'Gas station heroin,' huffing, and the drugs hiding in plain sight: What every parent, spouse, and friend needs to know

September is National Recovery Month. Every year, I spend a good deal of it sharing experience, strength, and hope. So let me start with mine.

My name is Ruth Ann, and I am an alcoholic and an addict. I have been in recovery for 10,798 days — twenty-nine and a half years — and that is God’s grace, not mine.

Recovery is real, and thank God it is. But the struggle is real too, for the ones still in the middle of their disease. That’s right — their disease. It carries a stigma we wish we could change, and we are changing it, one day at a time. We do recover. I’ve seen it thousands of times.

But you can’t recover from something you don’t know you’re fighting. So this year, I want to spend Recovery Month talking about the drugs that families don’t recognize yet — the struggle they’re watching in their own house without knowing where to turn. I want them to know how to get their loved one the care they need.

I have spent nearly thirty years in behavioral health and addiction treatment, and I still get the same phone call almost every week. A mother, a wife, a grandfather, a youth pastor. The voice on the other end is scared and a little embarrassed, and the first words are almost always some version of:

“Ruth Ann, what is this stuff? I found it in his truck. It came from the gas station.”

I want to be honest about where this article comes from. It comes from a place of concern — real, present-tense concern for what Colonel Steven Maxwell and I and everyone in our field are seeing right now in Mississippi. Not a trend we read about. Kids and adults sitting in front of us. And the thing I keep coming back to is this: most of the families I meet didn’t know what they were looking at until it was far along. That is why the warning signs matter more than anything else on these pages. You can’t act on what you don’t recognize.

So let’s talk about it. Plainly. Because the things I’m about to describe are legal to buy in most places, they are sitting on the counter next to the beef jerky — and in the cooler next to the energy drinks that make every one of them more dangerous — and they are sending people I love to the emergency room, to jail, and to funeral homes.

I’ve asked a friend to help me say it. Colonel Maxwell spent more than thirty years in law enforcement, led the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics before retiring from it, and now directs the Corrections Investigation Division for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He has seen these drugs from the interstate to the jail cell. I have seen them from the intake office to the funeral. We come at this from opposite ends of the same road, and we have arrived at the same place. You’ll hear from him throughout.

Start here: The newest and deadliest — cychlorphine

Before I walk you through what is sitting on the gas station counter, I have to start with the one that scares me most right now. This is deadly, and most families have never heard its name. I don’t want the first time you hear it to be from a coroner.

It’s called cychlorphine (say it “sy-KLOR-feen”). It is a lab-made opioid, and it is not fentanyl — it comes from a different chemical family altogether. It is believed to be about ten times stronger than fentanyl, and fentanyl is already fifty to a hundred times stronger than heroin.

Why is it showing up now? Every time the law closes one door, the chemists open the next one. When fentanyl got harder to get, a group of drugs called nitazenes took its place. Last summer, China cracked down on nitazenes, and within months cychlorphine filled the gap. Medical researchers call it the leading edge of a new wave, and they warn that the time between the first sighting of a drug like this and a widespread problem is short. We are in that window right now.

How fast is it spreading? It was first spotted in this country in 2024. By this spring, at least 24 states had reported overdoses or deaths linked to it. East Tennessee has been hit especially hard — in the Knoxville area, the chief medical examiner counted more than 50 fatal cychlorphine overdoses between October 2025 and May 2026. It has been found right next door in Louisiana and Tennessee, and in Texas. In many of the deaths studied, it was the only opioid in the person’s body. It isn’t just riding along with fentanyl; it is killing people by itself.

Where is it hiding? It is not sold by name. It is mixed into other drugs, so the person taking it usually has no idea it’s there. It has been found pressed into fake Xanax, Percocet, Dilaudid, and OxyContin tablets, and mixed with fentanyl, oxycodone, meth, cocaine, and nerve pills. Overseas, it even turned up in a Traditional Chinese Medicine product sold as Lion’s Mane mushroom. In May, the DEA named it as one of a group of powerful synthetic opioids increasingly turning up in fentanyl and counterfeit pills. And as of today, it still isn’t on the federal list of controlled drugs.

