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Three hours later, Michael had recovered enough to hold a conversation with me. At first, he was defiant, telling me that he would have been fine and I shouldn’t have searched him out. He was mad and wouldn’t even look my way. I pulled my chair closer to his bed and pushed the play button on the video camera. I knew it would have much more impact than anything I could tell him.

As he watched himself slur through words with glazed-over eyes, he started to cry. He covered his eyes and said, “Mom, I think I damaged my brain.”

I put my hand on his arm and said, “Pray to God that you didn’t and that you will be okay.” Then he said, “I’m sorry, Mom,” over and over again. It was heartbreaking, but I knew that night, for certain, that “sorry” wasn’t going to last. My child had a drug problem. I knew I couldn’t help him. He needed professional counseling. He had to go into a program.

While growing up, my brothers and I spent about 80 percent of every day in the company of at least one of our parents,
either on tour, on a TV show, in a recording studio, or at home. We were certainly exposed to drugs and alcohol, but the fear of disappointing my parents was far stronger than any curiosity about drugs or alcohol. We were held accountable for our actions, and it was our responsibility to the rest of the group to do our best. There are many ways I could have benefited from having a more typical childhood, but this is one aspect I don’t regret. I watched as my performing peers, especially my dear sweet friend Andy Gibb, sabotaged their health and their careers with drug use and, as in Andy’s case, even died very young.

Back in the seventies and eighties, I don’t think most people understood what kind of physical damage substance abuse causes to the brain and heart. But now there is no denying its negative effects. One study I heard of and looked up shows that the brains of young substance abusers are like those of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (
Oxford Journal
, August 2010). Drug use burns out the natural neurotransmitter chemicals in your body that help produce joy and peace of mind. And there also seem to be more powerful and more addictive drugs available now than there were in the seventies.

As a mother who learned the hard way, I can tell you that there is no such thing as “experimenting” with drugs. Your child may tell you, “I only tried it once.” Once is enough. Intervene. Monitor their friends and seek help for your child. Even if you don’t understand drug use or aren’t certain what’s going on, step in to save your child. Don’t write it off as them being sleepy or moody teenagers. At eighteen, Mike told me
that he first started taking drugs when he was
twelve years old
. I had no idea. Be the parent. Let them know you’re paying attention. Give them curfews, make sure you follow through, and try to stay up so that they know you’re keeping track of the time. Trust me, having your child be embarrassed by you or angry with you for a year or two because you put limits on his social life is better than the alternative of your teenager becoming addicted or dying from drug use.

After doing some research, talking to professional counselors, and also seeking the advice of other parents, I sent Michael for six weeks to the Anasazi program of YoungWalkers. It’s an amazing wilderness therapy program that combines psychology, nutrition, and physical challenges. The children go with highly trained counselors into the wilderness of Arizona to learn to live in nature, work as a team with their group, and communicate without the distractions of technology. They hike for miles every day, sleep on the ground in a sleeping bag, eat food they cook themselves over a campfire, and learn other great survival skills. The aim is for the teenager to understand that he has the power to make choices. The Anasazi program is also a great help for parents, who are fully involved with their child’s program. I found that it gave me extremely helpful skills to communicate with all of my kids. It may not be the right program for every teenager, but my son seemed to thrive in it. He would always say that those were some of the best weeks of his life because he was challenged to grow and push himself beyond what he thought he could do.

He was a different boy when he came back home, centered,
calm, and more mature. He and I had long talks about what he had learned, his past struggles, and his new dreams. I could hear in his voice and with his new outlook on life the incredible adult that my son could have potentially become one day. He had learned great new skills, but there was a major stumbling block in his way. He was returning to the same household. Nothing had changed. I was still on an emotionally draining treadmill, working to support the whole family and feeling little peace of mind about my marriage. I know Michael sensed my hopelessness and even my loneliness. It’s too much pressure for any child to worry about his mother’s happiness. It robs him of his childhood. He isn’t there yet, emotionally. We need to assure him that we are okay, that we are the adults and we can handle our problems.

