Introduction
Josh's addiction takes everything he has worked for in life in less than 2 years, in this clip from Season 17, Episode 3.
#Intervention
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"Intervention" profiles people whose addictions or other compulsive behaviors have brought them to a point of personal crisis, and the friends and family members who come together to help them.
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Content
This program contains subject matter and language that may be disturbing to some viewers.
Viewer discretion is advised, my name is joshua and I live in raleigh north carolina, I'm 34 years old, joshua's, a very smart man, very intelligent, very articulate.
I knew what I wanted out of life very early on how many other kids have you ever seen that have bought a house? Have a family at 21.
We were the happy family.
You know all we were missing was the white picket fence.
He was very, very successful.
I bragged about him to everybody, never hear it anymore.
I know I got to get back.
It was a lot of fun.
He lost everything he had and it all kind of happened within a uh one or two year period.
I was about 32 years old.
When I moved back into mom love, you be good.
My son joshua is an alcoholic on top of just having an addiction that takes everything away from my life.
I have an additional layer, it's kind of a weird thing: it's like one of the people that eat you know sofa cushions or something like that.
Joshua is addicted to hand sanitizer joshua will drink hand sanitizer nearly every single day he drinks anywhere from 12 to 28 ounces.
So all I do is add some water to it.
I have drank it completely, 100 straight before uh, but the consistency is I just.
I can't it's like loogie stuck in your mouth all the time.
It never crosses your mind to think that someone would use hand sanitizer to get high.
I just couldn't imagine drinking something so thick and gulping it down.
It actually makes me sick to my stomach after I've had one entire bottle.
I can actually drink the second bottle completely straight hand.
Sanitizer is everywhere.
A standard size bottle is actually eight ounces.
This is like the most prominent ones that you see on like desks and stuff all over the place.
Three and a half shots for a dollar 39.
I don't know any bar in the world that would do that.
I'm a binge drinker.
I've put myself in some alcohol poisonous type situations very quickly hand.
Sanitizer is really dangerous because it's not designed for human consumption.
I have no idea what's happening to my brain and my body from all the inactive ingredients he's going to drink it all whatever's there.
It's a race to the bottom of the bottle, it's destroying him inside and out outside an end he's been in the hospital at least a dozen times in the last three or four months, his heart, liver, kidneys, internal organs is being affected by this stuff.
He has seizures he's been on life.
Support he's almost gone blind.
I live in fear that the phone's gonna ring and he's gonna be dead any time.
If someone had told me years ago that joshua would grow up to be addicted to hand sanitizer, I would have called him crazy.
There's no way no way.
My son, my successful son would drink hand sanitizer and like it.
The day joshua was born was a surprise.
He was born six weeks premature.
He was a little teeny itsy bitsy thing.
He was a happy baby, very easy going child, but there was a lot of fighting going on between joshua's father and I so I left and left the children with their father.
I raised him from the age of 2 to 15 with his father gary.
He was a great well-mannered.
Kid growing up through the years, never got any mischief any trouble in new york.
I grew up in a very small town.
Our school was k through 12 and it had about 300 students total a lot of the people around.
There were very country and very into hunting, but I like to play guitar and listen to music and I didn't quite fit in the summer.
In between ninth and tenth grade I was 15 years old.
I decided to move in with my mother.
Florida was super dynamic and it was great and it gave me the opportunity to reinvent myself.
Joshua flourished.
He took music lessons.
He was an ab student.
He excelled at the courses he took when he went to college.
I didn't worry about him ever drinking or smoking or getting in with the wrong crowd, because I knew the person he was.
He wanted to go to college, get a good job, get a house and then find the love of his life.
When I met joshua, he was working at a convenience store, he was happy and funny and very knowledgeable and he had the gorgeous blue eyes.
I just melt every time I look into him.
I told her that I was 23 years old because I thought that would be believable and she said she was 27., okay, cool on her second date.
I decided to tell the truth and say: hey just so.
You know I'm 19 years old and she said what you're a teenager and then she stormed off and then I called her later and said: hey that's only four years.
What's the problem she said.
Well, I lied too, I'm 33.
So when we met we were only four years apart, but by the time we were in love, we were 14 years apart.
It didn't seem like I was dating a 19 year old, a lot of people frowned upon it, but I didn't care and he didn't care.
I fell in love right away and I fell in love with their kids right away.
