Keith Farmer\u2019s story and fight with addiction started when he was 12 years old. His battle with finding recovery didn\u2019t happen until he was 35 because his family didn\u2019t consider his use of pain pills and heroin to be a problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just what we did,\u201d the Louisville resident said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it was a problem. You don\u2019t know you have a problem until you have it.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a family that is full of addicts, it\u2019s not common for any of them to get help or be supportive of the other family members searching for help because they often don\u2019t want help, experts say. They don\u2019t want to have a light shined on their mistakes and cries for help.<\/p>\n
Brandon Lockwood, 41, also of Louisville, said he started his journey with addiction when he was 15 years old. Since then, he has been in 20 different recovery settings: detoxes, 28-day programs, half-way houses.<\/p>\n
Lockwood is currently in The Healing Place, a rehab center in Louisville.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my first long term treatment and is the first-time court mandated,\u201d Lockwood said.<\/p>\n
Through the resources of rehab, Lockwood was able to gain knowledge on the symptoms and signs of addiction, giving him an edge over his problem.<\/p>\n
Before rehab, he said, \u201cI thought I was smarter than the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a supportive family that is awaiting positive results and indications of recovery, Lockwood is now looking forward to full recovery and says he is making real progress.<\/p>\n
Cameron Isbell\u2019s first experience with controlled substances started when he was 13 years old and living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He described his experience with a quote from the foreword to the first edition of the Alcoholics Anonymous book, which talks about trying to recover from a \u201chopeless state of mind and body.\u201d<\/p>\n
He feels like he has a reliable support system \u2013 but one that is also flawed. He described his mother as a \u201chigh functioning addict,\u201d which is what experts call a drug user who is able to perform at a sufficient level while abusing drugs.<\/p>\n
Other than his mother\u2019s addiction to opioids, his family was very against alcohol and nicotine products and mostly stayed away from them until Isbell was admitted into his first rehab program when he was 22.<\/p>\n
All of these experiences \u2013 one having a larger family history factor, one having a ton of family support and another being more about being the outlier in the family history \u2013 all have one thing in common: They all started as teens.<\/p>\n
Oldham County Sheriff\u2019s Deputy Russell Ruff said marijuana is still the number one drug he sees teens and adults using.<\/p>\n
\u201cI usually see teen athletes getting injured and then they get addicted to the pain pills they were given,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I arrest a minor, unless it was a class D felony or higher, they are returned to their parents and are not sent to a facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd depending on the case,\u201d he added, \u201cwe sometimes must bring the juvenile to the detention center in Campbell County, which is an hour to an hour and a half away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruff said the problem is there are no rehab centers or programs for minors in Kentucky, including at the detention centers.<\/p>\n
Keith Farmer, Brandon Lockwood and Cameron Isbell all said if they had gotten help when they were teens, they most likely would not currently be in a rehab center in Louisville.<\/p>\n
And, they think, the lives of countless others might be remarkably different, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Keith Farmer\u2019s story and fight with addiction started when he was 12 years old. His battle with finding recovery didn\u2019t happen until he was 35 because his family didn\u2019t consider his use of pain pills and heroin to be a problem. \u201cIt was just what we did,\u201d the Louisville resident said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":252371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,467,462],"tags":[518,509,519,520],"staff_name":[507],"class_list":["post-252369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-x22","category-xposure-2022","tag-addiction","tag-mental-health","tag-teens","tag-treatment","staff_name-jaylin-jaggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252369"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252404,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252369\/revisions\/252404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252369"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=252369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}