motheramphetamines-alex-skelly

It’s December 14th, 2023. I’m sitting in my three hour computer class messing around with my
friends, a state away one of my favorite youtubers has died of his addiction. Joseph Robert Wilson, better
known online as Mitten Squad, was a staple in my youtube watch history for most of my high school
years up to that point. His addiction to alcohol took his life at just twenty-seven years old.

Paul’s, as he referred to himself, death hit me hard then. And even now, coming up on two years
of his passing, I still sometimes find myself thinking about his videos and his life, and ultimately the
ending of it. On the Thanksgiving before he died Paul was hopeful, his recovery was going well, even
stating that he was hoping to start uploading again, in his own words: “the Mitten Squad channel isn’t
dead either. I will upload again, eventually…. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see another video until early
next year.”

His last posted video was in July of 2022. Paul’s content centered around doing challenge runs in
RPG games, usually Bethesda games, and usually the Fallout series. His last video was titled “Can you
beat Fallout: New Vegas while addicted to every chem in the game?” He ended the video concluding that
he couldn’t beat the game with the drawbacks of addiction and withdrawal within the game mechanics.
He couldn’t succeed within the game to beat the effects of addiction, eventually getting frustrated with the
game and deciding to quit playing. He never posted another video. So it stands as a cruel sort of irony that
his addiction in real life proved to be his end, a man lost to his vices too soon. He experienced the cruel
reality of addiction and withdrawal twice, and neither time he won. He never posted another video.

Paul’s death hit many of his fans hard, many of us had been as hopeful as he seemed to be about
his recovery, and to see such a 180 turn was shocking. His death hit me particularly hard, for a long time I
couldn’t place the feelings that his death evoked. I knew that I was sad he was gone, and that I, like many
of his fans, would miss his content. But I couldn’t help but feel a looming sense of dread, almost terror. It
took me a while to understand why, and I wasn’t until I was sitting across the room from my mother watching her lie through her teeth about her addiction that I realized why the death of a man whom I had
never met hit me so hard.

My mother is an addict. She has been an addict for the majority of my life, and oftentimes she
was absent because of it. Her vise is and always has been something worse than alcohol, my mothers
addiction is methamphetamines, meth. Any addiction is horrible and should be treated as such, but it
always seems like our society accepts alcohol abuse as a normal. When a person dies of their alcohol
abuse they are more humanized, their addiction was a flaw that they couldn’t beat despite their best
efforts. When someone overdoses they are nothing more than their addiction, a druggie, an addict. In
some ways, I’m lucky. I’m lucky because my mother hasn’t become part of a statistic of dead drug
addicts. And don’t misunderstand, I’m incredibly grateful for that fact.

But in so many other ways, my mother’s addiction has bled over into my life in ways others
wouldn’t expect or perhaps understand. She often wasn’t there when I needed her most as a child, many
times she was sitting in a jail or prison facing the consequences of her addiction. She was just a part of the
estimated 60% of the prison population with what NIH (National Institution on Drug Abuse) called a
SUD, or Substance Use Disorder. Because of this, I was raised by my grandmother. In the 2021 census,
around 8% of children under 18 lived with grandparents, and of that 8% just under 39% of them lived
with both parents.

Being raised by my grandmother was for lack of a better word, an experience. It wasn’t entirely
good, and it wasn’t entirely bad. We were poor, and living off of government assistance. For a very long
time my grandmother made less than $300 a month to cover everything we needed. It helped that we were
getting assistance for our bills and rent, plus food stamps to eat, and my school fees were mostly waived,
but that less than $300 had to cover everything else. Clothes, household items, school supplies, food when
the food stamps eventually and inevitably ran out before the end of the month, all of that plus putting
money on my mothers books. That didn’t leave much room for non essential items, things like toys or
eating out, we couldn’t afford wifi or TV, most of my clothes were old and certainly not name brand.
When my mom was around things were better, there was a bit more money to go around that could be used for fun stuff. But then she would be gone again, and we were scrambling to pick up the pieces left behind.

I firmly believe that children have a sense for people who aren’t like them, a different
socioeconomic status or different religion, they can sense as well as sharks can smell blood in water. So
when you’re poor, when you have no father to speak of, and when you’re being raised by your
grandmother you may as well be a lamb to the slaughter, because you’re different and different is
inherently bad to third graders. Add the fact that I was some type of undiagnosed neurodivergent and had
only my grandmother and librarians to socialize with, I was very quickly outcast by my peers. Sprinkle in
abandonment issues and anxiety, and you’ve essentially created a recipe for the worst k-12 experience of
your life. Which was coincidentally the k-12 experience that I had.

I had a few friends, thought they were very few and often didn’t stick around long. Those that I
was friends with, their parents had their own opinions of me and my family. Many of my friends weren’t
allowed to come over to my house, On some occasions I wasn’t welcome in their homes either. That’s
what happens when your mother’s name is literally googleable. I suppose I couldn’t entirely blame them
either, ask any self respecting parent if they want their child near an addict and they’ll tell you no. Even
the other addict parents didn’t want their children around my home.