In 2006, I found myself starting to struggle again with depression, which concerned me greatly because I never wanted to go back to that dark place I was in when I had postpartum depression. There are always factors that lead up to depression. This time, I had lost my mother, my father was rapidly declining in health, my older children were going through their teenage struggles, and I was trying to make wise career choices and still have time with my kids, to name just a few. I could feel myself spiraling deeper down as the responsibilities piled on. It was also exacerbated by severe female health issues that I had been experiencing for several years, which left me feeling generally lousy on a daily basis.

One late afternoon, as I was packing my bag to go to Philadelphia for several QVC shows, I became very concerned about
flying because I was doubled over in pain. I couldn’t imagine how I was even going to be able to leave the house, let alone get on a plane and fly for six hours. I called for a last-minute appointment with my doctor. In her office, I asked, “Will it be okay for me to fly out tomorrow morning? I really need to be on that plane, because these QVC shows are so difficult to rearrange. They are booked eight months in advance.” I never expected her answer. She said, “Absolutely not! I’m scheduling you for emergency surgery in the morning.” I drove home feeling even more despondent, not only about having major female surgery the next day, but also about having to disappoint my doll company, the QVC producers, and especially the thousands of viewers who always tuned in for the shows. Also, I knew that having surgery would leave me unable to take care of my kids for a while. But I had no choice. I was already weak and tired and it seemed to me like surgery was going to be one more stressor on my exhausted system.

What became an even bigger struggle is that I had to follow up that surgery with various medications to balance my hormones, which I was told could take a substantial amount of time to get the levels just right. I was raised to rehearse until I got it right; let’s just say that was one long, long rehearsal! Each day I struggled more and more just to focus enough to get through the most mundane tasks, but it didn’t register with me until months later that I was no longer able to think clearly.

Another doctor I went to see suggested an antidepressant, which I didn’t really want to take after my previous experience with PPD, but I finally resigned myself to the evidence that it
was worth a try again. The one I was prescribed this time did help the extreme lows, but it also took away any high emotion, too. It gave me more of a flat, joyless feeling, like playing one note on a piano.

I couldn’t fully admit it to myself at the time, but I know now that the depression was, in part, brought on by my unwillingness to face that I felt my marriage was a failure. I couldn’t imagine going through a second divorce, especially since I was the first person in my entire family who had ever been divorced even once. I dreaded having to hear or read the harsh public opinion I had endured following my first divorce. I also had to consider more than my own feelings. How would divorce affect my children, because there was a strong possibility it would be written about in magazines and become a topic of gossip on the Internet? Other students at my children’s schools had made remarks to them in the past about having Marie Osmond as their mother, which was already difficult enough. I spent a lot of time on my knees, praying that my feelings would be resolved, asking that my family could just be happy. In retrospect, I thought it was the right thing to pray for because I was constantly being persuaded that staying in my marriage was what God wanted, “for better or for worse.” With my busy life, I was rarely given one second alone even to think about it. So when my intuition, the whisperings of the spirit, would rise up through my consciousness to tell me that I needed to leave my marriage, I continually ignored it. I wanted God to fix it. But God won’t take away our free will or agency. God can give us the promptings and direction, but then we have to listen and be proactive in fixing it for ourselves.

While trying to make sense of my feelings and struggling along physically for months following my surgery, I ended up in such a mental haze that I finally hit an all-time low. One afternoon, following yet another sleepless night and many other stressors I was dealing with on a daily basis, I was left completely broken-down, in pieces, and my emotions plummeted to the bottom until I felt no self-worth whatsoever. I went upstairs into the bathroom to try to collect myself. I remember thinking that I should take some of my medications to help me. That was my first mistake and also my last moment of any clarity. I don’t remember much after that thought, but I was told later that I took more than I realized. It’s all a blur to me, even now. My powers of reasoning and any logical thinking ability had diminished greatly, as if my brain had gone into shock from the emotional and physical pain. But my will to live must have remembered who I was and what had happened, because from somewhere deep inside of me a gleam of light arose through the dark mental haze. I must have sensed that I had to get help fast. I was told later I stumbled out into the hallway, calling for help, and then I passed out.

