When we envision having children, we think of adorable little mini me's who love us unconditionally, hang on our every word and bask in the glow of the knowledge that we instill in them. The reality is pretty much the same as the vision....and then they turn 2! From that point forward though, it is a constant uphill battle on the part of parents to get them to walk and talk, then to sit down and be quiet. We spend hours dealing with fits over seams in socks, eating vegetables and bed times. Then before we know it, they are teenagers and we learn that we have done such a good job as parents that they suddenly have minds of their own and they ain't afraid to use them, however immature and inexperienced in the real world they are. The fits turn into battles and we find ourselves battling over curfews, friends, boy friends/girl friends, homework, driving and there is always the fact that they are so wise at 15, 16, 17, 18..... that they simply do not understand how we as the dinosaurs that we are, can carry on a conversation let alone understand their oh so complex lives. Yes, parenting looks much easier on paper than it is in reality.
With all of this though, never once in my pre-child days did I ever say to myself, "Gee I hope my child grows up to be an addict." Even in those trying years of being a toddler on up to the know it all teen, never did it occur to me that my angel would ever make a choice that would become an addiction. Maybe my child was right when he believed I did not understand his oh so complex life.
Now I was not completely catatonic during my kids growing up years and I did spend many an afternoon, evening and car ride discussing drinking, drugs and the dangers of the two. At first my kids listened wide eyed and intent on the dangers of underage drinking, drinking and driving and never even smoking weed as it had been drilled into me by their father that weed was a gateway drug. He would have been the voice of knowledge as he had been a dual addict who had spent years in recovery, while I was the small town girl whose worst vice had been a little drinking and a little dive into smoking that lasted about six months. I thought it made me look cool, but it really just made me wheeze because I had asthma. That was the extent of my knowledge of the illicit world of drugs, so it is no wonder that my drug lectures eventually fell on deaf ears. At some point they were living in a world where drugs were at every party, offered in every school hallway and they couldn't throw a stick without hitting a kid who was part of the ever developing drug culture. It is true, after awhile, my lectures must have become monotonous and lame and they just tuned me out. In my ego inflated brain though, I truly thought I was getting through with my self-righteous "don't do drugs," and "just say no" regurgitation from every after school special I had ever watched. I was wrong.
At first my child just started becoming distant. I justified this by telling myself he was just a teenager and teenagers just did this. Then in time the distance became laced with anger. He could go from zero to aggressive in seconds and over nothing. Then I began to fall into the pit of enabling. I had no idea I was enabling or that there was anything going on other than teenage angst, but there was and I did.
I would question, poke, prod, lay down the law and battle this child of mine daily. It seemed like in the course of a few days, he had gone from the child I knew to some pod person that had taken over my sons body. That is how it seemed, but looking back I can now see that this had been coming on for awhile. Maybe even a year or so. At first it was just weed and he wasn't really smoking enough of it to set off too many alarms, but as he began to dabble in other drugs, they were taking a hold of him and his brain and the changes became too obvious to ignore. Still though, I was looking for excuses for him. I tried to convince myself that it was everything from him being bullied at school, to having a hard time with school work, to even psychiatric issues. Never once did drugs ever occur to me. All the while though, I was being naive and making excuses which started a long and winding path of enabling.
I had no idea that drugs were at the core of his issues, but his attitudes and behaviors were starting to get borderline violent, erratic and abusive. It wasn't just at home either. He was an equal opportunity aggressor and his actions were starting to cause many problems with teachers, community members, other family members and friends. Still, I was the mom and as the mom I had to make everything better, so I went into "fix it" mode. As he went through life damaging, destroying and causing chaos, there I was following right behind him picking up his messes, trying to fix the damage and making excuses for his behaviors right down to lying to family and friends as to why he was acting the way he was. My excuses included but were not limited to: "He's tired. He's had a bad day. He's not feeling well." And my all time favorite, complete denial that he did something by simply saying, "You are lying! He didn't do that." The situation was getting out of hand for both of us.
