Read Online Lost Girls by Caitlin Rother - Free Book Online Page B

from her six-year-old broke Cathy’s heart. “It was horribly sad,” she said.
    John Sr. only made things worse by putting a negative spin on the crying. “Your mom is turning you into a fag,” he told his son. When John Jr. heard this, he got quiet and silent. “John [Sr.] didn’t know how to show affection, attention,” Cathy recalled. “He was worried somehow that if he was too affectionate with his son, it was going to make him effeminate, and John was already kind of a crybaby.”
    Around this same time, the boy took a hundred-dollar bill out of his dad’s wallet and took it to school to try to make friends. A teacher saw him playing around with it and reported the incident to his parents. When he got home, he got a spanking.
    Consulting with John Jr.’s doctor, Cathy took her son off the Ritalin for a couple of weeks, which initially helped with the rebound effects, but the other behavioral problems resumed. He was out of control, being aggressive and in constant motion, making odd noises and acting the class clown at Ocotillo School. This time they tried extended-release Ritalin.
    Cathy had enough college credits to complete her associate’s degree in 1985 and became a registered nurse. The new form of Ritalin allowed her to do a calming bedtime routine similar to the one she’d used when he was a baby: They talked about his day, then she gave him a bath, read him a story and put him to bed.
    Around this time, the boy started setting fires. At age six, he started one in a wastebasket, and when he was seven, he and a friend lit up a large field, requiring the fire department to come and put out the blaze.
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    By the second grade, the doctors tried switching John to Cylert, which contained amphetamines (and has since been discontinued). This drug caused John to experience stomach upset and insomnia. He hid the pills in his cheek, then stuffed them under the dryer, where Cathy ultimately found fifty of them socked away.
    The doctor put John back on the Ritalin and he was sent to a child psychologist every week for three months, then occasionally for three more months. At the psychologist’s suggestion, John was evaluated by a psychiatrist for depression and was diagnosed with conduct disorder. He also started making a sound like he was clearing his throat, so he went into speech therapy as well.
    The next year, he saw two other psychiatrists at Kaiser Permanente, who once again increased John’s Ritalin dosage to fifteen milligrams, with an extra five milligrams at four in the afternoon for special events or homework. This time, he did better in school and his behavior improved. When he had insomnia, Cathy tried giving him the antihistamine Benadryl at the doctor’s advice, but that only made John Jr. accuse her of trying to make him sleep when he didn’t want to.
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    In the midst of all this, Cathy’s relationship with John Sr. had begun to deteriorate.
    They were renting a house in Palmdale, which they had an option to buy. To come up with a down payment, she’d been working double shifts—weekdays at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Neuropsychiatric Institute and weekends in the intensive-care unit at Palmdale Hospital. This was necessary because John Sr. had injured his back at work—falling off a ladder while lifting some boxes—and had been receiving only a small disability check for the past couple of years.
    He had two back surgeries and operations on both feet in 1986 and 1987, which kept him taking codeine and made him moody and cranky. “I can’t go play tennis. I can’t go fishing. I can’t do any of these things because I’m in constant pain,” he complained.
    â€œHe got very depressed being a shut-in,” Cathy recalled.
    John Sr. started smoking pot for the pain, and his mood improved. Cathy didn’t realize, however, that he’d thrown some speed into