Here’s why it scares those of us who do this work:

One pill can be enough. A kid who thinks he’s taking half a Percocet at a party may be taking something ten times stronger than fentanyl. It shuts down breathing.
Our tests can’t see it. The regular drug screens most hospitals run were built to find morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl. They don’t catch cychlorphine, and neither do fentanyl or nitazene test strips. That means a clean test does not mean a safe pill, and a negative drug screen at the hospital does not rule it out. It also means deaths from this drug are being undercounted.
Narcan works, but it may take more than one dose. The doctors who reviewed the research on this drug say there is no evidence that Narcan fails on cychlorphine. But it is so strong that it may take two, three, or more doses to bring someone back. And these pills are often mixed with nerve pills like Xanax, which Narcan cannot reverse. Never give one dose and stop. Keep going.

Signs someone may be using pills or opioids:

Pills with no prescription bottle, pills from a friend, or pills bought online or through social media apps
Pills that look like Xanax, Percocet, oxycodone (“M30s,” “blues”), or Adderall but didn’t come from a pharmacy
Small baggies of white, beige, or brown powder; bits of foil with burn marks; cut straws or empty pens
Heavy eyelids, nodding off mid-sentence, sudden sleepiness at odd hours — then sick and irritable once it wears off
Talk of “pressies,” “blues,” or pills from a “plug”

Signs of an overdose — this is an emergency:

Won’t wake up when you shout their name or rub their breastbone hard
Slow, shallow, or stopped breathing
Snoring, gurgling, or choking sounds
Blue or gray lips and fingertips
Slow heartbeat; cold, clammy skin; a limp body

Don’t wait to see pinpoint pupils. We usually teach families to look for tiny pupils with opioids. But in a bad overdose, the brain is starving for oxygen, and the pupils can go big instead. If they won’t wake up and aren’t breathing right, treat it as an overdose. Period.

What to do — and do it fast:

Call 911 first. Narcan buys you about 15 minutes to get EMS there. It is a bridge to the ambulance, not a cure.
Give Narcan.
No response in two to three minutes? Give another dose. Then another if you need to. Keep a second and third dose on hand.
Breathe for them if you know rescue breathing. If they’re breathing, roll them on their side so they don’t choke.
Stay with them until EMS arrives. No matter what, they need medical care — even if they wake up.

Narcan is not treatment. It is a bridge to the hospital. I need every family to hear this. Narcan can bring someone back for a little while, but it does not get the drug out of their body. A drug this strong can outlast it and put them right back under. They need doctors, oxygen, and watching, and only EMS and the hospital can give them that. Don’t let them talk you out of the ambulance because they “feel fine.” Feeling fine is not the same as being safe.

Don’t be afraid to call 911. Mississippi’s Good Samaritan law protects people who call for help in good faith during an overdose. Your call could save a life. Make it.

And if your family has already lost someone to a pill that “should have” been something else, please hear me: it was not your fault. These drugs are designed to be hidden.

“Gas station heroin”: Kratom and 7-OH

Kratom is a plant from Southeast Asia. In its leaf form it has been chewed and brewed as a tea for generations. Here, it shows up as capsules, powders, gummies, and little energy-shot bottles with names like Feel Free, OPMS, or a hundred others. It is marketed as “natural,” a mood booster, a pain reliever, an energy supplement, even as a way to get off opioids.

Here is what the marketing leaves out: kratom acts on the same receptors in the brain as heroin and fentanyl. In low doses it feels like a stimulant. In higher doses it feels like an opioid. People who use it daily develop tolerance, dependence, and a withdrawal that they will tell you is every bit as miserable as coming off pain pills — the sweats, the vomiting, the bone aches, the anxiety, the insomnia.

