“I didn’t know how to be a mom,” Lisa Galvan said. “I was used to being by myself. It was really hard for me to adjust and even for the kids to adjust because I never was around. So when I came back out [of rehab] they gave them back to me, and within a month I started using again.”
By the time Galvan was 20, she had three children and had been using meth for seven years. She had been a drug addict for far longer than she’d been a mother, and when she tried to get sober, she found out she needed more than just substance abuse treatment before she could properly care for her kids.
These days the nation is on high alert, for good reason, about the impact of drug abuse on children and foster care systems across the nation. The national conversation is focused on the epidemic-level abuse of heroin and opioids, but the scene in LA, where Galvan lives, is a bit different.
“There are concerning trends, but the opioid epidemic hasn’t touched LA County the way it has other parts of the country,” said Gary Tsai, medical director and science officer for LA County’s Department of Public Health Substance Abuse and Control division, citing increases in emergency room visits and hospitalizations related to opioid use.
[For more of this story, written by Sara Tiano, go to http://jjie.org/2016/11/30/in-...ugs-keep-their-kids/]
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