After the Storm, Sun, Kinda

Slowly, since my last post, my son and I have been working through the hurt and pain of our last encounter. I still feel a little soreness, a little trepidation, around my heart. I’m still half-holding my breath. But things are working themselves out.

He and his girlfriend have made up and are back together, stronger than ever, so they say. They are planning to move in together and looking for transitional housing that takes families.

He and his ex (his daughter’s mother) have renewed their relationship too, as friends, and co-parents. For the first time since she was ten months old I’ve been able to visit with my sweet granddaughter again. She’s two now.

I had both my “grand-babies” visiting this weekend, my granddaughter and my adopted “grandson,” the one who was supposed to have spent Christmas with us. He was able to open all the presents I had saved for him. Child laughter in my home, the two chasing each other around, all gathered in my son’s lap as he reads them “Cat in the Hat.” Kisses and hugs from the little ones. Heaven on earth.

So things are looking up. I should be so happy. But I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall. I feel like the storm clouds are still waiting over the horizon. Waiting for me to turn to full-blown joy before crashing down again, like they like to do.

My son will be 9 months clean, heroin-free, next week. But his work situation is dire, housing unstable, and he’s drinking beer now openly. For all the joy in his life again–the woman he loves recommitted to him, the daughter he loves back in his life, the mother he loves having forgiven him–he still seems tense, on edge, anxious. We both are.

Maybe that’s good. Maybe that will keep us on our toes. Maybe full-blown joy is too much to ask for at this stage of recovery.

Joy without doubt? Without fear? Without reservation? Is such a thing possible for the mother of an addict? Maybe joy in small doses is enough. A child’s kiss. A son’s smile. A mother’s forgiveness.

Baby steps–why do I always forget that?

Yet when I remember where he was last year at this time, having OD’d three times in 4 months, strung out on heroin, lost on the street. When I see how far he’s come. When I read of other mothers whose son’s and daughters are where my son was then–I have to drop my head in gratitude, and pray that all our children come home safely to their rightful place. That all of us, some day, will experience that full-blown joy we yearn for.

Are Some Things Unforgivable?

Despair 1 by Lette Valeska, 1954.

My son is 8 months into his recovery. That’s the good news.

The bad news? We’ve had a terrible falling out, words said that seem unforgivable, and I don’t know how we will get past this. Or even if we should.

This was, hands down: Worst. Christmas. Ever.

With one small bright spot.

After writing my last post about if you can’t be with the ones you love (my own grandchildren), love the ones you’re with (the child of my son’s girlfriend), I did just that. A few days before Christmas, the little boy spent the night with me. It was a sweet, tender time.

He helped me decorate the Christmas tree, set up the Nativity scene, decorate sugar cookies. We played together, sang together, read books together. We cuddled in bed where I stayed with him until he fell asleep. When he woke up later calling “Grandma! Where are you!” I spent the rest of the night in bed with him. We’d had a lovely time together. I was looking forward to Christmas Eve when he would return with his mom and my son for dinner, then spend the night and open presents the next day.

But it never happened. And I’ll probably never see the little boy again.

After spending weeks preparing to make this the best Christmas ever for them all,the boy’s mother texted me an hour before dinner to say she couldn’t make it after all. She’d been spending the day migrating between the festivities held at the four churches she attends. None of the churches know about the other, and all were trying to help her. One promised her a laptop. Another new tires for her car. She decided she’d rather spend Christmas with them than with us. This infuriated my son, and he broke up with her. We spent a sad, lonely Christmas together–just my son and his dad and me–staring at a Christmas tree and all those lovely gifts we had so joyfully selected and wrapped, which would never be opened.

The next day we went to return the girlfriend’s presents (I held on to the presents for her son, hoping I may still be able to get those to him someday). That’s when things blew apart. When things were said that seem unforgivable.

