Hi, My Name Is….
To borrow a few lines from Jay-Z’s song, “Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself”:
I did not come here to show out
Did not come here to impress you
And I don’t care what you think about me
My name is Nadine and those three lines tell you all you need to know about me when it comes to my advocacy work. I am a family addiction advocate. I did not choose this advocacy, it chose me. I don’t do it to show out or impress anyone and I don’t care what anyone thinks about my reasons for doing this work. All I care about is giving a voice to the millions of families who are dealing with loved ones suffering from addiction and making sure our stories are heard.
You see in the battle against addiction, the family is often considered collateral damage. Collateral damage is the general term for unintentional deaths, injuries or other damage inflicted incidentally on an unintended target and the fallout from a loved one’s addiction can be devastating. So much of the focus is on the person with the addiction that nothing else seems to matter. All your energy, thoughts, time, money; everything goes to that person and before you know it, you have no life. Every waking moment is spent wondering if they’re okay, if they’re safe, will today be the day…it is a sense of dread that is extremely hard to put into words but families who have dealt with addiction know the feeling all too well. In a sense you are being held hostage by the addiction and you’re just hoping that everybody makes it out alive…
Dealing with a loved one’s addiction is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and I didn’t just do it once, I did it three times: with my brother, sister and husband. In my husband and sister’s case, they were able to make it to and stay in long term recovery. But I lost my brother to alcoholism eight years ago and it is a pain that I will never get over; even after all this time it breaks my heart whenever I talk or write about him but I know I need to do it. I need to share the devastation I still feel about losing my only brother; about how the last memory I have of him before he passed, taking a picture with my daughter before her prom, makes me happy and reduces me to a sobbing mess at the same time.
I really need people to understand what it’s like to deal with addiction, and that includes the loved one with the addiction. Do they know what it’s like to watch someone they love slowly kill themselves and know there’s not a damn thing you can do about it? Do they know what it’s like to have to lock up or hide things so they aren’t sold for drug money? Do they know what it’s like watching their parents go into debt to try and find yet another rehab, and hope this time the treatment will be successful? Do they know what it’s like to not know where their loved one is, when and if they’re coming home, or if today will be the day they get “the call?” Do they know what it’s like trying to explain to their child why their mother or father isn’t there or why they had to leave? Do they know what it’s like to visit them in jail or worse yet, the cemetery?
I heard a piece on NPR’s All Things Considered recently about families who lost children to overdose. One of the ladies in the piece said something that rang so true to me for families that have lost loved ones due to addiction. She said that when you lose a child to addiction, no one brings a casserole to your door; no one comes to spend time with you. They don’t know what to say or do because the stigma of addiction is so strong. I know this personally because when my brother died, no one sent cards or food; no one came by to see how we were or if we needed anything; it just wasn’t talked about. Sad to say but the same attitudes exist today and that is a shame because losing someone to addiction is no different than losing someone to cancer or heart disease; the families should be shown the same support and condolences.
We as family members dealing with addiction have to speak up and share our stories and advocate for the same support, treatment and understanding that families dealing with other diseases do. By doing this, the stigma surrounding addiction will no longer have us suffering in silence and will lead to more of our loved ones getting to and staying in long term recovery, and that is what we all want!