Crazy Insanity

This addiction business is tough stuff. It takes you through terrain we never asked for and that you never dreamed you would enter. Once there though, you experience a roller coaster ride of emotional blackmail, manipulations, lies, and gas lighting that you would think would only be seen in the movies. Unfortunately, the reality is you are now living out your worst nightmares, only you can't wake up. If it helps though, just about everyone who loves an addict has been through it. 

Once you have a few Al-Anon meetings under your belt, you will start hearing a reoccurring comment. "Everyone tells me that I am acting crazy, and I feel like I am going crazy." The truth is, you are acting crazy! It is all part of the insanity of addiction that drags you in and pulls you under before you even realize what is happening. It seems like almost over night, your addict becomes the worlds best manipulative gaslighter and you feel like you are going crazy because you are literally being driven to that point from a direction you never saw it coming from.  

So how does this happen? Part of the issue is, that when you have an addict in your life that you knew prior to their addiction, your own brain can't reconcile the fact that the addict before you is so different from the person you previously knew and loved. That is why it is so easy to make excuses for them and to enable them. In your selective vision, you don't see an addict before you, who would literally steal everything worth stealing from you and lie to your face without an ounce of remorse. If you could actually see that reality, you would never help them or enable them and distance and boundaries would be a breeze. What your confused brain sees though, is the person you raised, or married or who is your parent or friend, who would never hurt you, therefore you must help them, even if that means making excuse for them, lying for them and letting them manipulate you into things you would never in a million years do otherwise. This is where the crazy insanity starts and it just grows from there. This is also why they say that those close to an addict are usually every bit as sick as the addict. 

Addiction changes everything about a person from the way they act to the chemicals in their brain. It can make a once loving and kind individual, turn cold, deceptive, angry and down right dangerous. It can also cause mental illness or accelerate existing mental illness. It also gives the addict a keen and urgent sense of survival, with drugs being their end game. In order to get those drugs, they will lie, beg, steal and play mind games like a pro. They literally will have you questioning things you know for a fact that you have said and done. It is gaslighting at it's finest. Add to that the extreme stress, worry and exhaustion that comes from them up and leaving without a word, making no contact for days on end and not knowing where they are or who they are with, and your own mental status starts breaking down pretty quickly and the craziness just keeps on keeping on. 

I once heard someone at a meeting say that life with an addict is like living in a torture chamber. It's one of the truest statements I have ever heard. The addict can break you so far down that if you aren't careful, you can become a casualty of their addiction before they do. 

Another part of the insanity is that when you love an addict, you have a misguided belief that you MUST stand by them and help them no matter how unacceptable their words and actions become . They add to this belief daily by telling you just that, and they can play on your love, your guilt, your relationship, and even your sense of right and wrong, to the point where you really aren't even sure what right and wrong is anymore. And, if you do hit a breaking point and realize the craziness of your own actions and refuse to give them money, or a ride or a place to stay, then they will scream and yell, tear things up, threaten, and often tell you they hate you and that you are the worst person ever. Then, like a switch was flipped, in the next breath they will be crying and apologizing and telling you that they really do love you and they just need help and they will get that help, if you only just do what they want right now. None of it do they actually believe or mean and all of it is manipulation with the goal of getting just the right reaction from you, to ultimately get whatever it is they want. It can be an exhausting roller coaster ride that can end up with you on the floor in a puddle, questioning everything you have ever known and doubting who you are as a person.

So how do you keep from literally going crazy and losing yourself in the process when you love an addict? You do what anyone does when going into battle. You put on armor to protect yourself from future attacks. Translated into the world of addiction, this means that you find the nearest Al-Anon or Nar-Anon meeting and you go, you listen, you learn and you gain the tools it takes to keep your sanity and protect yourself from future attacks. 

You will quickly learn to listen to others and understand that most have been if not in your exact shoes, then at the very least similar shoes. You learn to detach with love and start seeing your addict for who they really are and not just the image of who you want them to be. You set up boundaries and you stick to those boundaries and allow your addict to make their own choices and also to live with their own consequences. You quit trying to save them and focus on saving yourself. Most of all you have to realize that you didn't cause their addiction and you can't cure their addiction, but you can enable them to death, or die trying..... if you aren't careful.  

The world of addiction is a murky one and it doesn't just affect the addict. It has long reaching arms that affect everyone that loves the addict. It is such a toxic disease that it can not only destroy the addict, but also those closest to them. Just like you can't protect them from themselves, you however must protect yourself from them, and that is not an overly dramatic statement. No matter what your relationship was with them prior to their addiction, as addicts, they have no filter and no ability or desire to reign themselves in. They see nothing wrong with their behavior and everything wrong with the fact you don't understand that. More insanity.

The good news about all of this is.....there is always hope and when you finally go to that first meeting and start taking the necessary steps to put on end to the insanity and your own crazy behaviors, then it starts becoming easier to put the focus on you (where it needs to be) and to let your addict figure his choices and consequences out for him or herself. By taking these steps actually and figuratively, then often that hope comes to fruition much sooner. Myself and my addict are living proof of this. 