When I regained consciousness, I was in a hospital room and very confused as to how I had ended up there. I stayed for a few days while the doctors determined that the mixture of prescribed hormones I was taking following the surgical menopause, the antidepressant, and my thyroid medication were interacting in a very detrimental way that most likely started my emotional and physical downward spiral. They couldn’t imagine how I had been able to function at all. I remember sitting in that hospital bed feeling like a complete failure. I was
so unbelievably sad at what was going on in my life and how emotionally dead and physically drained I had become, I couldn’t even recognize myself. I felt so alone.

While I was there, I talked to a counselor about some of the stress factors in my life, though I didn’t bring up my internal conflict about wanting a divorce. It was still good for me to get perspective from an unbiased person and talk about the other issues going on in my life. But it would have helped more if I could have been completely open about everything. I wanted to, but I was still worried about my children’s and my own privacy.

I had to take a long look at why I had let myself get to this place and whom I could trust to make sure it didn’t happen again. What I finally came to realize is that I had to take care of myself. Grandmother Osmond was right when she told me as a child, “No one’s going to take care of you but you. So you better learn how to do it, young lady.” I think I’m finally learning how, Grandma.

At this point in my life, I choose a much healthier lifestyle and incorporate natural healing modalities, I eat foods that are good for my body when possible and exercise regularly, and I strive never to ignore my intuition. And importantly, I listen to its direction so that I can consciously choose joy.

I am writing about this difficult part of my life for two reasons.

First, it’s imperative to remember that medication is medication and doctors are human beings. Medical professionals prescribe medicine that they believe will help, but they can
only make their best-educated choice, and this is tricky with antidepressants, especially when mixed with other medications you might be taking. One that seems to work well for other people may not work for you at all. The problem is, you may be too depressed to monitor your own reactions. Be sure to always schedule a follow-up appointment so the doctor can assess whether you are reacting in a positive manner to the prescribed medications. As a strong backup, ask your family members and close friends to keep a watch on any reactions you might have that don’t seem to be for the better.

Also, get one of those weekly pillboxes to help you keep track of when you should take the medication. You have enough to think about when you are struggling without wondering if you took your medication or not. Also, more and more research is coming to the forefront that many kinds of prescribed and even over-the-counter medicines, if mixed incorrectly, can have mental and emotional side effects you may have never considered. The number of emergency room visits by people who mixed over-the-counter drugs to bad effect has more than doubled since 2004. It can’t be stressed enough that if you’re sick and in pain, you already aren’t thinking clearly. Ongoing pain, whether physical or mental, begins to deactivate the frontal lobe of the brain, which is the part of the brain that helps you reason and make good decisions in the moment.

If you need to be on an antidepressant, you might want to see a therapist or some type of counselor as well. There is a reason you have depression that is creating your inability to function. The medication can give you a good base from which
to start working on your problems, but unless you actually do work through those problems and make changes, the medication will only postpone your dealing with the true underlying issues. I know I finally had to ask myself, “Why am I trying to medicate instead of fix?” A great counselor opened my eyes to the basis of my question. She told me, “You’re a ‘fixer,’ and you have a classic ‘child-star’ syndrome. You will do whatever is needed to accomplish what you must, because your goal has always been to make those around you happy. And now you are beginning to understand that you’ve done this at the expense of your own emotional and physical health.” But she added, “It’s not just child performers. It’s the same issue for many, many women everywhere who were rewarded for being pleasers as girls. These girls, who usually suffer low self-esteem because of past issues, may confuse being controlled [by someone] with being taken care of.” As she said these words, I knew that they applied to me and that they were truth.