He is still at the place, I think, but has said he was going to leave because he just cant do that program.
he has already been to the emergency room and gotten antibiotic for his tooth and something for his nerves because he had a panic attack!
my husband said to make it work
now what is my role?
the first night he was there he said he liked it and he thought he could work the program the next night was all down hill
Stands, it helps me to remember that addiction is a horrible and destructive thing ~ and that my son is caught in it. Like your son, whose intentions were good, who tried to work the program (even one night is trying), my son slides back into drug use. Not like "Oh, boy! I think I'll really enjoy myself and use some drugs!", but with desperate rationalizations that enable the first uses and then, allow the addiction to win.
Your son is trapped in that horror as surely as mine is.
I see my role as the person who will tell my son addiction is a terrible thing, or drugs are powerful, or he was raised better, or that however tough it seems now, he is going to have to go through it to get to the other side. Sometimes, we don't hear from our son for a very long time. Sometimes, we hear from him enough that we hope that this time, he will make it.
Sometimes, we hear from him when he is using, again.
We are learning not to judge him for that.
Whatever our son's choices, we see our roles as parents who love their child but who will never help him to destroy himself.
For you, and for your son now, your truth is that whether your son works this program or ends up back in prison, the addiction is going to have to be dealt with. It isn't going to be easy or pleasant. Unless he does beat it though, the addiction will dominate his life, and he will lose everything that mattered to him once.
If he cannot break free of the addiction, the addiction will be the only thing he has left.
You will be surprised how easy it is to speak this truth to your son, once you have determined that it IS true.
And true it is.
It is your son's addiction that has taken over and destroyed his life. Until there is a cure for it, those who have fallen into that trap will have to beat it on their own.
Or they will lose their lives to the addiction.
They may not actually lose their lives, but they will surely live a marginalized life, a life on the outskirts, instead of the full celebration their lives might have been.
Nothing you did caused this, Stands.
Nothing you do now can cure it.
Your son needs to understand, like mine needs to understand, that not only will I never again help him destroy himself in the service of his addiction, but that I love him too much to watch him destroy himself. If your son accepted treatment for a panic attack, I think your role would be to tell him there will be many such attacks before he beats this addiction. I would tell him too though, that there will come a time, once he stands up to the addiction, when the panic attacks will become easier to live through.
But it is going to get worse before it gets better.
That is the nature of addiction.
Parents like us, like husband and I, and like you and your husband, need to be crystal clear with ourselves about how to parent our addicted children.
And I don't care what anyone says about how we should just be able to turn away once they turn eighteen or twenty-four or thirty-two.
Persons who say such things have no concept of what it is to be the parent of an addicted child.
You and your husband are on the right path, Stands. husband and I try to understand our own feelings by acknowledging that we suffer.
We suffer, because someone we love is addicted to drugs and is slowly, certainly, unavoidably, losing his life.
We suffer, because so much of who our son was is already lost to us.
But I think you will find too Stands that once you acknowledge your pain, you can function through it. You can choose correct responses, you can learn to forgive yourselves for not having the answers your son so desperately needs.
You can love your son because he is so worth loving, whether he is addicted to drugs or whether he is able to beat the addiction.
Those are the understandings that have helped us navigate through this hellishness, Stands.
It isn't going to be easy for you and your husband.
But your son, like mine, is worth loving without remorse.
We just have to be honest with ourselves about how we will respond to the addict's cries for help.
Assisting in any way with a lifestyle which includes drug use is wrong, and will never help our sons to beat their addictions.
You are coming clearer with each challenge you face and meet, Stands.
I think you and your husband will do fine, and I hope with all my heart that both our sons are able to find their ways back home.
Barbara
