If you have never lived with an addict, I tell you now to get down on your knees and thank God. No...REALLY! Living with an addict is a life that I would wish on no person no matter how much I disliked them. It takes a toll on you mentally, physically and emotionally. It makes you question your sanity and everything you ever thought you knew about anything.
Not until I became the mother of an addict though, did I realize that there were people who lived like this, let alone survived it. Up until this time in my life, I had been a precise thinker. In my head, I always believed that people should act and behave in a certain way. Yes, looking back it seems a bit controlling but also not unusual. It was all about black and white with very few shades of grey. For the most part, people in my world did act with a sense of right and wrong, so my thinking wasn't too far out there. However, you throw an addict into the mix and the world turns upside down pretty quickly. What once was normal becomes torn to shreds by someone who sees nothing wrong with lying, stealing, hitting, screaming, knocking holes in the walls or destroying anything in his path. In a life where I once could have set a clock by the same ol' same ol', suddenly I never knew what I was walking in on or waking up to next.
One day, everything my son had ever been and everything I had ever taught him, seemed no longer to exist. The control I prided myself on having in my home was gone and it had been replaced by utter chaos. He had literally turned into a monster and I didn't know how to "fix it." He was so unpredictable as some days there were still glimpses of the funny, fun loving, sweet son I had raised, but more and more was emerging a vile, angry, aggressive, hateful and hate filled human being. You never knew which version of him you were going to get. The worst though was after awhile, he learned to manipulate and gas light like a pro. More and more he would take situations that I knew were one way and manipulate the situation to the point where I literally questioned my own sanity.
The problem in living with an addict is that they slowly lose all of their social skills which means they end up usually losing their jobs, their friends and even family members. They become the very worst versions of themselves and with an addiction such as meth, they also become paranoid, grandiose, impulsive, compulsive, careless, reckless and they deny and rationalize in the most amazingly manipulative ways. An example of some of these traits are: a meth addict is not the cleanest person. Their surroundings usually have much to be desired. If you tell them to clean up their room (something that would take you or I a half hour) you might go down in two hours and find them with a toothbrush cleaning the dirt off of a heating grate. Now mind you, that will be the cleanest grate you have ever seen, but that will be all that has been done in two hours and likely all that will get done even if given another two hours.
My addict had a brilliant mind before drugs and during drugs, he would come up with the most grandiose and ridiculous ideas of how he was going to make millions. One idea was that he was going to learn to blow glass and sell his works. The reality was that all he ever made were a bunch of meth pipes that when I found them I crushed them all. We were lucky he didn't burn the house down in the process as he had a great affinity for torches and fire at the time and was highly upset that I wouldn't let him use propane in the basement.
The next great idea was that he was going to take apart non-working tvs and sell the working parts on buy/sell sites. I came home one day to find my garage and basement full of 55"+ non-working broken down tv's all parted out everywhere. He was frantically taking them apart talking a mile a minute about all the money he was going to make. Needless to say, a month later I was loading up tv parts and taking them to a recycle place.
After I finally realized that he was an addict, I was in a bit of an abyss. I was a mom and mom's didn't just turn their back on their kids. I had to fix this and by damn I would! I had no idea how far out of my pay scale meth addiction was and worse I had no idea that every single minute of every single day, I was doing nothing but enabling him and making the situation worse. Still I forged ahead deluding myself and denying what was right in front of my face.
Then the stories began. He would tell tales of things he was doing, rationalize the worst of it and talk with pride about his exploits as an addict and a dealer. Yes, the truth is, any addict who uses long enough becomes a dealer. They also become criminals shop lifting, robbing and stealing from strangers, friends and family. They have to steal to use and they have to keep using to survive.....at least that is part of the lies meth tells them.
As a parent and a human being, I lost all sense of reality. I was living in this dark and terrifying world that my addict had created not only for himself but he had dragged me into it too. I feared daily for his life, for what would be destroyed next, what he would do next and I even began to fear for my own safety.
When things got to their worst, I finally was starting to realize that meth had become his best friend, his mother, his father, his love and his god. I had no control over him and I couldn't compete with meth. I was emotionally exhausted and whipped, physically suffering from lack of sleep and spiritually dark. I was no longer in control of anything including my own reactions. One day as he stood in front of me spitting on me and calling me every vile name he could and telling me that he used because of me, I lost it! A rage built up in me that I couldn't control and I hauled out and slapped him across the face with every ounce of strength and anger I had. It was a terrible thing to do....not that he didn't deserve it, but that act put me in more danger than I had ever been in. It stopped the tyraid but opened a flood gate on his end of extreme aggression. Luckily another individual was there at the time and stopped my son from likely killing me. Instead my door took a savage beating. It was at this moment that I knew he had to go or something horrible would end up happening.
It just so happened that I went downstairs as he was outside "cooling off" and I found lines of meth out in the open and that was all I needed. I told him either he left or I turned him into the police. Yeah, more words I never thought would come out of my mouth. His friend persuaded him that his best bet was to leave and he did. It was his last time living under my roof for more than a night.
Looking back, I can't even remember how I survived it all. This was all before Al-Anon and before I had any tools to help me get through situations such as this. Sadly, it still took me awhile before I realized that I was never going to fix this. There were more ups and downs but mostly at a distance and I still had so much more to learn before I would get to the place where I had to reach out for help. I honestly believe that the day I found Al-Anon was the day that saved my life.
Knowing now what I didn't know then, I can safely say that a situation like that is not likely ever to happen again because I know better how to handle myself. I have also learned that beyond the shadow of a doubt that although I did enable my son, I am not the reason he is an addict. His addiction is his choice and his decision and getting clean will also be his choice and his decision.
I guess I would like to end this by saying that addiction happens in the best of homes and the worst of homes. It happens where families are well off and where they have nothing. It is a human and willing choice first and disease after that. As I said before, if you or your family has not been touched by addiction, then thank God above, because for those of us who have, it is nightmare that we have no control over. If we do it "right" we turn our addict out into the cold, both figuratively and literally and we leave them to their own devices in a world we know nothing of. We fear every phone call and every ring of the doorbell knowing that this time could be the time we hear our addict is in jail, the hospital or worse. Please don't judge us too harshly if we isolate a bit, seem to be into praying a lot more and use a lot of phrases like "Let go and let God" and "One day at a time" and if we tell you we can't do something because we have to go to a meeting, please understand that we really have to go. Just know that we are trying our best to survive in a world we didn't create with a disease we never wanted. The bottom line.....I have no control over my addict or his choices.....but I can save myself.
Until next time.......
❤️❤️❤️ Thank you for this.
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