After a five-day methamphetamine bender in 2008, Pattie Vargas’s son Joel returned to the family’s Southern California home, where he laid in bed for three days.
Vargas knew that her son, then 26, desperately needed help. But she had no idea where to turn.
She had family members and friends to lean on, but none of them had experience navigating treatment and recovery for a substance use disorder (SUD). “They were sympathetic, but they weren’t living it,” she says.
So Vargas turned to the only place she felt she could find answers: Google.