I used to think it was the drugs, when he would go off on me like this, say these horrible things. I told myself, it’s the drugs, not him, not my son. In his right mind, when he wasn’t strung out, when he wasn’t having withdrawals, he would never talk to me like that, never scream and hurl horrible names at me. But he wasn’t on drugs now. He had no excuse. And the terrible realization that this is how he really feels toward me, how he sees me, that it wasn’t the drugs at all, was devastating.

I don’t know how to get pass this. Are some things unforgivable?

Here’s what happened:

When my son and I were in the store returning gifts, I said something that hurt his feelings. He lashed out at me and stomped off. When I returned to the car, he was still fuming. I tried to explain that what he thought I said wasn’t true, and wasn’t meant in the way he found so offensive. But he wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t believe me. He shouted me down when I tried to explain and called me a liar.

The whole time he was shouting at me and calling me a liar, I was picturing him treating his girlfriend like this. He had told me once how she was always lying to him, and even when he called her on it, she would never admit it. It’s the one thing big thing they fought about. I was thinking, if he treated her like this when he thought she was lying, no wonder she didn’t want to be with him, with us, at Christmas, and I said as much. I wanted him to know that if you treat people like this–her or me–you push them away.

Apparently that was the worst thing I could have said to him, rubbing salt in his wound, he said. He hit back screaming the worst things a son could ever say to a mother, calling me names that no mother should ever hear a son call her.

I was shocked and stunned. Nothing I had said should have brought out this kind of hatred and profanity.

I told him to get out of my car, but he refused. He just kept shouting at me and calling me names. So I grabbed the keys and left. We were in the middle of a busy parking lot and I had nowhere to go. I sat on a bench and tried to pull myself together, hoping that by the time I returned to the car he’d be gone. But he wasn’t. And he wouldn’t leave. He insisted I drive him back to my house where all his things were, including three bags of laundry he had washed, and then drive him back to his place.

I was furious, shamed, outraged. I felt violated, abused, sick. I drove him 30 miles home so he could get his stuff, then 30 miles back to his place, all in a furious silence.

By the time I got home, I was physically ill, vomiting, my head pounding. I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t see how I could ever get past this, how I could ever forgive him, now that I knew it wasn’t the drugs. Now I knew it was him all along. It’s how he feels about me, how he feels he can treat me when he’s angry and hurting. He has no respect for me, no gratitude, no love for the one person on earth who has always stood by him and believed in him no matter what.

He has no clue how despicable, how unforgivable, his words were. How utterly they ruined our relationship.

I don’t know how to forgive that. I don’t know that I want to. I can’t imagine anything he could ever say or do that would allow me to forgive him for treating me that way, for thinking I deserved it.

He’s texted me a few times. In his opinion, what I said to him was far worse than what he said to me. He says he talks that way and uses that filthy language all the time, so it doesn’t mean anything. I shouldn’t take it personally.

But I do. I do take it personally. Any self-respecting mother should.

And now, I don’t want to have anything to do with him. I don’t want someone who would treat me like that in my life.

I could rationalize it all in his favor. I could tell myself he was obviously hurting a lot more than I had known about the break-up. He could have been harboring resentment for me for the part I played. He broke up with her in a way because he thought she had hurt me and disrespected me by not coming to dinner and spending Christmas with us. Returning those presents he had picked out for her, dresses he thought she would love and wanted to see her wear, maybe that was more painful than we had realized. Maybe when I said something that he thought was insulting, it all came to a head. And then when I called him on his temper, said if he treated her this way, no wonder she didn’t want to be with him, taking her side as he saw it, maybe it did feel like a betrayal, like the mother he’d defended by breaking up with her was stabbing him in the back. Maybe obscenities are the only way he knows how to express his hurt and anger toward anyone, including me. Maybe. Maybe.

But I’m tired of making excuses for him. The excuses don’t matter. It’s the behavior that matters. I didn’t deserve that. He had no right. Something got broken between us, and I don’t know how it can be mended.

At first I felt I hated him, but now I know I don’t. I’m not even hurt any more. And I do love him still. I care about him. I want him to learn from this and be a better man because of it. Be the man I’ve always known he can be. But how can he be that man if he thinks it’s okay to treat me like that? If I forgive him this time too?