Finally one day when things were particularly rough for both of us and he was appearing to have an emotional break down of sorts, he blurted out that he was smoking pot. I remember being completely and totally dumb struck. I absolutely had no words.....until I did! The words were, "your grounded and you aren't smoking any more weed ever" and then I am sure there was incoherent screaming that followed because I was lost. Unfortunately, my son was already well on his way to establishing some very fine addict tools and he pulled manipulation out of his hat like a pro. Before our conversation was over, he had gone into victim mode as to all the reason he had chosen to use, "I was too strict, I was too mean, I didn't understand him," but my favorite was that he was having extreme anxiety and weed helped calm him. Now this might have been a good one had the child ever had anxiety before. He had not. Still, before all was said and done, my motherly guilt was in full gear and he walked away punishment free and still smoking weed.
Now let me say here, if you have never had a child with addiction issues, you probably just rolled your eyes and thought, what a pathetic parent I am. If however you are reading this and you have walked in these same shoes, then I am almost sure you have lived some version of that last paragraph yourself.
My denial and his manipulation ran deep. That day I showed him that I was a huge enabler who chose to believe my son over my gut which even at the time was churning as I think I knew there was more to the story. I also taught him through my actions and reactions that he could pretty easily manipulate me because I so wanted there to be a reason that he chose to smoke pot rather than just the fact that he wanted to smoke pot and liked it.
In time his drug of choice switched up to include methamphetamine. The story of how he "chose" that drug will be for another blog but make no mistake, he did choose it. In fact before it became his disease, it was his choice. This became a very grim time in our lives as I was still heavily in denial all the while he was constantly running, having strange people into my home, wrecking cars and getting more and more vile, aggressive and dangerous.
When I finally learned that he was using meth, this was so foreign to me that I had no idea what was even going on. I found out one day when a friend of his took me to him, he was staying at a house that I had no idea was a drug house. This individual took me right up to him and told me to look at him and never to forget what I saw. My son who had always carried a little weight was skinny, his skin was pale, his eyes sunken and they literally looked crazy. My son was beyond angry and as I left he proceeded to stand out in the street and scream obscenities at me. Later that day, he started sending me texts that were vile. He told me that he wished I were dead and that when I died he would be so happy that he would dance on my grave. He also called me names that were so vulgar and insulting. I couldn't imagine calling someone I hated those things let alone calling my mother that.
Within days he was close to death and he knew it. When he came down he barely remembered any of his tirade and he begged to come home. Looking back now I laugh, but at the time I felt like he was in a bad place and somehow I was now in charge. I was in control. I allowed him to come home with a laundry list of rules. Soon, he started looking and acting more like the son I raised and before long, it seemed like things were normal again. Until they weren't.
Within a year, I began to see changes again. Unfortunately, I was still stuck so far in denial that once again, I didn't recognize what I was seeing. Once again I had to be told and had to have his drug use forced down my throat before I knew what was going on. Once again I thought I was in control and pulled the reins in tight. There was peace for a few more months.
When the third relapse happened, my naivety was starting to grow thinner and my gut was telling me that he was using. Then as happens with addicts, he started getting sloppy, cocky and feeling like consequences couldn't touch him. That is how he got caught by me on this occasion. I may have been getting wiser at this point but I was still pretty stupid about drugs and addicts. I still somehow thought I had some control and that I could "fix" things. I gave it one last try and it could have very easily had tragic results.
By this time, he had been both snorting and smoking meth. I began searching his room in my house and I found that he was stashing both meth and paraphernalia everywhere. He had also been dealing and selling with my vehicle (he had wrecked his) and he was getting involved with meth people who were very dangerous.
