Have you watched this show? I would highly recommend it to any family with a family member with an addiction.
The entire family and even extended families are so deeply affected by this addicted member.
As a mother, I can not describe it better than the advertisement for Scrubs where the doctor takes the heart in his hand and squeezes it and blood squirts out. As gruesome as this sounds, it is the true feeling that a Mom feels every second, hour, day, week, month and year when she has an addicted child. Even though she has a deep and profound belief in God it still hurts on a daily basis. There is a feeling of hope each awakening that today is the day that the miracle happens and then a deep and penetrating sadness upon going to sleep when it didn't happen. I don't think there is a mother alive that wouldn't lay their life down just to cure their child.
Every holiday is affected. You plan for such a happy occasion with a knot in your tummy hoping that the addicted one doesn't spoil it for everyone. It is so sad, because all involved love each other and suffer the same sadness. Only the addicted one doesn't realize the impact of their actions.
Your children (who have not suffered with an addicted child, thank goodness) get frustrated with you and rightly so that you can't just "kick" the child out. Only when you are a parent with this problem can you truly comprehend how extremely hard (and for some impossible) it is to do.
You watch children with such potential, wonderful and tender hearts just become falling down drunks or skeletons from an eating disorder. It seems the more you try to help them, the more they turn their anger at you and lash out at you.
How do we keep from being enablers without deserting our children? I have never figured that one out. There is just so much pain every minute of every day.
What about the children of the addicted parent? Their childhood is only a one time thing. How sad that it could be marred by such pain.
But the great sadness of it all is for the addicted one. What they must go through. How many times they must swear this is going to be the last one. Only through the power of filling the void in their hearts with God is the addiction ever going to go away. All the treatment centers, etc etc will not work if that void is left there and again it must only be filled with the power of God.
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It's hard to imagine that as a parent (and I have tried); it's hard enough with a sibling.
I think the only key to the situation is to find your own way through it, for you. You didn't cause it, you can't control it and you can't cure it.
I think there is a deep lesson to be learned when things aren't fitting neatly into what we think life should be or what we want it to be. For us or others.
Certainly j has one answer to this quandary, for him, and his actions challenge us to come up with our own understanding of where such a thing fits in our worlds.
A wise person once told me that suffering is pain multiplied by resistance. If our pain is 10 and our resistance is 100 then our suffering is 1000. Perhaps the best course is as you've said, to release this to the hands of a higher intelligence.
As a sibling, it's different I imagine. Releasing judgment, it's his life, but maintaining honesty in my own boundaries about such behavior. And sometimes it pisses me off and I'll call him on being an a**hole.
But perhaps a more social response may be looking up the al-anon groups in the area and finding support from others whose family members have chosen this path.
It is a strange thing, from a sibling point of view, to figure how "you" feel about it.
For me, it is two strong emotions in turmoil for which determines my perspective. On some days it is profound sadness at the loss of a brother I once knew and no matter if today was the last drink he ever took that there would be damage to himself and his life that could not be undone. Sadness that "we" can fix him or even have a conversation that will make sense and/or be remembered the next day. Other days the feeling is anger. I find myself angry at what "this person" has done with my brother, his life, and his family. Angry at the impact it has on my mom and pop, other brothers, little sister, and his own children. Most of all I am angered at the wonderful life his issues (I use that word because I believe substance abuse is a symptom of other things rather than a disease of its own) are causing him to waste. Times and memories he can't ever get back and it breaks my heart and selfishly speaking I don't like that feeling.
I guess it is somewhere in the balancing of those two I just try keep the love for him in my heart from being soured so I see him as the person he is today above all things. My brother...
Hello, My name is Stephanie and I have a very dear friend who is only 23 that is addicted to morphine, ocycottin, any narcotic pill that can be broke down and injected. Just yesterday she nearly died from complications from her type 1 diabeties and her drug use and today signed out of the hopital against doctors orders. She does have medical problems that require some kind of pain medication and to really sum it we DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO! Medical treament and insurance problems are limiting us so much that we cant get her into a facility that will show any compassion to her whole problem. We desperately need some real help. Any ideas? My email address is swhite2881@hotmail.com, my phone number is 6207785278 and my mailing address is S. Sexton, 3916 West Main, Parsons KS 67357. I normally wouldnt give my personal information out but if it means saving this young girls life Im willing to take the risk. Please get in touch with me as soon as you possibly can.
Stephanie
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