I wasn't thrilled at all when the relationship in the beginning, this older woman, was taking my son and having him become a father right away at 19., I found a house that I wanted to buy.
I closed on it when I was 21 and we moved in.
He landed a great job and within a year he got promoted and was in charge of 14 different convenience stores.
I was very proud of him.
When joshua was 27, he decided to have gastric bypass to help with the weight loss.
Joshua didn't lose weight as quickly as he wanted to.
He couldn't exercise because he was having back issues.
I ruptured one disc and then herniated another.
I was prescribed hydrocodone quite a bit of it like a hundred pills a month for about eight months.
I got really used to it and started using in a manner that was not prescribed to me to make me feel happy after the back surgery.
He was feeling better, so they quit prescribing it and that's when he went to street drugs.
I was doing all of them from hydro to oxycodone fentanyl, like just the whole list of prescription.
Alcohol was another thing that he started doing that with the two of them mixing he would pass out drunk, swept him down, he's not drinking, but you could tell he's drunk.
My addiction became my number one priority and I was drunk all the time and just not a good husband, and I was not a good father.
Joshua was in and out of rehabs, but he couldn't stay clean.
The more I fought to get him better, the more he fought to get away from me and just push me away and pushed everybody else away.
The big problem was that I was just losing everything left and right.
Within a one year span my children left.
I got a divorce and I lost my job.
Somebody in rehab told him how he could do the hand sanitizer mix it with a little juice, so it doesn't taste so bad, so you can get drunk.
I really don't know what would be worse than drinking hand sanitizer.
He had been in the hospital over a dozen times in just the last few months and I'm terrified that one of these times they're not going to be able to save them.
There's a point during the drinking phase that I know that I change that I switch from just talking like I normally would do acting out of anger or act out of paranoia without even considering whether it makes sense or not.
He used to be a happy drunk now he's an angry drunk and he gets violent.
I don't have another drink kidding me dude where's, the other bottle.
Where the is my drink.
I only know of the two bottles, the square one and the one that you were damn.
How do you not know what I'm talking about you're, the one that came in and asked me whether that was you're, the one that looked at my mattress and says: where is it and then picked it up huh? Do you not know what I'm talking about? Well, it wasn't a square bottle that I picked up underneath I don't give.
Where is it hey, honey, I'm so glad you're here? What's going on, we love you me too, dear josh, but I am here today because I love you.
You have so much positive potential for great things that lie ahead for you.
I know for a fact, you're struggling at this point in your life.
I am so afraid for you right now.
I am strongly urging you to make an immediate decision and commitment to turn your life around today.
Don't give up.
I know you can do it.
This disease has changed you, the fire in your eyes, for life has diminished and the saddens me.
The things like the family or the kids are not as important as getting your next drink and drugs have made you not care if you live or die, and this scares me it's time to get help to heal yourself and the family.
We've been sick long enough, I'm here to tell you that I love you more than you can possibly fathom, but I don't like some of the choices you are currently making.
I'm very concerned and afraid that you are killing yourself.
I can't and won't sit idly by and be witness to my son's death.
Often I've wondered about like what value and what worth I have anymore as a human being, because I've lost so much and done so much damage and hurt so many people.
The fact that you guys are all here and you write these letters and you visit me- shows that I guess I do have a value.
Yes, you do, and I do have worth so in an effort to help me prove to myself that I have it.
I will gladly accept anything when joshua said yes and said he was gonna go.
It was the the happiest moment I've had for a long long time.
I am so relieved and so excited for the first time.
In a long time I feel like I can breathe a sigh of relief that he is on the way to recovery.
I made sure that the treatment center knew to get rid of all the hand sanitizer, so they have nothing here.
It's all alcohol free hand.
Sanitizer is everywhere.
It's always in your face.
It's available.
It's extremely easy to get.
So maybe there's a slight concern that I have that I'll be tempted after I get out, but I'm hoping that this is going to help me kind of absolve and learn how to abstain from that physically.
I feel fine and my memory is starting to return.
I am remembering things better.
I am quicker to solve problems.
What's been the hardest thing for you these first couple weeks after I'd been here like seven days, there was an opportunity to take hand sanitizer from a outside meeting that we were at, and I just took it without even thinking that relapse kind of made me realize that this is something beyond what I can control, I'm so proud of you for realizing that and just digging in deeper you.
