“You were far away, and I didn’t ask you why. What could I say? …How close am I to losing you tonight?” – The National
She wrapped me in a warm flannel blanket and placed in front of me a bowl of hot soup. Rubbing my back to warm me up as I shook with cold trying to control the spoon she had placed in my hand. I remember her sobbing but not allowing her emotions to consume her or distract her from her priority. The priority that she had always made her priority since the day she gave birth to me. To comfort me, her youngest son and to always make sure that I felt loved by her. My mother has always been a strength to me throughout my life and was a beacon of hope during a very dark time in my life. This moment in my addiction, I had been found intoxicated, shirtless and passed out headfirst in a snowbank. I was found by a former classmate of mine from high school. In a selfless act he lifted me out of the snow placed me in his car and drove me to where he knew my parents had lived. Moments like these had become frequent for her and never did she turn me away no matter the vitriol that would often come from my mouth or when I would throw things at her telling her how much I hated her and how much I just wanted to die. Her selfless acts for her son always won out and no doubt bought me extra time in moments on those days I felt as if no one loved me. My mothers’ consistent action of love always seemed to be the light that kept me going. As I sat at her kitchen table trying to work the spoon of soup to my mouth, I can remember the deep shame I felt about the pain I was causing her and wanted so much for her love to be enough to stop the insanity of my destruction; but it wasn’t, and it never would be. I believe that’s why that memory stands out the most above all the other times, and believe me there were many. For in that moment sitting in her dimly lit kitchen no words exchanged between us just the silent acknowledgement of our own tears; I believe we both knew her love nor anyone’s could ever save me from my addiction.
Recalling that incident is still an emotional one for me. As I am no longer plagued by the shame or guilt of my addiction. Once I took the action necessary to work on my internal condition and right those harms I caused; that guilt and shame was washed away. I however can still recall the heaviness of the feelings of those moments and the love as well as the heartache that are forever etched in the memory of my emotions. I am grateful for this for it allows me to reflect and not forget the truth of my experiences.
The most heartbreaking thing for those family members and loved ones close to someone effected by a addiction, is knowing there is nothing you can do to fix the disease in front of you. If one were to think that the disease of addiction only effects the individual, they would be sorely mistaken. Those family members and loved ones are affected deeply to the core of their very being. Until they acknowledge their own powerlessness over fixing the addict/alcoholic then they are damned themselves to their own insanity of believing they can some how fix their loved one.
My family time and again would bail me out of situations and literally bail me out of jail. Hoping that they would somehow be able to fix me and or prove to me that I was worth saving. A lot of the time though their enablement of me financially or giving me a place to live while I was actively using only proved to be more dangerous for me then helpful. Not allowing me to feel the natural consequences of my actions disallowed me to feel the desperation I needed to. That would then eventually compel me to take the action I needed to, to save my life. That’s the insanity of the disease for family members and loved ones, where the addict’s insanity lies in the belief that ‘this time will be different’ and that ‘this time I will be able to control my drug use.’ The insanity for a loved one dealing with an addict, shows up like ‘well if I help them this one last time’ or ‘If I bail them out of this financial or legal situation this one last time.’ Etcetera, etcetera.
It wasn’t until my mother and father made the hard decision to stop financially supporting me and not allowing me to live in their house while actively using that things started to become real for me. I was forced to wake up to the nature of my disease and the reality of my life. You see as long as they continued to try and soften the consequences of my addiction the more I believed it wasn’t as bad as it was. A family member almost must stop doing everything they have intuitively done their whole life and let the individual go. I think where people get confused is they believe when professionals tell them to stop enabling their loved one. They hear for some reason don’t love them anymore. But this is not the case at all. My mother and father both as difficult as some of those decisions were they never stopped emotionally supporting me and expressing their love for me. I would often try to emotionally hold them hostage by telling them they didn’t love me if they wouldn’t give me something I wanted. True love is when someone can make those decisions and hold a boundary when they know they will be perceived as cold hearted or mean. When a parent or loved one can put aside their own fears of how they will be perceived then and only then will opportunities be allowed for the addict to see his or her true reality. I often believe enabling an individual is really only a selfish pursuit to fill one’s own pride and ego and often times presented in martyr fashion as pseudo altruism. I get it. It’s not consciously an individual’s intent, but that is how the disease shows up for them.
The devastating affect addiction has on those close to an individual with substance use disorder can continue to show residual effects even after a loved one gets on the path of recovery. My mother told me years after I had been sober for some time that even though I had been clean for a while, she would often get sick to her stomach and feel intense fear when the phone rang at night past 11 o’clock. As that is usually when she would receive a call from the hospital or jail during my using days. I had in fact created a trauma response in my mother that took her years to undo.
The best thing a family member can do for an addict and for themselves is to focus on their own mental health and wellbeing. To attend their own 12 step support groups, seek out individual therapy and practice good self-care.
Fear of losing an individual is probably the one of the scariest feelings a human being can experience. It may bring up our own fears of abandonment that may have its genesis somewhere back in our own childhood. So, it’s a very rooted fear that may have been with us for a long time, maybe longer then any other fear we have. So, it makes sense it can drive one to a very irrational place that pushes us to an anxious place of control and we hang on for dear life; believing if we hang on tight enough we will somehow force upon a situation a result that will give us peace. But the truth is we only really experience real peace when we learn to surrender and let go. It was in my families ability to stop fighting for me and letting go, that I was finally able to fight for myself and then eventually find myself in recovery.
The MixTape Diaries 