Five months after his 18th birthday, my oldest son started talking a mile a minute. He couldn’t sleep. Things he said made no sense. Doctors diagnosed him with psychosis and hospitalized him against his will.
Eight months later, my silly, big-hearted boy experienced a second episode, forcing him to leave college. The meds doctors prescribed made him “feel like a Scooby-Doo zombie.” He quit taking them. Instead, he self-medicated with pot, which ended up making his condition worse.
My life got reduced to keeping things normal-ish for my younger kids and making sure my eldest recovered — or attempting to manage him when he didn’t.
Last summer, my son cycled through three psychiatric hospitals in three months. After signing himself out of the last one, he settled in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, just south of the leafy, liberal town where my husband and I raised him.
In early November, troubling texts and social media posts signaled his continued deterioration. For the first time ever, my son made threats of harm against our family. Two days before Thanksgiving, he drove to Florida, where his dad and I live, claiming we owed him thousands of dollars. We disagreed. He stormed off and checked into a motel a mile away. That night, we learned he’d charged a 9 mm pistol and 100 rounds of ammo to his credit card. He had to wait three days to pick them up.
I was vaguely aware of federal and state red flag laws and presumed these laws made my son ineligible to own a gun. Since he’d threatened his younger brother in a text a week earlier, I wanted to be certain this was the case. Fifteen minutes before closing, I called the outdoor store where my son purchased the weapon, but they wouldn’t release any information. They advised me to call the police. I hung up and called my local police department.
Florida law leaves people struggling with mental illnesses alone unless they pose an immediate threat of serious harm to themselves or others. I’d originally spoken with police after my son threatened us. Since he lived 1,200 miles away, they hadn’t deemed his threats credible. Now that he was only a mile away and waiting to take possession of a gun, I figured officers would collect him and spirit him to a hospital. This would buy us 72 hours — the amount of time the state allots for doctors to determine if someone meets involuntary hospitalization criteria. My son was so demonstrably ill, I felt certain doctors would keep him longer. Maybe we could even get him back into treatment.
The officer I talked to advised me to call back if my son showed up with a weapon.
I wanted to scream at him, but I knew I might need him later. Instead, I wished him a happy Thanksgiving.
Still concerned for the safety of two of my children, I dialed the state police. An operator took my name and number, but I didn’t hear back. I was up all night. On Thanksgiving morning, I sent my son who’d been threatened by his brother to a relative’s house an hour away. Throughout Thanksgiving Day, I monitored my struggling son’s whereabouts using the Snap Map on Snapchat.
On Black Friday, I reached the manager at the store where my son had charged the gun. The manager would not confirm the purchase, then, on the busiest day in retail, he directed me to the online version of the federal form all gun buyers must fill out and went through it with me. Two areas disqualified my son from taking possession of a gun — if all his court and hospitalization information was up to date, and if someone caught it.
Before we hung up, the manager told me I’d have to trust the system. But it was Thanksgiving weekend. I stressed about the hundreds of thousands of gun purchases being background checked while the checkers would be understaffed, until the store manager called back — God love him.
Again, he wouldn’t give me any information, but he said, “That thing you were worried about — I can only tell you, you don’t have to worry anymore. Now go enjoy your weekend.”
I did not enjoy my weekend, but I did get some much-needed sleep. Until the following Tuesday night.
That’s when my oldest son, then back in Chicago, started posting about a gun belonging to a friend. When he couldn’t reach his girlfriend one night, he texted that he intended to shoot himself with this gun. Using screenshots of this threat, my husband convinced Chicago police to visit his apartment and conduct a wellness check. CPD broke down his door, but my son wasn’t there.
His online threats to harm himself and others continued. Things got scarier when he doxxed a drug supplier on social media. I kept calling law enforcement in Chicago and telling them my son was going to shoot someone, get shot or shoot himself. By then, he’d cleared out of his apartment. There wasn’t much police could do.
My husband and I retained a lawyer in Illinois. We flew to Chicago the first week of December to appear before a judge and request a court order to have our son hospitalized — the only way to get someone with a mental illness hospitalized in Illinois. The process wasn’t guaranteed because Illinois won’t compel someone addicted to drugs into treatment, even if they exhibit symptoms of serious mental illness. After flipping through my son’s dossier of threats, the judge granted our request, and the police went to pick up our son.
