aries~ I dunno exactly what MASK email forum you were on, but it sounds like you received emails. whatever helps, I guess, is a good thing.
at the beginning of MASK, I sat in people’s living rooms with 8 or so of us parents there. my first experience: the frum woman on the couch next to me, [a therapist!], stood up & said that her son’s a heroin addict & what it was like to have him taken away in handcuffs on a Shabbos afternoon, in full view of the neighbors. my mouth dropped wide open to the floor… this was the real deal.
I left the MASK meetings years ago already, well after R’ BenZion Twersky got involved, and many off-shoot branches had begun. that’s not to say, tho’, that my problems were over… the worst was yet to come. 🙁
B’H, as I said before, these issues are behind us now. I can’t say ‘Baruch Hashem’ enough times!!!