My mother’s addiction touches every part of my life. It has touched everything I care for with its
grimy hands, tarnished the things I love and left inky stains on not only my mothers name, but mine as
well. My home was a hotspot for police activity, they would follow cars that left our drive way, they
would follow me when I walked to the store. Oftentimes the police would stop me on my way home.

“Where’s your mom?”

“Have you seen your mom today?”

“What are you doing out so close to curfew?”

For the record, officers, two hours before curfew is not close. And no, I haven’t seen the mother
that you arrested last week. Even my school wasn’t safe from the harassment from the local police force,
even the school resource officer had it out for me. I remember the day I got my permit. I had been so excited, I rushed to show the paper copy to my E-sports coach, And while my coach had shown excitement
on my behalf, the school resource officer just had to throw in his two cents from the side of the room. “At
least someone in your household will finally have a license.” He was so smug, like ruining the day of a
fifteen year old kid was the highlight of his day. I still don’t have my license, and sometimes I can still see
his overly smug and puncheable face in the back of my head because of that. The police showed up to my
graduation to harass my mother, because god forbid we let someone in recovery exist peacefully at their
child’s high school graduation.

Capiophobia. It’s the fear or phobia of the police. A lot of things can cause it, Environmental
factors, Traumatic experiences, you could even learn it from others around you who have it. I have it.
There’s only so many times you can watch your mother be escorted away in handcuffs or be pulled out of
a car for a K9 unit to search. Eventually the mere sight of a cop sends alarm bells ringing in your head,
you can’t fill your lungs with air, suddenly you want to vomit because even if you’re doing nothing wrong
a cop car means trouble, it means having your things ransacked, it means getting a patdown as a minor
and being put in the back of a cop car alone while you struggle to stay grounded in reality. My friends
think my beef with the cops is funny, they don’t know what it’s like to see someone you love slammed
against a car for having a seizure.

There was little escape from the effects of my mothe’s addiction, I couldn’t go anywhere without
suffering police harassment, and home was usually only fractionally better. When my mother was home,
it was a constant rotation of sleeping for days on end followed by a stream of other addicts coming to buy
drugs from my mother. Her addiction at many times was also the very thing that kept us afloat, paid for
christmas and birthdays, small treats and rewards. But at the same time, the addicts giveth and the addicts
taketh away I suppose. Things in our house had the uncanny ability to grow legs and just walk away.
Piggie banks, wii games, my entire gameboy collection, my grandmother’s prescription meds, the
memorial ring of my siblings ashes, all gone. Stolen by someone looking for their next fix.

As someone born female, I deeply appreciate my mother and everything she has done for me or
tried to do for me. As her child I can’t help but resent her. I hesitate to say that my mother’s addiction stole my childhood. In almost every good memory my mother is there, as my mother, her importance to what
little semblance of a normal childhood I did have can not be understated. But she is both sides of the same
damned coin, many of my bad memories revolve around her too. It’s like memory Russian roulette.

I load the rounds and spin the cylinder. Click and I’m in seventh grade and my mom is handing
me a meowing bundle of pissed off kitty. Bang and I’m fifteen calling her phone for the twentieth time
because she forgot to pick me up from my after school event, people are staring, my band director ends up
driving me home. Click and we’re driving across state lines on a school night to go pick up a gameboy
advance that she has seen on facebook marketplace. Click and I’m getting matching tattoos with her and
my grandma. Bang and I’m seven, standing at the top of the stairs while my mother screams at me and is
dragged away in handcuffs by the police, there’s blood on the floor, my grandmother is writing a
statement, I’m crying. Bang and I’m standing outside in the cold, begging for my mother’s life while her
equally addicted boyfriend beats the shit out of her behind the locked door to a camper. I can’t fill my
lungs again, I want my mommy. We’re both begging for it to be over. The cylinder is empty, do I dare
reload more memories.

My mother knows the effect her addiction has on others, she knows and acknowledges that she
fucked me up in many ways, her words not mine. My mother has taught me many things, things she
didn’t mean to teach me. I know that meth is often referred to as Ice or dope, I know that when it’s melted
it turns brown and smells like burning plastic. My mother taught me these things, she didn’t mean to. She
didn’t hold a class called “Meth 101” or give me a book called “Meth for Dummies”, honestly I don’t
even think she realized I picked up these things. I watched, I observed, I was there. I was in the car while
she sold, In the basement while she smoked, I was glaring at the grown man offering the highschooler a
meth pipe. My mother never taught me how to drive a car, or how to do simple division, I learned the
wrong things from my mother and taught myself the right things.

I understand that by this point, you as the reader will have formed a vision of my mother in your
head. Perhaps you see a deadbeat woman who abandoned her child, or maybe you see a woman with
crooked teeth and visible bodily signs of drug abuse. Maybe you got close, you imagined a woman broken by the system who is struggling. Or a high school dropout with nothing to show for it. What I know that
you didn’t imagine, however, is my mother. You didn’t see a woman with a frankly absurd collection of The Nightmare Before Christmas merch and rubber ducks, or the woman who risked going to jail every Friday night just to see my marching band perform at football games. You probably didn’t imagine a woman in her mid thirties trying her best. You didn’t imagine the seventeen year old carrying her rapist’s baby, on her own
terms. The woman who sacrificed her education, her life, to give that baby, to give me, a chance.