He wasn’t at his apartment.
My husband and I spent the entire next day staking out his building from a rental car. When our son showed up to grab some things, we ducked and called 911. Twenty minutes later, too spent and wired to feel anything, I watched officers fold him into a squad car and drive him to a hospital.
As a mother in fear for her son’s life, there was no way I was going to trust some bureaucratic “system” to protect him or anyone he might have harmed when he was unwell. Thankfully, I had the time and the resources to keep at it. It’s a good thing since there was no system. Until a person is deemed a live threat, it’s up to friends, family and concerned citizens like the outdoor store manager to try to manage them.
My experiences with my son, the uptick in mental illness in the young, their access to weapons, general misunderstandings about what mental illnesses actually are — all of these issues are too thorny, too snarled, too painful to untangle in a thousand-plus words. Four years in, I’m sure of only one thing: Even families as resourced as mine need more help.
I took it for granted that law enforcement would want to keep a firearm away from my son when he was ill — especially once he threatened members of our family. I knew police officers would be the ones who’d have to deal with him if things went south. I was terrified he’d shoot an officer, or one would shoot him. Or both.
Equally as terrifying, my son repeatedly threatened to take his own life. For 30 years, suicides have made up the majority of U.S. firearm deaths. My heart misses a beat every time I remember that an American dies by suicide with a gun about every 20 minutes. I knew my son was far more likely to take his own life than someone else’s. And yet, in order to protect him, protect those around him and protect law enforcement, his dad and I had to spend thousands of dollars and appear before a judge 1,200 miles from our home to beg the courts to decree his hospitalization.
I’m not challenging the Second Amendment here, only stating the obvious: No American family should have to work that hard to keep its members safe from a gun.
If near-weekly mass shooting tragedies and shamefully high gun death rates aren’t enough to move lawmakers to insist on common-sense gun policies to protect our citizens, there’s something they can do right now to keep people safe from harm. Much like nationwide requirements for child abuse reporting, lawmakers could require school administrators, teachers, social workers, law enforcement and health care providers to report if they hear, or suspect, that someone poses a threat. The person in question could be investigated, monitored, and, if need be, hospitalized — with their privacy and rights intact.
Citizens can insist on this. They can call or email their representatives right now. State and federal lawmakers could begin drafting this legislation tonight. Laws could be codified within weeks.
In the meantime, to anyone who loves a person with a mental illness, you may be like me, bone tired, heart in shreds, or, like my spouse, maybe you keep it together like it’s just another day. Either way, as things stand, we are the system. I realize that makes us the lousiest system ever not-created. Still, if there’s any possibility that your child/sibling/classmate could be dangerous, the merest chance, please tell someone. It’s the best way to keep everyone safe — and maybe the way your loved one gets better.
My son is. Better, I mean. In May, my husband and I helped him move to a city closer to us. He’s landed on the right meds, is attending a couple classes and is sober. I’m hopeful — and afraid to hope. Mostly, I just try to stay in today.
When I told him I wanted to write this piece, my son said, “Do it. I write about you in my music, it’s only fair that you write about me — especially if it helps one person.”
20 Years OfFreeJournalism
Your SupportFuelsOur Mission
Your SupportFuelsOur Mission
For two decades, HuffPost has been fearless, unflinching, and relentless in pursuit of the truth. Support our mission to keep us around for the next 20 — we can’t do this without you.
We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.
Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.
We remain committed to providing you with the unflinching, fact-based journalism everyone deserves.
Thank you again for your support along the way. We’re truly grateful for readers like you! Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again.
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
I hope our story does help people feel less alone, less ashamed — and that maybe, just maybe, it plays some part in convincing our leaders to enact immediate and lasting change.
Coley Gallagher has written for Motherwell, The Chicago Tribune, and Hypertext Magazine. She lives on Florida’s Atlantic coast with her family, their Shepherd mix, and the most beautiful cat on the planet, and is currently finishing a memoir.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.