He needs to learn: Some things are unforgivable. Am I wrong?

Six Months Strong and Bulking Up

“You’re getting fat,” I tease my son, pinching the roll that is starting to form around his waistline.

“On purpose, Mom,” he tells me. “I’m bulking up. This will all be muscle. You’ll see.”

I don’t doubt him. Already his biceps bulge like barbells. He can bench press 240 now.

He works out every day at the gym. But he doesn’t have the budget that will support the kind of high quality diet that most body builders use when they are trying to put on muscle. Bread, rice, and beans are his stables. He’s not complaining.

A year ago he was lying unconscious on my bathroom floor from a heroin overdose.

Seven months ago, fresh off the streets, he was so skinny you could count every bone in his body.

But now, after six months clean, he’s starting to look like The Hulk. In a good way.

The thing is, the way it was before never seemed real, always seemed like a bad dream. It wasn’t who he really is.

And now I have my son back.

I feel so blessed. I hope every grieving mother who reads this, knows there’s hope for their sons and daughters too. Six months clean can make a world of difference.

There’s much to celebrate this Thanksgiving.

 

A Step Up, A Step Down – The Wobbly Road to Recovery

Step-ladder stile by Kate Jewell WikiCommons

My son is five and a half months clean, still going strong in recovery, but still struggling to acquire the basics in life, what so many of us take for granted: stable housing, stable income, stable relationships.

He lives in a metal shed, what his friend calls “his guest house.” It has a bed, a chair, a table, a refrigerator, and even a TV that plays two channels. Pretty comfy for a metal shed. But there’s no plumbing. No kitchen. No insulation. No heat or air conditioning.

He showers at a local gym. He cooks on a hot plate and microwave oven. He has a portable heater and fan.

It’s a step up, or a step down, depending on how you look at it. Before he moved here he was living in a motel room for $1350 a month. His shed is free, so he’s able to start saving money again, and get caught up in child support payments. So that’s a step up.

It’s a step down because—well—it’s a shed. And his girlfriend and son are no longer living with him. They’ve moved back to the shelter.

But he’s still working, still going to AA meetings with his sponsor, still going to the counseling required by his Prop 36 program, still taking Methadone, and still dating his new girlfriend. He even has been able to see his daughter a couple of times since I last posted here. He’s talked to a lawyer about getting visiting rights.

Life is good, considering he was at death’s door only seven months ago when I started this blog: having been kicked out of rehab, living on the street, two overdoses within a week of each other, and another on my bathroom floor around this time last year.

So I’m happy and hopeful, and more importantly, so is he.

Life is good on the wobbly road to recovery.

Is Addiction a Disease? Or a Moral, Social, & Spiritual Failing?

Addiction as a Disease

The latest scientific, evidence based thinking refers to addiction as a brain disease. People who become addicted have a brain-based disease, or a chemical-based predisposition to becoming addicted to alcohol or drugs. Some of us can drink alcohol and indulge in narcotics without becoming addicted. Others can’t.

When my husband and I were young, we indulged in the common recreational drugs that were available at the time. Occasionally while we were dating, we smoked pot, or took speed, or dropped acid. It seemed harmless at the time. Neither of us became addicted. By the time we got married, we weren’t using narcotics, except for a few puffs on an occasional joint. By the time we had kids, we didn’t do that either. It just wasn’t part of our lifestyle anymore. We continued to drink occasionally. And we still do–mostly beer (him) and wine (me). We might even drink something harder, a cocktail for instance, during special outings or at a back-yard BBQ.

But we don’t worry that we may come addicted. It’s just not an issue.

For our son though, it is an issue. His initial use of alcohol and narcotics led to an addiction that his father and I never got. We weren’t physically or chemically inclined to become addicted. He was.

Was the fact that his narcotic use led to addiction because he was morally weak? Because he was too stupid or weak-minded or self-indulgent that he could not use narcotics moderately for recreational purposes only, as his parents had?