And here is something most people standing at that gas station counter do not know: kratom is not legally on the market in this country as a drug, a dietary supplement, or a food additive. That’s not my opinion — that’s the FDA. There is no approved kratom product, period. The FDA has warned the public not to use it because of liver toxicity, seizures, and addiction. They’ve documented babies born in withdrawal because their mothers used kratom through pregnancy. They’ve found products contaminated with Salmonella and heavy metals. The agency estimates about 1.7 million Americans age 12 and up used kratom in a single year. That is not a fringe problem. That is somebody in your Sunday school class.

7-OH (7-hydroxymitragynine) is where this went from “concerning” to “dangerous.” Think of it this way: 7-OH is the strongest ingredient in the kratom plant, but there’s only a tiny amount of it in the leaf — less than 2 percent. Manufacturers figured out how to pull it out, concentrate it, and make it in a lab. Now it’s sold in tablets and gummies that are many, many times stronger than the plant itself. The FDA says it hits the brain’s opioid receptors harder than morphine.

This is not a plant anymore. This is a concentrated opioid in a colorful package.

The FDA has said exactly that. They’ve seized 7-OH products off shelves and sent warning letters to the companies selling them. Their own words: 7-OH is the beginning of a fourth wave of the opioid epidemic. First it was pain pills. Then heroin. Then fentanyl. Now this, sold next to the lottery tickets. This summer the DEA started the process of making concentrated 7-OH a Schedule I controlled substance — the same legal category as heroin.

Mississippi got there first. Since July 1, 2025, it has been illegal in our state to sell high-strength 7-OH products, kratom has to be kept behind the counter, and nobody under 21 can buy it. Some counties have banned kratom altogether. But laws don’t empty out the back rooms and the online storefronts overnight, and I promise you the kids know where to get it.

That’s why people in my field call it “gas station heroin.” Not to be dramatic. Because that’s what it is.

Colonel Maxwell has been sounding this alarm from the law enforcement side. On the Defining Wellness Centers 365 Proof podcast earlier this year, he warned about the dangers of unregulated products like kratom and synthetics and said the sentence I want every parent to sit with: “children are being exposed earlier than ever.” Earlier than ever. Not at the party. At the gas station on the way home from practice.

He also described what his former agents are still pulling off the street in the counterfeit pill trade: “We see fentanyl and meth being pressed, colored, scored, and sold as fake pharmaceutical drugs.” People think they’re buying something from a pharmacy shelf. They’re not. And that is exactly the lesson of the gas station counter — the packaging says one thing and the chemistry says another. A gummy is not safe because it’s a gummy. A “botanical” is not safe because it’s a plant.

Warning signs of kratom / 7-OH use:

Empty capsule bottles, foil packets, small shot bottles, or “botanical” gummies in the car, backpack, or bathroom trash
Constipation, nausea, weight loss, dry mouth, itching, pupils that look like tiny pinpoints
Nodding off, then wired and irritable a few hours later
Runny nose, sweating, chills, and flu-like misery that clears up “as soon as they run to the store”
Money disappearing — daily use of 7-OH can easily run several hundred dollars a month
Defensiveness when you ask: “It’s legal, it’s natural, it’s just a supplement”

Huffing and “whippets”: Nitrous oxide and inhalants

Parents ask me all the time: “What are these little silver canisters?” or “Why does my daughter have a box of whipped cream chargers and she doesn’t bake?”

Those are nitrous oxide cartridges — “whippets,” “nangs,” or the bigger canisters now sold at smoke shops and online under brand names like Galaxy Gas, marketed with candy flavors and bright colors and aimed directly at teenagers. The gas is inhaled from a balloon or straight from the canister for a thirty-second high.

Huffing is the older cousin: inhaling fumes from spray paint, air duster, glue, gasoline, or aerosol cleaners.

