the search by driving to Billy S.’s, her father’s, house.  Billy S. lives in Utica with the children he and Lisa S. created before she ran off with Joe.  He lets all the kids of whatever ages run the streets.  Putting it nicely, he does not take care of himself.  His “girlfriend”, also an addict, shares the same attributes.  We thought he did not report Lexi S.’s situation since he was already involved with New York Child Protective Services.  We would find out later the answer was much creepier.

Billy S.’s house, nothing.  Lexi S.’s grandmother’s house, nothing.  Friend’s house in the neighborhood, Lexi S.’s brother little Billy S. is standing in the doorway.  20 years old and stoned out of his mind.  “Know about it, can’t do nothin’” he says of his 14 year old sister.

We drove up and down the streets for 90 minutes.  No sign of her or any of her friends.  I was thinking about going into a majorly dysfunctional house party when I spot two police officers.

I introduced myself, have about a 30 minute conversation.  Cops explain that if the custodial parent knows where she is, even if it is a crack house, there is not much anybody can do until a report is filed with New York Child Protective Services.  Thinking I am pretty much done for the night, I agree to that the next day.

Call CPS first thing Wednesday morning.  Explain everything – even the part where Lisa S. is living up by the border in a town called Malone where every day, instead of caring for any children, she does drugs with her 19 year old lover.  Lisa S. is about my age.  CPS requests I make a full complaint.  I do so.  Later on, I get a call from CPS saying that they are in the area and that the state police have opened an investigation into the pregnancy.

A few days go by.  We finally hear from CPS again – child has been reached, state police case has been closed and HIPAA prevents the release of any other information.  Through channels it comes to light that Bill S. asked Lexi S. to leave not because he was involved with CPS but because he wants her to have the child so he can raise it as his own.

I have since called a lawyer inquiring into how we stop that from happening.  Lexi S. is very tiny and may not be able to carry a baby to term.  We also contacted New York Planned Parenthood just in case.

A lot of people have suggested the middle ground position where Lexi S. has the baby and gives it up for an adoption.  As someone who was given up at birth by a 12 year old, just the conversation raises all kinds of inner demons for me.

I tell you this story today to accomplish two things.  First, anonymity should not mean we do not let the rest of the world know what it is like to live in recovery.  That has gone on for too long and as a result, we are often misunderstood.

Secondly, a number of conservatives who are protecting a secret in a small town tried to use the story to discredit me.  That I would not mind.  Along the way, they made many numerous incorrect statements about recovery which may hurt others.

However, they did not stop there.  They got the name of the girl wrong, the birthdate wrong, the address wrong and every detail of the story wrong.  On one hand they will tell you that I am nothing to fear, not serious, a joke, et cetera.  In the very next breath, they will do this and challenge my recovery.

In 11 years, my recovery has always been supported.  I have found that support in hospitals, from first responders, from folks I speak to regularly in rehabs and just people who recognize me on the street.  It is only members of the Tiverton/Portsmouth anti-toll movement, and the organizations they are connected to, that has ever rooted against me.  Since I have 11 years and a good program, I find this more bizarre than troubling.  What is troubling is that they make fun of everybody with an addiction and root against us all.  I find that to be sick.  Maybe before assisting the anti-toll movement, you should take that into consideration.  I have never seen anything like it before.

If you or a friend has a problem with alcoholic or drugs, I would be happy to discuss with you or them what living happy, joyous and free is really about.  In order to keep it, I must give it away.