Backstreet Mom: A Mother's Tale of Backstreet Boy AJ McLean's Rise to Fame, Struggle With Addiction, and Ultimate Triumph (46 page)

After the first week, I scheduled the therapist to fly in and meet us at
the next city. She was to stay for a couple of days. The goal was for her to get in as much time with Alex as was possible. It was a costly expense, so I wanted him to get the most out of it that he could. The boys
spent a lot of money on the road for frivolous stuff. I felt that this was
something worthwhile. The expense was Alex's alone, so no one could
complain.

The tour staff understood the situation. They helped to arrange her
travel and hotel bookings. That assured me she would arrive without
incident. Vicki was also a recovering alcoholic and drug addict herself.
She could speak from the heart when it came to her patients. I liked that
about her.

She showed great concern for me and we had a few conversations
about how I should handle Alex's situation. I was still hesitant to call it
an addiction. Vicki helped me understand that what my brother had
told me was absolutely right. Alex would not be forced into recovery
until he was ready. That meant he had to reach his bottom. In other
words, he had to reach that point at which he had nowhere else to go.
That was a really difficult concept for me to accept. I think it is for any
parent.

Imagine having to purposely step outside the protective bubble you
have formed for your child. In our case, I think my instincts were even
stronger than normal in that area. It had been just the two of us for so
long and Alex had chosen a field where the sharks circled continuously.
I had grown so used to keeping the predators at bay that it was difficult
for me to reconcile with the idea of leaving him to fight them off on his
own. And he was still suffering from the loss of a woman who had been
like a mother to him. In a way, we had both lost a parent.

Actually, I was still having problems coping with my mother's death.
With all of the other pressures on Alex, I was certain that he was having
even greater difficulty. I did not make excuses for his actions, but I tried
to get into his head so that I might understand just what he was thinking. There was not one reason that I could find that warranted the beginning of his drinking at such a young age. I was never one to consider
drinking a solution to life's problems, nor were my parents. We were all
social drinkers.

In the beginning, when I first went out on the road with the band, I
tried to keep up with them. It was a way to feel like I was part of the
group. But I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to do my job
if I was up every night drinking with them until all hours. They had no
responsibilities before 5:00 P.M. the next day, whereas I had to be up early
to work a normal office day. Going out with the boys became an isolated
event for me, something that I did on occasion if the next day was free.

The question, of course, was why Alex chose the path that he did. He
had everything he could ever wish for: fame, fortune and a family who
loved him no matter what. I really could not understand what was going through his mind.

I do know that when Donna was around, certain situations arose that
involved pressure to partake of alcohol and marijuana. He told me then
that he had experimented, but in the early days it was easier for me to
keep a close eye on him. That was not the case anymore.

Unfortunately Alex always wanted to please people and fit in. I believe that led him to the mindset that experimenting was okay. It made
him feel like he belonged to something, especially when he had adults
doing it with him.

Back then, Alex told me that he tried drugs a couple of times and
gave it up. It made him sleepy and he did not really like it. Had he lied?
My son had developed a manipulative nature over the years and he was
definitely prone to exaggeration. Maybe all of his shenanigans were a
way to keep me off his back. I was getting myself more confused by the
minute. I decided to take Vicki's advice and step back to watch him and
see where he was headed.

When Vicki was around, he tried several times to manipulate situations and use her sessions as an excuse to drink. For example, one night
we went to a very fun place. It was a restaurant, bowling alley and arcade, all in one. While we played video games everything was fine. Then
we had a nice meal and did a bit of bowling. All of a sudden Alex left
and returned with a beer.

Sarah and I looked at one another and asked him why he had done
that.

"Vicki told me that I should try to cut down on my drinking instead
of stopping altogether," he said. "She said that if I could make it through
an evening without alcohol, that was fine, but if I couldn't, it was okay
to do so in moderation."

"That doesn't sound right to me," I said. "I want to talk to Vicki about
this."

Alex got very defensive. Then he started pacing around the place.

"You're just using blackmail to get me to stop drinking!" he said angrily.

Finally, I said, "Look! Just do what you want. I'm leaving!"

Then I left.

When I spoke to Vicki the next day and told her what happened, she
said that Alex had twisted her words and used them to his own benefit.
She also told me that he had all the symptoms of an addict and that I needed to treat him like one. Since I didn't quite understand what she
meant by that, we discussed it further.

Finally, I asked her straight out, "Is my son an addict?"

"Yes," she said.

I was shocked and scared at the same time. Visions of him dead in a
gutter from an overdose flashed into my mind. What was I supposed to
do? She explained to me again that there was nothing that I could do.