Here is what happens inside the body when someone inhales these:

The brain is starved of oxygen. Every single time. Nitrous and inhalants displace the oxygen a brain needs to function. People pass out, hit their heads, fall, or throw up and choke on it.
Nitrous oxide destroys vitamin B12 in the body, and B12 is what keeps your nerves healthy. I’ve seen young people who can no longer feel their feet, who can’t walk without help, who have permanent numbness and weakness in their legs — from a gas they thought was harmless because the dentist uses it.
Huffing can stop the heart. There is a documented phenomenon called “sudden sniffing death syndrome.” A first-time user can die on the first try. It has happened to children in this state.
It damages the brain permanently. Inhalants eat away the protective coating around nerve cells — think of the insulation on an electrical wire. What that looks like in a fifteen-year-old is memory loss, slurred speech, personality change, and a drop in grades that never comes back.

Warning signs of nitrous oxide / inhalant use:

Metal cartridges, “crackers,” balloons, or large flavored canisters
Chemical or paint smell on breath or clothes; paint or glitter stains on hands, face, or sleeves
Rags or plastic bags hidden in the bedroom or car
Red, runny nose and eyes; sores around the mouth
Slurred speech, poor coordination, a “drunk” appearance with no smell of alcohol
Tingling, numbness, or weakness in the hands and feet
Confusion, mood swings, or suddenly seeming emotionally blank — “not there”

And yes — alcohol

I would be doing you a disservice if I wrote this and left out the drug that still kills more Mississippians than any of the others combined. Alcohol is legal, it’s everywhere, and it’s the one we make excuses for. It’s also the one most often mixed with everything on this list — and the combination of alcohol with kratom, 7-OH, or inhalants is how a “party” becomes a coroner’s report.

Alcohol doesn’t get a pass in your house because it’s in yours. If the drinking is daily, if it’s hidden, if it’s the first thing after work and the last thing before bed, if there are blackouts, missed obligations, or you’re hiding the recycling — it’s the same conversation.

The energy drink problem: Modern-day speedballing

Now let me talk about the one thing on this list that nobody thinks of as a drug at all.

Walk into any gas station and look at what’s sitting right beside the kratom shots and the nitrous canisters. Energy drinks. Rows of them. And here is what I see in the kids and adults I work with: they don’t use one thing. They stack. A kratom shot and a Monster. A few whippets and a Red Bull. Three beers and a Celsius to “stay sharp.” Nobody calls that a drug combination. I do.

In my world we have an old word for pairing a stimulant with a depressant: speedballing. It used to mean cocaine and heroin. Today it means an energy drink on top of any of the substances in this article. The energy drink revs the heart and masks the sedation. The kratom, the 7-OH, the alcohol, or the nitrous slows the breathing and clouds the judgment. Your body is getting the gas pedal and the brake at the same time, and the heart is what pays for it.

A 2023 review in the journal Nutrients — titled, fittingly, “The Dark Side of Energy Drinks” — laid out the documented damage: racing and irregular heartbeats, spikes in blood pressure, dangerous changes in the heart’s electrical rhythm, and in the worst cases, heart attack and cardiac arrest in young, otherwise healthy people. It also documented seizures, kidney damage, and episodes of mania and psychosis — losing touch with reality. These drinks are sold as food supplements, so there is no legal ceiling on how much caffeine and how many other stimulants go into a single can. A teenager can drink two before lunch and be well past what any doctor would call safe — before adding anything else.

Mix that with 7-OH or alcohol, and the person feels “fine” right up until they aren’t. The energy drink hides the warning signs the body would normally give. That is exactly what makes this combination so lethal.