No. My husband and I never struggled with trying to “resist” drugs or alcohol. We could use it or not use it whenever we wanted. We weren’t morally superior because we used in moderation and eventually stopped using because it no longer interested us and wasn’t desired.

Yet because his early drug use led to a severe addiction that lasted years, and our early drug use didn’t, he is considered a social pariah, and we are considered upstanding citizens.

Our drug use never created an overwhelming desire to use more and more. We never had to use “will-power” to stop using. We never had to pray to stop using. We never had to go to rehab or 12-step. It never tried to take over our lives. It never affected us the way it affected our son. We weren’t better than him. Our brain chemistry was just different, so it was never a problem for us.

Believe it or not, some people who use heroin do not become addicted. They just don’t. It is considered one of the most powerful drugs there is, yet if I used it, I know I would not become addicted. Not because I’m stronger than other people who become addicted to it. But because I’m not chemically inclined to do so.

Yet, as a society, we still claim moral and spiritual superiority to people who become addicted. We still blame them for their addiction. We still think they are weak or immoral or bad. We still think it’s their fault. Even those who “know” addiction is a disease, treat addiction like a social or moral or spiritual failing. We’ve become conditioned to think that way.

Even addicts buy into this thinking. Even mothers of addicts.

Addiction as a Moral Failing

I’ve been participating in a movement by mother’s of addicts, where we try to help each other cope with the difficult work we have to do in trying to help our sick children. And we’re also trying to help society understand addiction as a disease, to blaming the victim of addiction for the disease, and to erase the stigma attached to it. Yet even within that forum, I still hear mothers blaming their children for their addiction.

Here’s what one mother wrote recently, a mother who had been an addict herself once. She starts off comparing the abuse of the welfare system to the abuse of drugs:

“Welfare has gotten a bad rap by people who manipulate the system and do nothing to better their situation. Sort of like the addict who continually relapses after they have the tools and are just to hard-headed to use them because they know how to manipulate their addictions right back into a worse situation than they started in.”

This same mother earlier called addiction a disease. Yet she goes on to say that relapse happens not because the disease that went into remission has now returned (as we do with cancer patients), but because they are “too hard-headed” to do what the doctors told them to do. Then she goes on to say that the depression and other mental issues that are produced by the disease are “self-inflicted.” As if they brought this on themselves by becoming addicted in the first place: It’s their fault.

Addiction as a Social Failing

Here’s another statement from a mother, quoting from a drug counseling textbook that she agrees with:

“Addiction is a disease of isolation; addiction is the solution to [that isolation] and the consequence of [that isolation], the addict’s impaired ability to develop and maintain relationships”.

The book admits that addiction is a disease, but then goes on to blame the disease on the “addict’s impaired ability to develop and maintain relationships.” Really?  So people with good relationships and social skills never become addicted? Only socially impaired people become addicted? Only people with “isolation” issues?

These statements are another way of blaming the victim of addiction. He’s inferior, socially impaired, isolated. Therefore he becomes addicted to alleviate the isolation and feel “normal.” This stigmatizes the addict.

The fact is, so-called normal people with healthy relationships and good social skills become addicted. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, actors, musicians, plumbers, teachers, and preachers become addicted. Not just social misfits.

Addiction as a Spiritual Failing

Another mother goes on to say that 12-Step programs are so important for addicts, because they help them discover their “true selves” rather than hiding behind a false “social” self. In other words, people who become addicted weren’t as spiritually evolved or as in touch with their “true selves” as the rest of us. That’s why they need 12-step programs and we don’t.

Again, this is placing a stigma on addicts: People who use drugs are spiritually inferior, less evolved, than people who don’t use drugs.

This is perhaps my biggest gripe with 12-Step programs—the belief that you and I don’t need them. Just the poor, weak addict. The rest of us are already in touch with our “higher selves.”

