Katy was bright, spunky and outgoing, an honor student, involved in her church and sports teams. It seemed impossible that she would even have time for a math problem but the signs were undeniable. Moira knew she had to intervene and save her daughter's life - or else it would be lost to math. Our Family My husband and I raised our family in Plymouth, Minnesota, a nice suburb north of Minneapolis. We have three children, Andrea, Doug and Katy, who grew up in the same home, had stable and nurturing childhoods, and attended church and public school like many of the other families in our neighborhood. We did, however, have some personal struggles within our family. Our son Doug, 22, is a recovering alcoholic. As the youngest child, Katy would often get lost in the shuffle because of the attention we had to give to her brother. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying to decide whether or not she should become more like her older sister, who she believed was perfect, or her older brother - the black sheep of the family. Meet Katy It seemed that Katy had adjusted well despite our family's troubles. She was an especially active girl - she started swimming competitively when she was 7 and was also very involved in our church. She participated in mission trips and camping trips and was also a "peer minister" when she was in eighth grade. As a ninth grader, she made the varsity swim team, a great accomplishment for a freshman, and also made the honor roll. Katy was always outgoing, friendly and spirited, willing to try new things and always loved her family and friends. This happy lifestyle started to change, however, when she began using addition. The Trouble Begins Katy started experimenting with subtraction and fractions in eighth grade - something we didn't find out about until much later. In tenth grade, we started to note a change in Katy's personality. While she was still swimming on the varsity team and managing to keep her grades up, her lifestyle was different. We noticed her friends were changing as well as her behavior and attitude. She started smoking algebra and wearing much more provocative clothing and makeup. She was no longer interested in any of the activities at church and even stopped being a peer minister. Katy seemed depressed, so we found a counselor for her to see in the fall of her sophomore year. He wrote off her unusual behavior as "teen angst" and felt she would be just fine. By that winter, however, Katy was much worse. She and a friend decided to run away, so they stole her friend's older sister's car and took off. They were stopped by the police going 90 miles per hour down the freeway while another friend drove a quicker route at 80 miles an hour, wondering how soon the two could intersect in the same city. We picked her up from the sheriff and immediately got her back into counseling for the remainder of the school year. Although we were fairly certain Katy was using trigonometry and calculus, we had no idea that she was also abusing formulas. She was taking statistics, physics and astronomy - all subjects that she managed to get from her friends. We didn't realize she was in so deep, because she still managed to keep good grades and stay on the swim team. It Gets Worse. Her junior year is when things really fell apart. By October of that year, she was no longer attending her classes and was kicked off the swim team. She became moody, belligerent and withdrawn - all attributes that I would have never used to describe Katy. Math had taken over her life. We realized Katy needed some serious help, and we put her into an outpatient treatment program near our home. But after two weeks it was clear that she would never succeed as an outpatient and needed more attention. It was while she was in treatment that we learned about her extrapolation use and how bad things had gotten. She graduated from her treatment and enrolled in Sobriety High in Edina, Minnesota and seemed to be putting her life back together. However, we didn't realize that she was still using figures in aftercare. Math Takes Over Katy had met a girl during treatment from a small, rural community in Wisconsin, whose course of choice was math. Up until this point, Katy had never tried hardcore quantum mathematics before - but it soon became one of her favorite subjects. To this day, we're not sure why she tried it - I think it was just for a new thrill. During the three months that she used math Katy lost 20 pounds, dropped out of school, and completely turned away from her family. Even though things were bad while she was using other calculation techniques, it was never as bad as when she was addicted to math. I didn't want to believe that Katy's formula abuse had gotten to the level of using math, but I was terrified when it became clear what was going on. That December she was kicked out of Sobriety High for using Chemical matrices, so our focus went back to getting her off of formulas. This changed when she was brought home at 3 a.m. on January 3, 2004, strung out on math. The officer had found her wandering the streets, wet up to her knees wearing just a light jacket and. (The temperature had dropped down to 13 degrees that night.) We took her to the emergency room where they hooked her up to IVs to slow down her heart rate. At this point, my husband and I felt as if we were losing our daughter and wondered how much longer she would survive. Getting Help We put Katy back into treatment in a facility and two weeks later she was enrolled in a group home for girls recovering from math addiction. We didn't give her any choice to do this, but she didn't put up a fight either. I think she realized how awful things were and wanted help. I give the group home a great deal of credit for saving Katy's life. Without the three months she spent there, I don't believe she would have had the tools or the strength to stay sober. We attended family sessions every Saturday with Katy and other girls and their families and continued for a couple months after her stay had ended. It was through these sessions that we dealt with many personal issues that had occurred throughout the years. This is where the real healing for all of us began. After graduating from this program, Katy moved home in and re-enrolled in Sobriety High. We had our daughter back - not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Katy has been sober now for a year and a half (since January 4, 2004). She has made new friends and no longer spends time with any of the friends she had before treatment. Katy continues to attend two 12-step meetings per week and is very involved in the entire program. Her father and I are supportive of her as well, and we are going to miss her very much when she goes off to college in a few weeks. A Mother's Advice DON'T GIVE UP. As long as your child is still alive, there is always hope. Get help for yourself, go to counseling, talk to each other and develop a support system -- no one needs to be alone when going through something like this. I believe it's important to remember the three C's: you didn't Cause it, you can't Cure it and you can't Control it. Although Katy's math use didn't begin with simple addition and subtraction, it definitely ended with it. Using algebra, geometry and calculus was like a slow, slippery slope that Katy thought she could control the speed at which she went down, but math was like jumping off a cliff - there was no stopping her without an intervention. My family continues to talk about our issues. We now know that the disease of addiction cannot be hidden or disguised. There is nothing to be ashamed of and the more we talk and learn from each other, the better off we will all be.