Warning signs of energy drink overuse — and of speedballing with other substances:

Empty cans stacking up in the car, the room, the trash — especially the tall or “extra strength” ones
Heart pounding, racing, or skipping beats; complaints of chest pain, pressure, or fluttering
Shaking hands, tremors, or restlessness that doesn’t settle
Headaches, dizziness, or fainting spells
Not sleeping, or sleeping at strange hours — wired all night, crashed all day
Anxiety, panic, irritability, or agitation out of proportion to what’s going on
Nausea, stomach pain, or vomiting
Frequent urination and constant thirst
Confusion, paranoia, or seeing and hearing things that aren’t there
Seizures — which are a 911 call, every time

If someone has been using energy drinks alongside kratom, 7-OH, alcohol, or inhalants and has chest pain, a heartbeat that won’t slow down, fainting, or a seizure — do not wait to see if it passes. Call 911 or Poison Control. The heart does not give second warnings.

Also on the shelf: Tianeptine, Delta-8, and vapes

Three more things sit on that same counter, and I’d be leaving you exposed if I skipped them.

Tianeptine — sold as Zaza, Tianna, Neptune’s Fix, and others — is the other product that earned the name “gas station heroin,” and it may be the more dangerous of the two. It’s an antidepressant approved in some other countries that was never approved here, and at the doses people take from these bottles it acts as a full opioid. Overdoses, seizures, and deaths have been reported, and the withdrawal is brutal. Mississippi has moved to ban it, but like everything else in this article, “banned” and “gone” are two different things.

Delta-8 THC and its cousins — the gummies, vapes, and drinks marketed as “legal weed” — are made by chemically altering CBD from hemp. There is no oversight of what’s actually in them. Poison Control centers have handled thousands of cases, many of them children who ate a gummy they thought was candy. In a young person who is already vulnerable, high-potency THC can trigger severe anxiety, paranoia, and psychosis.

Vapes. I know — you’ve heard about vaping. But parents still tell me, “At least it’s just nicotine.” Here is why I include it. A single disposable vape can hold as much nicotine as several packs of cigarettes, and a teenager’s brain becomes hooked on it faster than an adult’s. Nicotine at that age rewires the parts of the brain that handle attention, learning, and impulse control. And the vape is very often the first thing — the device that gets refilled with THC oil, the habit that makes the next gas station purchase feel normal. If your child is vaping, you are not dealing with a small thing. You are dealing with the front door.

And one warning that covers everything above: fentanyl. Colonel Maxwell’s former agents are finding it pressed into fake pills, and it has turned up in kratom products, THC products, and street drugs of every kind. A dose the size of a few grains of salt can kill. This is why I tell every family to keep Narcan in the house even if you’re “only” worried about a gummy or a kratom shot — because you cannot see it, smell it, or taste it, and the person selling it may not know it’s there either. Just remember: Narcan buys minutes, not a cure. Call 911 every time.

The warning signs for all of these overlap with everything above: the packaging, the money, the mood swings, the secrecy, the sickness when they run out. The rule is the same. If it came from a gas station or a vape shop and it changes how someone feels, it’s a drug.

When mental illness is part of the picture

Here is the part I need you to hear.

A lot of the kids and adults I work with are not partying. They are medicating. They have anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, bipolar disorder, and they found something at the gas station that turned the volume down for a little while. Kratom for the anxiety. Nitrous for the racing thoughts. A drink for the sleep.

The problem is that every one of these substances makes the underlying condition worse. They disrupt sleep, spike anxiety on the rebound, deepen depression, and can trigger psychosis in people who are vulnerable to it. And here is the hard truth I tell every family: the brain has a point of no return. Not for everyone, not every time. But some people use one of these drugs and something in the brain doesn’t come back — the memory, the ability to walk steadily, the ability to control emotions, the ability to feel joy. I have sat across from families who would give anything to go back to the day they said, “Let’s wait and see.”

If your loved one is struggling with a mental health condition and using, that is not two problems. That is one emergency, and it needs a professional who treats both at the same time.

This is not just a teenager problem

Let me be clear about who I’m seeing.