To be clear: 12-Step programs, which are spiritually based, are wonderful programs for anyone who wants to acquire a spiritual practice, whether they are addicts or not. But to assume that people who are addicts need them more than the rest of us, is to assume that addiction is a sign of spiritual failing rather than a chemical imbalance: If only they had been more spiritually evolved, they never would have become addicted. Do we say this about cancer victims? People with heart disease?

Some addicts may find that 12-steps programs help them to cope better deal better with their disease. It may help them to recover, to keep the disease in remission, to abstain from the alcohol or drugs that will cause a relapse.

Spiritual programs help cancer victims too. It helps them to have hope, it calms and comforts them, it lowers blood pressure, it builds the immune system, it helps them to heal. It may even help them to become in touch with their truer selves. But we don’t assume cancer patients are less in touch with their truer selves than the rest of us.

Just the addict deserves that stigma, it appears.

Breaking the Stigmas of Addiction

The acceptance of addiction as a disease is only now becoming the norm. But there are so many assumptions about addiction still circulating, consciously and unconsciously, that even doctors, addiction counselors, and rehab programs still blame the addict for the addiction, still treat these patients as if they are morally, socially, and spiritually impaired.

Even those whose loved ones are suffering from addiction slip into this mode of thinking.

We need to call them on it when they do. We need to be alert, and dismantle the stigmas wherever they appear.

Addiction and “Turning Pro”

I just discovered the book “Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work” by Steven Pressfield. It’s been around for a long time, and it’s meant for writers or people who want to create something worthwhile in their lives.

But it’s perfect for addicts, too, because it compares the struggle to live our passion with the struggle to overcome addiction. This could include addictions to drugs, sex,  gambling, money, fame, web-surfing, or even maintaining the perfect house–it’s all the same.

All addictions are mindless or mind-numbing distractions.They are all ways we resist being who we were meant to be, and doing the work we were meant to do.

Let me quote a few things he says about addiction that ring true:

Have you ever noticed that addicts are often extremely interesting people? Addiction itself is excruciatingly boring . . .because it’s predictable–the lies, evasions, the transparent self justifications . . . But the addict himself is often a colorful and fascinating person . . . . [His] story often reads like a novel, packed with drama, conflict, and intrigue.

“Addictions” are not bad. They are simply the shadow forms of a more noble and exalted calling.

Addiction becomes a surrogate for our calling. We enact addiction instead of embracing the calling.

All addictions share, among other things, two prime qualities: (1) They embody repetition without progress; (2) They produce incapacity as a pay-off.

Both addicts and artists are dealing with the same material, which is the pain of being human and the struggle against self-sabotage.

Both artist and addict wrestle with the experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away.

The addict seeks to escape the pain of being human in one of two ways–by transcending it or by anesethitizing it. Borne aloft by powerful enough chemicals, we can almost, if we are lucky, glimpse the face of the Infinite. If that doesn’t work, we can always pass out. Both ways work. The pain goes away.

The artist takes a different tack. She tries to reach the upper realm not by chemicals but by labor and love.

The book is calling all the “amateurs” of the world–those of us stuck in our distracting, mind-numbing “addictions”–to turn “pro.” Turning Pro is changing our mind-set. It’s turning our life around. It’s embracing our higher-self and our higher-calling.

This how-to book starts off by identifying all the ways we avoid being who we were meant to be—through our addictions, our self-doubts, our self-inflicted wounds, and through fear in all its forms. And it identifies what is needed to overcome these, how the “Pro” approaches these very same doubts and fears and resistance in ways that are productive rather than self-sabotaging.

“Turning Pro ” evokes the spiritual in a non-secular way. The author states: “The pain of being human is that we’re all angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”  We’re all struggling toward a higher sense of self that we fear we will never reach.

But we can, Pressfield claims: Once we start taking ourselves and our dreams seriously. When we realize it’s worth the hard work to do so, worth the effort to resist anything that would slow our momentum or lower our reach, that’s when we turn our lives around; that’s when we turn Pro.

This is what the struggling addict (in all of us) needs to hear. This book is for those who are tired of the merry-go-round of addiction and want desperately to get off. And it’s also for those who have gotten off the merry-go-round and wonder, now what?

