Parent University Hosts Attorney General,

Provides Substance Abuse Prevention

By John Voket

& Eliza Hallabeck

Caroline could be one of the many relatively nondescript women you might see running in to pick up a couple of quick things at Caraluzzi’s or walking briskly beside her dog along the trails at Fairfield Hills or trotting into her weekly yoga class at the Graceful Planet.

She asked The Newtown Bee to identify her by an assumed name, because she is the mother of a recovering addict who spent last Saturday morning working to protect other parents from experiencing the same sort of personal hell she went through.

And because when she was in her darkest hour, watching as her child battled the two-headed demons of heroin and Oxycontin, she reached out and Newtown Parent Connection co-founders Dorrie Carolan and Donna DeLuca were there with a solution, and arms outstretched to hold Caroline through the process.

“Without the Newtown Parent Connection, I don’t know if I would be alive today, never mind my son,” she confessed as she stood chatting with Ms Carolan at NPC’s Parent University, which was held at the Newtown Middle School on March 20.

A few years, and seemingly an entire lifetime, earlier, Caroline might have heard about the organization or its annual symposium full of parental inspiration, tips and ideas to help influence children to resist the temptation to experiment with drugs, and shrugged it off.

“You want to find a reason it couldn’t possibly be you.” But in Caroline’s case, she came to the realization that by the time her own child was 16, there was a gradual transition from experimenting with smoking pot to becoming a regular user.

“By high school I knew he was on to other things,” she said, gazing downward her voice trailing off. “I even suspected he was running his drugs up from New York to Newtown.”

It was almost two years ago to the day, Saturday, that Caroline’s son entered his first tour in rehab.

“By then he was using Oxy and heroin,” she said.

Since that fateful, hopeful day, Caroline has not seen much of her son — but that is because it has taken that long for him to prove to himself and his program that he can stay clean, and to earn his privileges to visit.

“He’s been back two times. Last Thanksgiving and two weeks ago,” she said. “And before he walked into the house, and after he went back [into the program following the visits], he had to show proof he was clean.”

While it was Caroline’s first opportunity to give back to the local volunteer parent support program, she admitted that she might never be able to do enough to repay Ms Carolan and Ms DeLuca for being the friends and providing the resource she needed to save her son’s life.

“When you finally admit it to yourself that your child is an addict, you don’t know who you can talk to,” she said. “But once you ask for it, you finally realize that you need a lot of help.”

Saturday’s Parent University opened with a keynote talk from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, making his second appearance at the event. The aspiring US Senate candidate talked about how important it was to set an appropriate example.

“When my oldest son was 6 or 7, we were sitting at the dinner table and I was drinking a glass of wine. And he looked at me and said, ‘Dad, alcohol is bad for you — my teacher told me.’ So I tried to explain to him that a glass of wine in moderation was fine,” Mr Blumenthal recounted.

But his son was persistent, so Mr Blumenthal said he would make a deal that if his son never drank, he wouldn’t either.

“It was easy for him, he was 6 or 7,” the AG said laughing, but since that day, “I have abided. I don’t think he has.”

The audience soon learned that the boy has since completed his undergraduate degree from Harvard and is a recent graduate from West Point’s Officer Candidate School.

As parents and attendees broke out of the opening keynote, they split into groups to attend the first session of workshops that included topics “Keeping FUN in Functional Families,” “This is Your Kid’s Brain…This is Your Kid’s Brain on Alcohol And Drugs,” “No Dread Sex Ed,” and “Friending, Texting and Twittering: What’s A Parent To Do?”

A movie was provided for children’s entertainment along with D.J. Music Man Kevin Koschel.

“It was really wonderful,” said Ms Carolan on Tuesday, March 23, looking back on the event. “The speakers were great.”

Newtown Parent Connection hosts support groups at 115 Mt Pleasant Road. Its Bereavement Support Group meets the first Wednesdays of each month from 7:30 pm until 9 pm, its Grands Place Support Group, for grandparents and caregivers, meets every Wednesday from noon until 2 pm, and its Hope And Support Group meetings each Thursday from 7 to 9 pm.  More information is available at NewtownParentConnection.org.