Yes, adolescents and college students. But also the nurse working nights who started kratom for energy. The contractor using 7-OH tablets because his back hurts and he doesn’t want to go back on pills. The stay-at-home mom whose “wellness shot” from the gas station became six a day. The attorney. The deacon. The retiree. The first responder who has seen too much and found something that quiets it down.

Addiction does not check your zip code, your degree, or your church membership. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Well, that’s not us,” — read it again.

Don’t wait six months. Here’s what to do this week.

Colonel Maxwell has run the sweeps, made the arrests, and watched the same faces come back through the system. Here is what three decades of that taught him: “real change begins upstream.” Not in the courtroom. Not in the ER. Upstream — at the kitchen table, in the youth group, in the conversation you’re afraid to start. He points to the lack of plain public education, and to the stigma that grows in that silence and keeps families quiet until it’s too late. This article is my attempt to break that silence. The rest is up to you.

Every family I’ve ever worked with wishes they’d called sooner. Nobody has ever told me they wish they’d waited. Here is the step-by-step, in order. You don’t have to do all of it. You have to do the first thing.

Step 1: Trust what you’re seeing.

If your gut says something is wrong, something is wrong. You don’t need proof. You don’t need to catch them in the act. You need to act on what you already know.

Step 2: Have the conversation — calm, private, and specific.

Not in front of siblings. Not at 11 p.m. after an argument. Sit down and say: “I found this. I’m not here to punish you. I’m scared, I love you, and we’re going to figure this out together.” Expect denial. Expect anger. Say it anyway. Then say it again next week.

Step 3: Call someone today — not after you’ve “gathered more information.”

Any one of these is a right first call:

Your pastor or a trusted church leader. Many churches in Mississippi have recovery ministries, Celebrate Recovery groups, or pastors trained in crisis response. You do not have to have the words. You just have to show up.
A licensed counselor or therapist. Especially one who treats mental health and addiction at the same time — you’ll hear this called “co-occurring” or “dual diagnosis.” Ask directly: “Do you treat addiction and mental illness together?” If the answer is no, ask for a referral to someone who does.
A counseling center or treatment provider. Mississippi has programs at every level — from a few hours a week for teens or adults, to live-in treatment, to medical detox. There are many excellent providers here in Mississippi and out of state. What matters is getting to the right level of care for this person — and that decision is made with professional help, not by guessing. A good intake coordinator or crisis navigator will assess and tell you honestly what fits.
Your family doctor or pediatrician. They can check for physical damage (especially B12 and nerve issues with nitrous), help someone come off a substance safely, and point you to the right next step.
Law enforcement. Call your local sheriff’s department or police department and ask for assistance. They are a resource, not just a threat. Many have officers trained in crisis intervention, and they know which stores are selling what and to whom. A parent asking for help is not the same as a parent turning their child in.
A crisis navigator or interventionist. This is what I do. If the family is stuck, if the person won’t go, if you don’t know what level of care is appropriate or how to pay for it, a navigator walks you through all of it and helps you get from “we don’t know what to do” to “they’re admitted.” In the Jackson area, call the Center for Hope & Healing at Broadmoor at 601-898-4947.

Step 4: If it’s an emergency, treat it like one.

Trouble breathing, unresponsive, seizure, chest pain, blue lips, sudden inability to walk or feel their legs — call 911.If someone has taken something and you’re not sure how serious it is, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222— it’s free, it’s 24 hours, and they will tell you whether to go to the ER. Keep naloxone (Narcan) in the house — it’s free through odfree.org, pharmacies, and county health departments, and yes, it can reverse a 7-OH overdose. (See “Where and how to get free Narcan in Mississippi” at the end of this article.) But understand what Narcan is and isn’t. It is not a treatment plan, and buying it in bulk is not a strategy. It is a short-term rescue that buys you about 15 minutes until the paramedics arrive. Call 911 first. Then give the Narcan. If they don’t respond in two to three minutes, give another dose — with the newest opioids, one may not be enough. And no matter what, even if they wake up, they need medical care. Get them to the hospital. If someone is talking about not wanting to be here, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any hour of the day.