This is what my son needs to hear. And I think he’s ready for it.

Yesterday he told me with such heartfelt conviction: “I’m done with drugs. I’m never going back.” I believe him.

But he also said: “I’m tired of screwing around, working low-wage dead-end jobs. My life is half over. I don’t have time to waste what’s left.”

He’s started to explore a new career choice, something that has always tickled the back of his mind, and he’s excited about pursuing it.  He’s ready for this book.

It ends, appropriately for all struggling addicts, with these inspiring words:

The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns.

You are that hero

Four Months Clean, and Struggling

Photo by Katy Silberg – Creative Common

I’m so proud of my son. Last night I took him out for dinner and he ordered a beer. When it came, he told the waiter he had changed his mind, and ordered a coke instead. I was so relieved. So was he. We were both relieved that he’d the strength to do that. On such a bad night.

His new girlfriend had just left him.

He came home from work that night and all her stuff was gone. Out of the blue. It was a blow, and he was crushed. They’d been living together with her three-year old son, mostly in motels. But they were looking for an apartment to rent together. She’d sounded so happy the week before when they were visiting us. Her little son, who is such a doll, was calling me “grandma.” I was helping her look for apartments to rent. We had become friends. Then this.

They may be getting back together. He doesn’t know yet, but they are talking.

I hope they don’t. This is the second time she’s left suddenly like that with no explanation, no warning. She doesn’t use drugs or drink, but I think she may have mental issues. She’s very vague about her past. We really know nothing about her. When he met her, she was staying at a homeless shelter. It sounded like she was running away from a bad relationship, someone who had been abusing her. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think she may be someone who is looking for love, and running away from it at the same time.

I feel for her, and for her little son. But I worry about mine. I think he needs to let her go this time. Not try to get her back.

My heart has been aching all day for him.

On top of this, his daughter turns two years old next week and her mother won’t let him see her. She won’t even tell him where they are living. They keep in touch by phone, and he’s trying to stay in her good graces so she won’t sever that contact. But he’s worried. He thinks she using heroin again. She talks crazy sometimes. She berates him for not being in his daughter’s life.

He says, “How can I be, you won’t tell me where you are living!”

She says, “I wouldn’t let that stop me, if I was in your place.” It makes no sense!

He pays child support, but she wants money on the side, and he wires it to her! I tell him he shouldn’t. But he’s afraid if he doesn’t, she’ll disappear for good and he’ll never see his daughter again. At least she sends him photos once in a while.

I tell him he should call Child Supportive Services. But he wants to wait until he has a place to live so if it comes to that he’ll be able to get custody of his daughter. It’s all so complicated.

Just a week ago I was planning this post–how wonderful everything was: four months clean, looking for an apartment with the woman he’s falling in love with, a sweet little boy in his life, being a dad to him. He was happy, hopeful. So much to celebrate, it seemed.

Still, there’s one thing to celebrate: Despite all he’s been struggling with these last few months, he’s stayed clean. That alone is well worth celebrating.

Lighting Candles of Hope

I created this blog earlier this year at a low point in my life. I’d given up believing my son would survive his addiction. I did not expect him to live much longer. I had lost hope.

When you lose hope, you lose everything.

But in reaching out to others, I found the support I needed to regain that lost hope. I found others struggling just as hard as I was–those who struggled with loved ones still deep in addiction, those whose loved ones had struggled and survived, and those whose loved ones had struggled and lost.

Many I found  here, readers of my blog who left comments and messages of support and understanding, who shared their stories, and their loved ones’ stories. They gave me the strength and encouragement I needed to keep fighting and keep hoping.

Many were recovering and recovered addicts, and they were especially dear to me because I heard my son’s voice in their stories, their struggles, and their triumphs.

Many I found in the movement called “The Addict’s Mom” (TAM), an organization whose members are the mothers of addicts who, like me, are struggling with the terror of addiction and how it tears families apart. I feel such a kinship with these women. They are my sisters-in-arms.