I may never know where my mothers addiction started, if it was a result of looking for an escape
from her trauma, an effect of her unchecked mental health issues, or if it was a slip of bad judgement by a
stupid kid still trying to figure things out. I’ll probably never know, and I’ll never ask, if she wanted me to
know she would tell me herself. She’s tried to quit before, a number of times actually. It’s always rough,
my mother can be a complete bitch going through withdrawal, she’s quick to anger, lashes out verbally at
anyone who dares be alive within fifty feet of her. My mother has never once put her hands on me, I was
never spanked as a kid. In her own words, if she ever had to put her hands on me she was going to make
going to jail worth it. Which is to say, my mother could put up a hell of a fight if she wants to, but her
words are worse. And when she’s going through withdrawal it’s like it’s pumped up to eleven. Sometimes
I still hear some of her worst comments when I’m at my lowest.

If she gets past the worst part of recovery, those first few weeks, things get easier. The urges go
away and her mood mellows out, for a while she’s not an addict, she’s my mother. But then things get
worse, money is tight and bills need paid, something breaks and needs replaced, and suddenly she’s
selling again just to keep us afloat. And then the temptation is right there, It’s the green goblin mask and
she’s just not strong enough to resist. 75% of meth addicts relapse.

My mother was going strong for a while, she went to her classes and did the drug screens, for two
years. Most relapses happen within the first year, it seemed for a while she would beat the odds that were
forever stacked against her. And then we lost our house, and my grandmother needed emergency surgery, and I started college, and the bills just kept coming and there was no end in sight. This is what my
mother’s addiction support groups call a “high risk situation”, a situation in which a recovering addict is
more likely to relapse. When push came to shove she felt she had no other choice but to start selling
again, and it wasn’t long after that she started using again.

Some nights I’m angry, I can’t help but feel that she’s pushing her luck. Those who relapse are at a
higher risk of overdose, how many times will she be able to beat those odds. Will my mother be the next
Mitten Squad in my life? Here one day, optimistic about recovery and making promises, only to be gone
the next. A victim to the substance that in many ways controls her life? It keeps me up at night, my
anxiety plays cruel tricks with my mind. I dream of her overdose or murder in relation to drugs, and I
wake up gasping with an image of her glassy eyes burned into my brain.

This experience, startling myself awake after dreaming of the loss of loved ones probably stems
from a phobia called thanatophobia, death anxiety. I probably couldn’t count the number of times where
my mother’s decisions in life have directly threatened her life, between verbal threats on her life and
physical harm. That number should be countable, should be zero, but it’s not. Drug dealers, addicts,
ex-boyfriends, there are a lot of people out there who seem to have violent thoughts against my mother.
Even people who proclaim themselves to be better than my mother have said to my face that my mother
would be better off dead or rotting in a jail cell for the rest of her life. None of that helps with the death
anxiety. I find myself panicking when my mother isn’t home on time, mind filled with thoughts of what
may have happened to her.

For all of her flaws, I love my mother. I’m not sure if she’ll ever get to read this essay, and even if
she did I’m not sure it would make a difference. I’m not sure how many more times she’ll beat the odds,
or how many she’ll fall victim to them instead. How many other people like my mother are out there, how
many people are viewed as nothing more than a percentage in a statistic, instead of the human that they
are. How many other people relate to our story? How many times has this essay been written by the
hands of someone in my shoes, never to see the light of day.

How many people have tried to beat the game of life while addicted to a chem. Among them how
many have failed and been failed by a system that has no interest in helping when it matters most. How
many more Mitten Squads will the world see? How many more times will my mother die in my
nightmares, before it becomes a reality?

Sources

“Addiction Relapse Rates in the United States.” Arms Acres,
www.armsacres.com/blog/addiction-relapse-rates-in-the-us. Accessed 22 Oct. 2025.

Bureau, US Census. “Grandparents and Their Coresident Grandchildren: 2021.” Census.Gov, 26
Feb. 2024,
www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/grandparents-coresident-grandchildren.html.

“Capiophobia Is the Fear of the Police: Symptoms Can Be Severe.” Anonymous Crime Reporting
Inc., 2 June 2025, anonymouscrimereporting.org/capiophobia/.

“Criminal Justice Drugfacts.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, 23 Mar. 2023, nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/criminal-justice.

Mitten Squad, Paul. “Mitten Squad Tweets.” X (Formerly Twitter), x.com/mittensquad?lang=en.
Accessed 22 Oct. 2025.

“Mitten Squad.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/@MittenSquad/videos. Accessed 22 Oct.
2025.

“Relapse.” Relapse – Alcohol and Drug Foundation,
adf.org.au/reducing-risk/relapse/#:~:text=Overdose%20risk%20during%20relapse&text=If%20a%
20person%20doesn’t,and%20lead%20to%20an%20overdose. Accessed 22 Oct. 2025.

Wikitubia, Contributors to. “Mitten Squad.” Wikitubia, Fandom, Inc.,
youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Mitten_Squad. Accessed 22 Oct. 2025.