My heart sank as I left her hotel room. Tears filled my eyes. What had
I done wrong? Had I protected him too much? His whole life played
through my head. All I saw was happiness. We had nothing but love in
our house after his father left. My parents had done everything, sometimes too much, to make him feel loved and special. He had never wanted for anything. I had worked two and three jobs to see to that. I could
not understand what was happening.

My head was swimming when I returned to my room. I called my
brother and he told me that there was a predisposition to alcohol abuse
in our family. He had his own bouts with it over the years. Some of what
he said came rushing back to me. I remembered how many years before,
he would go on drinking binges and had to be found and brought home.
But where did this come from?

I tried talking to different members of my family to see if anyone else
had that type of problem. The only one I came up with was Dad's father.
He was a big partier and womanizer. The man spent money like water
and never gave his son a second thought. He would hand him money
and tell him to get lost. That was the extent of their interaction. Could
that have been where the problems in the gene pool began?

I asked Vicki what she thought. She told me not to kill myself trying
to figure out where it came from, but rather to deal with the problem at
hand. So that was what I tried to do.

LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER the tour began, I realized that I had to leave
Alex to attend a previously scheduled VH1 Save the Music Foundation
fundraiser in New York with my nephew, Billy. Before deciding for certain about making the trip, I waited to see how things went with Alex. If
that situation took a bad turn, my nephew would have to go without
me. First things first.

As it turned out, Alex seemed to be doing fine. Sarah agreed to stay
with him until I got back from New York. I felt fairly comfortable leaving, since I knew in my heart that things were going to run their course,
with or without me there.

The night before I left, there was a knock on my door at a very late
hour. It was Sarah. She was frightened, almost hysterical. I told her to
calm down and tell me what had happened. She said that Alex had gone
back out after they returned from the arcade. He was gone for several
hours and she was sure that he was out looking for drugs.

Finally, upon his return, she said, he became frantic and terribly angry. He had a tantrum, during which he punched a few walls and trashed
the hotel room. Sarah was afraid for both him and herself.

I sent Sarah back to Alex and asked Marcus to meet me at my son's
room. By the time I dressed and got there, Alex was on the couch, crying and holding his hand. He said he thought he might have broken it.
I took a moment to look around the room. There was furniture and
clothing tossed all over the place. He had broken a glass from the bar
and Sarah was trying to pick up the pieces. She was visibly shaken and
avoided looking at me.

I asked Alex what had happened. He told me that he was angry with
himself because he had fallen off the wagon and had tried to score some
drugs. He had wound up drinking for most of the night. I was a bit
confused by that because when I had taken leave of him, he was calm
and seemed to be looking forward to relaxing in bed and falling asleep
while watching television.

Apparently, he had fallen asleep for a while. A craving that he could
not get rid of awakened him. In an effort to find someone who would go out with him, he went out into the hallway and knocked on a bunch of
doors. When that didn't work, he went downstairs to drink in the bar.
By the time he got back up to the room, he was angry and acting crazy.
Sarah did not know what to do, so she came to me.

Alex and me on the Today Show with Ann Curry and Matt Lauer

I held him and tried to calm him down. I felt better knowing that
Vicki was due to arrive the next day. He would be able talk to her and
work through what was ailing him. When Marcus got to the room, he
helped us clean up the mess.

Sarah pulled me aside and told me that she had had enough. She
planned to catch the next plane to Los Angeles. I convinced her to stay,
at least until I got back from New York. She agreed and we all got back
to a normal night's rest.

The incident made me realize just how desperately Alex needed help.
1 was torn over whether to go to New York. After a conversation with
Vicki the next morning, I decided to go and leave Alex in her capable
hands.

At the end of my stay in New York, I received a call from home. My
brother was concerned about my dad and was at his wit's end. He sounded
terrible. I was forced to make yet another tough decision. I called Vicki.
She said she had made some significant breakthroughs with Alex and
that he had been quite cooperative.

In an attempt to help him with his anxiety and cravings, they had
tried hypnosis. It sometimes worked well with addicts since there were
triggers she could use. In other words, if she knew Alex got anxious
when he saw a beer commercial on television, then that was a trigger
that she could program through hypnosis for him to ignore the commercial or replace it with something not harmful to him like a soda or
candy. He had used it a couple of times and it seemed to help.

With that bit of good news, plus the fact that my nephew agreed to go
out on the road for a couple of weeks with Alex, I decided to go home
and see about Dad. I know now that alcoholics are great liars and manipulators. Alex had become a master at both. Those few events made it
very clear to me that I had to make every effort to learn all I could about
my son's addiction.