September is National Recovery Month, And TAM is launching a “Lights of Hope” Campaign.  They ask everyone on September 1 to light three candles:

• One for an addict currently using
• One for an addict in recovery
• One for an addict who is gone but forever loved and remembered

I hope you will join me in lighting these candles of hope. For all the moms and their loved ones.

Thank you.

To learn more about TAM and other events planned in September, visit their website at http://addictsmom.com/

Celebrating 90 Days Strong Amid Trials & Tribulation

My son celebrated ninety days clean this week.

I can’t tell you how proud I am of him, especially when the past several weeks have been so rough. Not only had he been picked up on an old warrant, survived ten days in jail, and suffered through methadone withdrawals, but when he was released, he found out he’d lost his housing, his job, and the friendship and trust of his sponsor.

He couldn’t understand it. He hadn’t relapsed. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But here he was jobless and homeless again, and without the support of the sponsor he’d so depended upon. Why was this happening?

The housing problem was especially difficult. The shelter where he’d been staying had promised to help him financially secure permanent housing, but now that was gone. His sponsor was angry that he had returned to the methadone clinic, instead of using his time in jail to get off it completely. And without a job, he didn’t have the means to live at all.

The one bright spot in all this was that a woman who had befriended him before going into jail was still there when he got out, still believing in him, and wanting to help. And during those first few difficult weeks they became closer, became a couple.

I was wary of this at first. Everything I had read and come to believe said that recovering addicts should not become involved in relationships until they had a year or more of sobriety behind them. I could not see this ending well, for her, or for him.

But I seriously wonder now if he would be celebrating 90 days clean if she hadn’t been there to help him through those last few difficult weeks. While it seemed that everyone else had given up on him and pulled the rug out from beneath his feet, she stayed and gave him steady encouragement.

More than that, she helped him through what has been a huge relapse trigger—the kind of devouring  loneliness that eats you alive. Over and over again, he has told me, the loneliness is the worst thing. The thing that gets him every time. That is so unbearable only a needle in his arm gives him release.

So, as unwise as a new relationship may be this early in his recovery, I am grateful to her, and happy for him.

His housing situation is still marginal. He sleeps in cars, or motel rooms when he has money, or at campsites. But his sponsor has returned, and he’s working again. He’s going to meetings, and he’s testing clean. And he and his new friend are looking for a place together.

I still don’t know if this is a good idea. I don’t know if their relationship will last. I don’t know what it might do to him if it doesn’t.

But this is the way it is. This is what he has to work with on his road to recovery. We never know what challenges or gifts life will drop at our feet. We just have to make the most of what we are given.

So I’m hopeful. And so is my son. We’re both extremely grateful, and reassured, that after being severely tested, he’s still 90 days strong.

On Loving an Addicted Child

Migrant Mother (1936) by Dorothea Lang

I found this poem on a Facebook site for mothers of addicted children. It spoke to me and I wanted to share it with you. Many thanks to Jacqui for allowing me to do so.

On Loving An Addicted Child

by Jacqui Brown

When our children are babies, we learn how to love and nurture them.
We learn how to fill their needs.
We learn to protect them, always keeping them out of harms way.
We help them learn to walk.
We help them learn to talk.
We teach them to chew their food so they don’t choke.
We read to them to expand their world.
We sing to them to lull them to sleep or make them smile.
We begin to build our dream chest for them right from birth.
Life always begins with the assumption of greatness!
We push them in school.
We help them with homework.
We become their very own personal cheering section.
We teach them to look both ways when crossing the street.
We teach them to eat healthy.
We teach them to not talk to strangers.
We teach them why they should wear helmets so they won’t get hurt.
We help them develop friendships.
We teach them how to set standards for themselves.
We teach them morals and good ethics.
We teach them about love and loving.
We teach them to respect others and to respect themselves.
We give them our heart and soul.
We give the commitment of unconditional love.
We forgive them their mistakes.
We set rules.

And then they grow up!