So if your addict has you at a breaking point and you know that you are acting crazy and feeling crazy, then give yourself the best gift you will ever give. Find yourself a meeting and give yourself the gift of sanity. Chances are, you will be like me, and be so grateful that you did. 

Until next time, here's hoping that you are able to look for the reality and not just the wished for, that you are able to let go of the crazy insanity, and that most of all, you can find your true self and your inner peace. 

I Accept Acceptance

The last six months of 2018, I believe the theme of my life was and in 2019 continues to be....acceptance. It is funny how such a common word has become another crucial verb in my life as I travel forward on this journey of my sons addiction and my own recovery.

In our new and improved politically correct society, acceptance is a word we hear a lot. We must accept this and we must accept that. People drone on about it doing very little to back up their words (in my humble opinion) and it just becomes blah blah, blah in our heads. Well, I'm here to tell you that without acceptance, you can't move forward and you will stay stuck.

My first true understanding of what acceptance really means was when I was not only confronted with but proven to, beyond a reasonable doubt that my son was a meth addict. Gone was any chance of me denying the situation. All that was left was acceptance. No....it did not mean that I was throwing in the towel and giving into the unacceptable. What it meant was that I was realizing the facts of the situation and accepting that while I was denying and fighting against the reality, my son was becoming and now was a full fledged addict. That is true acceptance when you understand and fully believe the facts laid before you.

The next step in acceptance hit me not long after the realization of his addiction. It came after I had run myself ragged for several weeks believing whole heartedly that somehow I could control the situation, his addiction and him. Suddenly, I was once again hit squarely in the face with the realization that I had zero control over any of it. Again with the facts.... my son was an addict and he didn't even have control over his addiction so how the hell could I possibly have any control over any of it? The situation was beyond anyone's control at this point and being that my son was legally an adult, he legally had the right to make bad choices and screw up his life and I had no control over any of it. Acceptance #2 had hit me full force. I had no control and I was totally powerless over any of it. 

Acceptance really began to domino when I walked into Al-Anon. The facts started flying at me hard and fast with every meeting I attended. Little fun facts such as, I was not a victim, but that I was however an enabler started rearing their ugly heads. I needed to change myself because I was never going to change him and the biggest moment of acceptance thus far has been, I need to mind my own business and focus on me. For REAL??? How do you take a mom who has been focused on her kids their entire life and tell her to just knock it off? And further more....how do you tell her that any control she had "prided" herself on in the past had just been an illusion since her child turned about 12. I truly wasn't sure I was up for this whole acceptance thing.

The great thing about Al-Anon is that even though the information and the realizations come at you hard and fast, especially at first, no one forces them down your throat. In each meeting they tell you to take what you like from the meeting and leave the rest. In other words, if something helps you....run with it. On the other hand, if you don't like what you hear, that's fine too. So as I was getting these glimpses of the real facts and not just the facts according to me, I slowly realized that I had to accept them, both the good and the bad.

What I think I have learned the most about acceptance is that in life and especially in addiction, we run from facts a lot of the time. We hide in denial and live in a fake world of our own creation. Eventually though, the facade fails us and the truth and reality seep in. You can try and continue to run and deny and make your world a twisted and complex tale, or you can face fact, accept things as they truly are and deal with them from that point forward. Not only does this simplify the world immensely, but it also gives you freedom of choice.

I learned that when I was willing to accept the facts, then I was also free to make a choice as to how I wanted to deal with them. An example was when I finally and fully realized that my son had no desire at that point in his life to get off the streets and get clean. Up to that point I had been masterminding, manipulating and trying my hardest to control the entire situation. I was literally making myself sick and driving myself to the brink of insanity repeating the same things over and over again, expecting different results. When I finally accepted that my son currently was who he was and that this was the life he was choosing for himself and I had no control over it, then that acceptance freed me up to make a choice. I could either continue running myself ragged with no positive outcome OR I could let him make his own choices (which hard as it was for me to "accept" were his to make) and start focusing on myself and getting myself healthy and less insane. Thankfully for everyone involved, I chose the latter.

The bottom line is, acceptance is not easy because it makes a person look reality straight in the eye and sometimes, reality ain't pretty. Once I did this though, I found a peace in the respect that I was no longer wrapped up in denial or the lies and complexities that go with denial. I no longer felt trapped either as I now had the freedom to make my own choices and focus on what was best for me, which in turn turned out to be best for all in my hemisphere. I saw a difference in all my relationships, especially with my other kids, when I no longer felt the need to express my opinion on their lives and their choices. With my addict son, I also saw a change, because once I accepted who he is, I made the choice to draw my boundary lines and also to quit constantly reminding him how his addiction was ruining his life. He knew he was ruining his life and me constantly reminding him, helped no one.

So today, I am grateful for acceptance. It has changed the way I think, feel and act in just about every situation in my life. I feel free to choose what is best for me and I no longer spend sleepless nights worried about others choices and my opinions of them. The fact is, I am a handful all on my own and if I continue to put as much effort into my own life as I have tried to put into everyone elses, then 2019 could quite possibly be my best year to date....and I whole heartedly accept that!

Until next time......