Mother and son duo Laurie and Keegan Wicks visited our class on Tuesday, February 20, 2018 to talk about their family’s fight against addiction and their family’s recovery. Keegan has been in long-term recovery for eight years and works in the recovery advocacy field with The Rase Project.

“I’m not an addict,” said Keegan. “Just a person who suffers from a fatal illness.” He stressed the importance of language when talking about addiction and recovery. You wouldn’t call someone a cancer if they got cancer, he added.

They shared their struggles as a family when it came to Keegan’s recovery. When Keegan was first put into inpatient treatment, there was a blackout period of 10 days where the family couldn’t see or speak to Keegan. The four and a half months that followed the blackout period, they could only see him for a couple hours on a Sunday after driving for several hours. Laurie spoke about her struggle as a mother dealing with her son’s addiction and recovery, which really hit home for me as my family, my mother specifically, has struggled with getting my brother into the proper inpatient program.

Despite their success story, Laurie said that there is no single path, and what might work for one person might not work for another. You must treat everyone as an individual because everyone has different needs.