And here is one most Mississippi families don’t know they have: Mobile Crisis Response Teams. Every one of our 82 counties has one, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You call a toll-free number, a licensed therapist or peer support specialist answers, and a team comes to you — your home, the school, wherever the crisis is — to assess the situation and help stabilize it. They work alongside law enforcement so that a mental health or substance use crisis doesn’t end in a jail cell or a hospital hallway when it doesn’t have to. Find your county’s team and number at mentalhealthms.com/mobile-crisis-response-teams. Put that number in your phone tonight, before you need it.

Step 5: Remove the supply and the access.

Clean out the car, the room, the bathroom. Cancel the online orders. Take the debit card if you have to. This is not punishment. This is oxygen.

Step 6: Get help for yourself, too.

Al-Anon, Families Anonymous, a counselor of your own, a friend who has walked this road. I also point families to the Family Recovery Collective (familyrecoverycollective.com) — an online community and education program built by a therapist and a recovery coach who have both lived this from the family side. It’s expert-led, it’s low-cost, and it’s for the people holding everything together at 2 a.m. You cannot carry this alone and you were never meant to.

Step 7: Follow through.

Assessment leads to a recommendation. Take the recommendation. If they say residential, don’t negotiate down to outpatient because it’s more convenient. If they say medication for the underlying depression, don’t skip it because you’re nervous about pills. And hear this from a man who has watched thousands of people cycle through jail cells after a few days of getting clean — Colonel Maxwell says it in four words: “Detox is not treatment.” Getting the drug out of the body is day one, not the finish line. Do what the professionals say, all the way through, and stay in it after discharge.

Step 8: If they refuse, you still have options.

This is the question I get most: “What if they won’t go?” You are not powerless. A trained interventionist can bring a family together in a way that gets a “yes” more often than you’d expect. Your Mobile Crisis Response Team can assess someone who won’t leave the house. And when someone is a danger to themselves or others and will not accept help, Mississippi law allows a family member to petition the chancery clerk in your county for an evaluation and, if needed, court-ordered treatment. It is a hard step and I never take it lightly — but I have watched it save lives that nothing else could reach. Call a navigator before you file anything; we can walk you through it.

Reach out. You are not alone.

I don’t write these things to scare you. I write them because I have sat with too many families who carried this by themselves for too long — good, loving people who kept it quiet because they were ashamed, or hopeful, or just didn’t know who to tell. Almost every one of them has said some version of the same thing to me: “I wish I had reached out sooner.”

So hear me: there is no shame in this house. Addiction is not a character flaw and it is not a parenting failure. It is a health crisis, and health crises get treated. Reaching out is not giving up on the person you love. It is the most loving thing you can do for them.

You have time right now. Use it. Your pastor, a counselor, your doctor, a mobile crisis team, the sheriff, a treatment center, a navigator — it does not matter who you call first. It only matters that you call. Whoever picks up the phone has heard this before, and they will not think less of you. Neither will I.

Colonel Maxwell made a promise to this state that he has kept for thirty years: “We can and will continue to do whatever it takes to keep our citizens safe.” He has done his part on the highways and in the courtrooms. I’ve tried to do mine in the treatment centers. But neither of us can do the part that happens in your house. That one is yours — and you don’t have to do it alone.

That’s what Recovery Month is really about. Not just the ones who made it — the ones who are about to. SAMHSA’s message this September is simple, and I’ll borrow it: with the right treatment, support, and resources, recovery is possible for everyone. That includes the person you’re worried about. That includes you.

If you don’t know where to start, start with me. You can also reach out to us at the Center for Hope & Healing at Broadmoor, 212 Key Drive, Madison, MS 39110 — 601-898-4947. We help families in crisis figure out the next step, whether that’s an intervention, a treatment placement, or just someone to talk to.

We are here for you.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of SuperTalk Mississippi Media.