- Alcohol
- Drugs
How was I so blind? My son was a good-looking party boy during junior high and high school, but I now know he was a full-fledged alcoholic by age 16. How I did not realize why he was so ornery on a particular family vacation, I do not know. His behavior was so unacceptable. He now says he was in alcohol withdrawal. I just though he was being incredibly grouchy and ungrateful for the outing I had worked hard to provide. Those years of raising a family alone was hard, and God knows I did my best. I worked, provided for their needs and gave them the opportunity to be involved in a fantastic youth group at great church, but my kids just would not make the effort to fit in.
My son was usually a sweetheart at home, but when he went to school, it was a different story. If I didn’t get a call from school saying he had beat someone up, it was a good day. He fought until he was finally kicked out of school. He was involved with the juvenile judicial system, and I got sued repeatedly for bodily damages of others. He was a tall, lanky kid with a long reach. The men at the juvenile detention center thought the answer was to get him in boxing, but he wasn’t interested in that either. His problems resulted from anger over a divorce none of us could change. My daughter now tells me she messed with pot from time to time, but unlike her brother she stayed out of trouble.
My son has fought the effects of his alcoholism and drug abuse for over twenty years, but I can tell you the party is definitely over. I have seen him lose everything he has more times than I care to remember. He is sober today, but tomorrow might be another story.
My daughter is the one that surprised me the most. She always behaved while her brother did the crazy stuff like steal our family vehicle for a joyride in the middle of the night, but she got sick as a young adult and took a lot of painkillers for a prolonged illness and several surgeries. After two years of sickness and pills, she found it necessary to go to rehab for a few days to detox and to follow up with intensive outpatient classes. This was her choice, because she had two little girls that needed her back home as quickly as possible. Later the threat of divorce took her right back to the opiates she had fallen in love with.
What I soon realized is addiction is addiction no matter how you get there. She had never been a partier, but she was just as addicted. I went to her house and packed up the one child that was in her care. There was no resistance from my daughter as she was passed out on pills. I have lost track if there were three or five rehab stays. Addiction and sobriety kept going in a cycle that lasted about three years. The last time we took a couple of days to locate her driver’s license and birth certificate, forms of ID the airlines needed before flying, and she came to stay at my house.
My beautiful daughter could not feed herself, sit in a chair without falling out or even drink a cup of coffee. She was a mess! Every time she woke up enough, she would feign a migraine and have a friend take her to a hospital to get IV drugs and prescriptions. She found a doctor to prescribe fentanyl patches for pain. By the time we delivered her to the airlines with instructions to have her transported by wheelchair to change planes, she had 11 pain patches on her body at one time. I would have done things differently had I known what to do but no experience in my life had prepared me for this.
When her 28 days in rehab were almost over, I was allowed to talk to her and a doctor on a conference call. I told her I would never take her to the doctor for a “migraine.” I no longer bought the charade. I told her if I ever thought she was using again, I was going to take her kids away from her myself. I was a slow learner, but the kids needed me and I was standing with them no matter what happened to their mom. She says she was not serious about her recovery until she was about to leave rehab and started thinking about her girls. She took an inventory and realized she had lost her husband, home and self-respect to her drugs. Every time she relapsed, she lost valuable stuff. The only thing left was her kids, and that day she decided to start fighting for her sobriety. She got on that plane and made up her mind to go back to support groups and actually participate. She decided to do whatever they told her to do, and she did. She now has over two years of sobriety, chairs meetings and goes to detox/rehab center that she started her recovery journey with and tells her story. Her brother also goes to meetings with her and is making progress. I live near her and my granddaughter and help out some, but they are with their mom who is by far who they need most. Rehab and recovery only work if we work it.