- Drugs
Having a drug addict in the family certainly changes the conversation at family gatherings. When the addict in your family is a young, beautiful talented teenager with her whole life ahead of her, it changes all of your experiences as well. Rather than planning for prom dresses and graduation gifts together, we were forced to talk endlessly about who could help, how they could help and how we could find someone to help. Nightly conversations with my niece’s 90 year old grandmother changed quickly from elder care to addict care and how this horrible addiction was ripping so many people apart. Vacations were interrupted for interventions; holidays were a nightmare whether she was with us or again in another treatment program without us. The wicked web that is weaved by these mind altering menaces is immense and though I was only a peripheral family member, I felt its agony deeply.
My niece began using drugs at a very young age. Since we were a “nice”, well educated family with strong family values, no one suspected that her violent outbursts, dislike of school, hate of her parents or overstated boredom were anything but adolescent angst.
My husband and I loved my niece and her brother as our own. They were not only the children of our brother and sister-in-law but acted as siblings to our only child who was 13 years older than his cousins. My son was settled and happily married when my mom (her grandmother) would call on a daily basis with worries about this “wild child”.
Once, my niece asked her grandmother to sleepover with a friend and my mom. Her 87 year old eyes figured out they had jumped out the window and crawled back in using a small window in the bathroom. This concerned her and so our conversations quickly changed from my son and his new marriage or my job or my new house to this young girl, my beautiful niece and goddaughter.
Her father, who traveled a lot, was distraught when she threw a match at his newly cleaned and ready for a business trip clothes. Her mom was constantly fighting to get her to school, getting beaten up while trying to get her in the car. Her mother still has scars on her arms from a bleach throwing incident. Her older brother would call and take refuge at our house when the yelling got too loud. Handcuffed ambulance rides to EMH with the whole family trailing behind and the neighbors hiding behind curtains were the norm.
Instead of attending softball games or soccer games where she was a former standout, we held vigils in waiting rooms and visiting areas. This was the fabric of our family’s interactions every time we got together. We wondered, “What did she do now and where would it lead her?” Jail and death were considered often as possible outcomes if she didn’t change. Treatment programs were implemented, counselors came and went, and she lived with us for a short time and behaved long enough to “win” a trip to the Cayman Islands with us but reverted to her bad ways the very next day after returning.
This thing wore on us all. If not directly, it wore on us worrying about those who were in her direct line of fire. Her parents were wrecks, her brother became somewhat introverted around us and my dear mother was sick with worry about the small little family that she managed to nurture into a respectable unit as a single mom. The stories are numerous and frankly too tiresome for a family abused by this affliction day after day and year after year.
She tells me now that it was during her last drying out period that she realized she needed to make a real change. Not the made up manipulations of past incarcerations. After hearing a group of very tough inmates talk about asking God for help, she went to her room and knelt down and pleaded with her higher power for the help to stop dying and start living. That was the day that the healing began. She had broken many bridges, lost so many people’s respect and will to believe her and realized she was alone in this fight.
If she was going to do it, it would be for her, because you can only depend upon waking up with yourself. That was three and a half years ago and she is still going strong and straight. We all know how hard she works at this thing called sobriety, or taking responsibility for herself, or finding peace and gratitude, but she is doing it.
Luckily for us, the pain and woe we shared during her bad days has now turned to joy, happiness and pride and an unencumbered love for all that she is to us. Today she is fully employed, helps other addicts, attends meetings regularly and lives independently in a city much larger than the one she grew up in. She ran the Boston Marathon and finished and has taken college courses and received all A’s. We are grateful to the God who lit up her spirit to accomplish these things and pray daily he will continue His loving guidance.