We stand back and watch them shed the cocoon we created.
We watch in awe as they step towards their life.
We have given them the tools by which to live.

But…
what happens when what they choose leads them to a life no one expected?
Addiction!

They get so caught up in it, you end up crashing emotionally every waking moment.
Every dream shatters!
Hearts are broken!
Life is no longer ‘normal’!
Fear sets in like your new best friend!
Every thought centers on life and death!

AND THEN…

YOUR LIFE STOPS!
Everything comes to a screeching halt!

You become just as broken as they are!
Nothing makes sense anymore!
You want to hide because you can no longer run!
You’re worn out!
Too many secrets!
Too many fears!
Too many judgments!
Too many days and nights wondering if they will survive!
If you will survive!

You make their choices your burden and you become a shell of what you used to be!
You simply stop being yourself in devoting yourself to their salvation.

BUT…

If you fail to recognize the one BIG thing that can turn you back into YOU, you will never recover, you will forever be broken.

When you fail to recognize that it is THEIR LIFE not yours that is broken, you will never be able to get back up from your trembling knees.

It becomes a lose, lose, game!
No one wins when the glass is shattered everywhere!

For those who have been dealing with this day in and day out, year after year, please understand that you must finally accept that you are merely a bystander in your addict’s life!

Matters of the heart are extremely devastating when it comes to our children.

Yes, we love them heart and soul!
Yes, we desire for them a life that is not always threatening!
Yes, we want them stop what they’re doing!

Yes, we want their own life back and we want our own life back!

HOWEVER…

until you are willing to let YOUR old dreams for them go…because their new normal will never match what you once held for them in your heart…
until you are willing to understand that you can no longer make their choices for them…

until you are willing to lengthen that leash as they move forward in their life, with their choices, with an outcome unknown…

YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HEAL YOURSELF!

When you finally understand that they are –

NOT DOING THIS TO HURT YOU PERSONALLY…

NOT DOING THIS TO RUIN EVERYTHING that makes you happy…

NOT DOING THIS TO DESTROY YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY…

NOT DOING THIS TO WREAK FINANCIAL RUIN ON YOU…

…you can then finally allow yourself to say out loud…ENOUGH!

It is your God given right to say that!
You cannot control everything nor can you fix everything no matter how hard you try, no matter how many sacrifices you make!

You MUST understand that, although it may feel like they want you down there in the trenches with them…
just as down and hopeless as they are…

THAT. WAS. NEVER. THEIR. PLAN!

YOU JUMPED ON THAT TRAIN AND TOOK THAT RIDE WITH THEM!

The idea of you being just as down and out as they are has never crossed their mind!
Addiction is a very selfish game!

If you allow yourself to become a prisoner to it because you opened the door rather than looking in through the window, YOU have put yourself behind the bars…not them!

Addiction…
It is a disease, just as cancer is!
It needs to be worked out methodically!
You need to start seeing it as a math equation!
Do this, add that, subtract that, it will equal this!

It sounds simple, yes!

But, when you learn to reign in your emotions and work from a problem solving method, you WILL start to see bits of your life coming back to you!

When the idea that only they can change their path finally sinks into your thinking, you will suddenly see shards of freedom coming back into your life!

Yes, it will always make you sad!
Yes, it will always hurt!

Thing is though…

YOU. DESERVE. YOUR. OWN. LIFE. TOO!

YOU NEED TO STOP BEING BROKEN BECAUSE THAT WILL NEVER FIX ANYTHING!

You need to jump back into your own life!
YOU need to do the things you love…
the things that bring you great joy…
the things that take that tremble out of your knees!

Your addict knows to their very core that you love them.
You instilled that a long time ago!

Your only job now is to ensure them that you love them as the child they used to be!
That you hope they too can see whatever dreams they had are still there waiting for them to be chased!
To ensure them that through treatment they can come back to that dreaming child!
That is all you can do!

THE REST IS UP TO THEM!

Please!
Get back into your own life!
You deserve it!

STAND UP!
STAY STRONG!