My having any control over him was quickly becoming a joke. He never stopped using and his behaviors were getting worse and worse. No day was a safe day in my house. He was aggressively engaging the neighbors, he would scream and yell and throw horrific tantrums in the house and he was getting physical with me. Still I lied for him and made excuses. I was slowly beginning to isolate myself from everyone because the lies and the hiding of who he was becoming were becoming more than I could handle. I was allowing him, the addict, full control over my life and I had no idea how to be anything but a victim.
One day, I found lines of meth in his room. It felt like the last straw and I kicked him out. He tried desperately to manipulate, threaten and control, but a switch had flipped inside of me and I was done living without sleep because I was afraid of what was going on in my house at night. I was tired of the daily fights and having to apologize to neighbors. I was tired of being abused and I was tired of seeing his face. Harsh but true.
He moved in with a friend and it became out of sight out of mind for me. I would get updates from time to time on him and have an occasional talk with him but I never saw him in person. I was told he was clean, but I found it funny that in 8-10 months he still didn't have a job, but I was just trying to find peace in my life so I really didn't ask too many questions. As long as I knew he was a live, I was okay. I never in a million years imagined that as a mom I would get to this point, but I was. Until I wasn't.
One day my son showed up at my house. He looked horrible and he was crying. He told me that he had been using the whole time he had been out of the house and that he had graduated to shooting up meth. By this time I really shouldn't have been shocked, but I was. My heart sunk as he sat in front of me looking sick, pale and horribly thin. He said he wanted help and just like that, I was back in enabling mom mode, ready to fix everything.
I spent the next two weeks getting him into detox, sober living and counseling. All of which he left as soon as he got there. He didn't want to be clean. Not really. He was killing me though. Literally! I once again was not sleeping, not eating and I was idling on high anxiety terrified that my son was going to die and feeling as if I was the only one who could save him. Then one Sunday I was sitting in church and I nearly passed out. I was beyond exhausted and I knew that I was both mentally and physically at my breaking point and for what? That day I dropped him off at a "friends" house and then I went home and went to bed. The following Saturday I went to my first Al-Anon meeting.
I walked into the meeting feeling victimized. I wanted to know how to fix my son and to get my life back into some kind of order. I wanted off this hamster wheel where I kept doing the same thing going in circles. I didn't know if I was going to find it here as I had avoided Al-Anon from the beginning, no matter how many times it was suggested, but I knew that what I had done so far was sure not the answer.
On that day, being in that room with a bunch of strangers, this is what I learned. Everyone in that room was different and yet we were all the same. We all had family members and friends that were alcoholics and addicts. We had all enabled, controlled and tried to fix our addicts with no luck and we were all at the end of our ropes. I also learned that I was not a victim and that I could not fix my sons addiction. I was powerless over his addiction and more importantly, I was powerless over his choices. I learned that he was an adult and that by enabling him, fixing things and making excuses for his actions, I was part of the problem and standing in the way of him ever getting help. The hardest thing that I realized that day though was that no matter what I wanted for him, he had the right to make bad decisions and I had to let him live with the consequences of those decisions. Then there was the light at the end of the tunnel, when I was made to know that Al-Anon was not for me to fix my addict, it was for me to fix me because I was part of the problem.
In that one hour, I had learned more about both myself and my addict than I had in all the previous years of his addiction. I walked out feeling hope as I had seen people in my exact shoes who were smiling, rested and moving on with their lives. I had a whole new prospective on both myself and and my son, the addict. It was both a spiritual and an emotional awakening. I have never looked back.
This is my story as the Al-Anon Mom. My name is LE and this blog is about my recovery as the mother of an addict. Yes, there will be stories about addiction thrown in because at times it will be hard to tell my story without telling how I got here, but this blog will by my therapy and my service.
I hope if you like what you read you let me know in the comments. Also if you have questions or need help because you are struggling with an alcoholic or addict in your life, please know that like me there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Al-Anon and NarAnon groups are in just about every city and even in smaller communities and they can and will help if you let them. You are worth it, just like I am and no....no matter how strong you are, you can't fix your alcoholic or addict. The only person you can fix is you.
Until next time.......
