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Local author tackles addiction and its strain on the family
Libby Cataldi discourages both enabling, ‘tough love'
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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Libby Cataldi pictured with her sons, Jeffrey and Jeremy Bratton.
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Libby Cataldi could not stop the pain, so she wrote about it.
It was not just her pain, but the pain of entire family as her "brilliant" yet dangerously addicted son Jeffrey was in jail.
"He says it started as a party … and then all of a sudden he was stuck in a sandstorm and couldn't get out," said Cataldi, an Owings resident whose novel "Stay Close" was released on April 28. Cataldi is also the former head of The Calverton School, where she worked for 21 years.
She said she did not initially intend for her book to be published, but was encouraged by an unlikely source.
"When Jeffrey recovered and rigorous honesty came forward we started to heal. Jeffrey says this is his 12th step," she said, of the novel to which not only Jeffrey Bratton, 30, but her other son Jeremy Bratton, 29, contributed.
"Maybe somebody else can learn from our mistakes because we made plenty; tons," she said.
The key mistake Cataldi said she made was enabling her son's addictions, which she said took place within a 14-year span and ranged from alcohol to marijuana to ketamine to crystal meth to heroin, "his drug of choice."
"In the end he was so sick that he was shooting it into his neck and into his groin," said Cataldi, who continued that she feels she enabled Jeffrey by paying his bills and rent, as well as constantly bailing him out of jail and buying him groceries.
"He got into trouble and we went to help," Cataldi said of herself and her former husband.
Through it all, Cataldi knew what she could not do: Be a bearer of "tough love."
She instead took an approach from her second home, Italy. This approach was "stagli vicino" or "stay close," which she calls "the opposite of tough love." Eventually, Cataldi stopped giving her son financial support.
" … I can't fix things for you, I can't pay your rent but I can stay close … I didn't enable for maybe the first time in my life," Cataldi said, explaining that she had to make her son realize that "help is not the color of money."
By no longer enabling, Cataldi was able to allow Jeffrey to choose to get help on his own.
"He said he realized that he was going to die … The day he decided to put himself into recovery he was in jail and in the hospital in the same day," Cataldi said of Jeffrey, who has now been clean for three years and lives in California where he works for a public relations firm. He also volunteers at a homeless shelter and a needle exchange program.
When initially asked if Jeffrey continues to struggle with temptations, Cataldi paused.
"I think he'll probably struggle all his life … [but] through this book and through his work at the homeless shelter, maybe he's not struggling so much," she said.
Several minutes later, Cataldi received a phone call from Jeffrey himself.
"Hey cutie pie," she answered. " … Do you still struggle?"
After hanging up Cataldi re-phrased the initial answer.
"He says, yeah, he still struggles but it's a different kind of struggle … he still thinks about it but when he thinks about it he remembers where he was and it keeps him from going back," she said.
Cataldi said that though much of the book was written as a way of healing for her family, she is also hoping it will remove some of the stigma that goes with openly discussing addiction.
"We still don't talk about addiction. We keep it in the shadows, under the table," Cataldi said of her book, which has received praise from authors Tom Clancy and Martha Tod Dudman.
As for how she's doing these days, Cataldi answered "It's been hell, but I'm more humble than I've ever been, I'm more compassionate than I've ever been and I think I'm a better mother than I've ever been. Today I live in a space of gratitude."
Book signing
Libby Cataldi will hold a book signing and discussion at The Calverton School on Thursday, May 21, at 6 p.m. For more information and book reviews, go to www.libbycataldi.com.
