I’m looking forward to your chat tomorrow at The Second Road. Have a great day!

Like Jody, I too am interested in the response you are, or are not, receiving from what we Al Anonics call the “Earth People,” or those with no program. What about feedback from family members of those in active addiction? I’m one of those myself and realize now that I’ve been a lot sicker than my “qualifier,” that is, my 27 year old addict son struggling to get into recovery.

Denial is putting it mildly for those of us, especially mothers of adult addict children, when it comes to admitting that we are powerless in any way when it comes to our children. Okay, I’ll stop using the collective pronoun “we,” and put the focus back on me. I too had to re-wind the tape to find my own traumatic experience and then hit the play button in my mind and re-live it and re-member it for what it was if I was ever going to find my own way into this elusive state of being called re-covery.

I remember the night very well: Thursday, May 16, 2002 at approximately 9 p.m. I got the call from my son in jail. Let me first say that there is a reason I remember the date. My dad died on May 16, 1975 at the age of 47, and each year that date brings with it a touch of sadness. So it was probably very appropriate that this trauma happened on this date for me.

I knew my son was not doing well. At twenty he had run the gamut of a textbook case of teenage rebellion, or so I thought. I left his father when he was eight and thought he was dealing with it okay until his dad remarried when he was twelve. Seems he had always hoped we would get back together and now that didn’t seem like it was going to happen. That he was also experiencing early puberty didn’t help. He did all the stuff a rage-filled teenage boy typically does: stopped hanging around with kids he’d grown up with and took up with the “Rave” crowd, left behind the prep boys school for public school and then dropped out altogether in the 11th grade, defiantly smoked marijuana in my home, got arrested at fourteen trying to cash a check from a closed account he had found in the trash in order to “produce” a rave with his rave friends, moved out at sixteen to live with his new crowd and his psycho girlfriend and so on.

So getting “the call” from jail did not surprise me. Thinking maybe he was in possession of marijuana or had been driving under the influence, I calmly asked, “what are you charged with?” He quietly answered, “drug possession,” and I asked “what drug?” When I heard the word heroin, my brain screamed it back at him like some kind of primal scream (this he has told me). I do remember everything turning black, my knees giving out and finishing the conversation slumped over the kitchen sink.

Discussing this with my therapist six years later (2008) I was as surprised as she at how much detail I retained from that night. I was even able to recall what I had done that afternoon and what television program I was watching when the call came (E.R.). My therapist informed me that what I had suffered was a traumatic experience and many of my “issues” that brought me to therapy looked very much like post traumatic stress symptoms. Also, since my son has been in jail a number of times since that fateful night I realized that I have indeed relived that experience many times and the symptoms have gotten worse and worse.

This was a good time for this revelation since I had just reached what I now see was my very own personal “bottom,” accepted that I was powerless over my son’s struggle, my life had become worse than unmanageable, it had become “un-liveable,” and I was ready for any power whatsoever to restore me to sanity. I was one sick puppy.

I relate all this to emphasize that this chronic progressive, incurable, but manageable disease, addiction, is called a family disease for a reason. When I encounter family members of addicts who have no program I shudder to think that I was that sick, but I was. That shame and isolation can be deadly too.