One Day at a Time
Yesterday S. was friended by our 19-year-old, A., on Facebook. S. poked around and took a look at some of his pictures. A. is living out west, after spending over a year in rehab for drug/alcohol addiction. He chose to stay because, well that's easy, because we live in the midwest. He's always had a bit of wanderlust about him, he's not ready to commit to school yet, and he wanted to make a go of it on his own.
While he doesn't follow the 12-step program, he has maintained that he has smoked a little pot, drank just a bit, but that in the end he realizes that he is "over that" and isn't really into it. While in treatment he participated in Native American sweat lodges and attended a Hindu temple. In these places he found his strength and peace. He claims that what he found there is greater than anything drugs have to offer. Recently he has been seeing a woman (I say woman because she is in her early 30s) that he met at a show where LSD and Ecstacy were being passed around. They were both next to each other dancing, both passing up the drugs. They became friends, and have spent some time together since, hiking, dinners, some shows. I do not know for sure if they are romantically involved. He shared that she's a good person for him to hang out with because she doesn't like to use either.
So why is this a problem? And why is this today's blog entry? What S. found on his Facebook page were several pictures of A. with a pipe in his hand, with that old look in his eyes. On top of that there were many pictures of loads of college-aged kids with alcohol and pot readily seen. He lives in a college town. S. wrote to him...a short "Dude, WTF? How much weed are you smokin?" I am in classic resistance stage...trying to figure it out.
Trust is a strange thing. When your teenage child becomes addicted, all trust goes out the window. Addicts will do anything to get their high. A. has always been intensely trustworthy. He values honesty, fairness, and equality. He gets angry when anyone shows any kind of prejudice or makes a comment that is judging in any way. So when he started lying and stealing, it was so completely out of his character that, as a parent, I could only react to each moment, because I had no idea what to expect from the next episode or outburst. In this stage of the game, trust was being crushed more and more each day.
When I handed him over, at the age of 17, to the escorts from the wilderness program, I had hope. This was my last chance...a last good chance. Moreso, there was a huge sense of relief to get him away from the drugs and out of his environment. He would be living primitively in the mountains with intense therapy each day. At that point, the trust I had in him was invested in the inner person that I knew A. to be. I had lost all trust in the shell that he walked away from me in. It was one of the scariest things I've ever had to do: to have faith...to trust in the program....to believe with all my heart that the inner A. would battle the demons that had taken him so completely over.
He woke up in the wilderness, and his drug brain slowly moved aside for clean, soulful rebuilding. We maintained a relationship through weekly letters, which to this day, are near and dear to my heart. The A. that I birthed and raised, the A. that was joyful and honest and good to the bone....the A. that had a vivaciousness towards everything he did....the A. that was highly perceptive and sensitive....he slowly started coming back. Trust slowly started being rebuilt. Slowly. That trust continued to be rebuilt throughout his rehab. After leaving wilderness, he went to a year-long residential program. He had a few relapses, which chopped away at the trust once again, but each time he pulled himself back up off the ground and stayed with the program.
During his treatment, something began to happen to me that I had not anticipated. I had been focused on him for so long, on call for 24 hours a day essentially, never knowing when I would have to spring to action and deal with his traumas, that I had lost myself. During his treatment, looking back, I was going through a similar rebuilding of self that he was also working on hundreds of miles away in the mountains. I had been damaged. I had lost myself. So while he was working through his life, one day at a time, so was I.
Our journey together has been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. As a parent, I can not explain the pain and sadness that resided in my heart. The wounds are there, and just above them is the underlying sadness. A feeling of loss. Just above that is fear. Most of the time, I deal with those feelings in a healthy way. Through his treatment, I learned about giving up control. I learned about being powerless. Before this, I would have fought for that control and power, never thinking of giving it up. What I found in myself, through letting go, was a peace that soothed those wounds...lightened the sadness, and slowly filled the empty spaces that had been leftover from the devastation. I was a barren, charred, dusty wasteland until then. Luckily, that life force in all of us, the instinct to live, that one piece of green that survived the explosion, emerges from the darkness when least expected.
Yesterday, I think I sensed something before I saw the pictures on Facebook. I had been feeling a sadness. Not over anything that was related to events in my life. Just an underlying sadness. Sometimes the most beautiful things break my heart. That's how it felt to me yesterday. When I see kids at the pool, of different ages, knowing that my own little ones will someday struggle for their own peacefulness just like the rest of humanity. When I see my husband and my youngest son, walking hand in hand on our evening walks. When I see the spotted sunlight flickering in my face as it wiggles its way through the lush tree in front of my window. When I see my life on this earth, knowing it is everything and nothing. In these moments...I sometimes feel a gut wrenching sadness. Yesterday, I may have been missing A. and thinking about his struggles, his self-searching journey that has given him both beauty and blackness.
And so when I see the pictures...with the pipes, the alcohol, the partying, that look in his eyes (God, that look is haunting), my trust is shaken. Has he been lying all along? Has he been using from the day he got out, and somehow maintains that he is thriving without drugs? Do I believe the pictures? Do I believe him? I start this downward spiral into the unknown....into that dusty wasteland, that black, ugly, lonely void. This morning I realized what this is for me. It's a relapse. It's completely tied to his actions. When he falls, I fall. When he is thriving, I am thriving. And I know that I must break out of this circle that ties me to his failures.
He is an addict. He will be for the rest of his life. He will struggle. He will make his own choices. He will not always choose right. And there's NOTHING I can do about that. I am not to blame. I can not do the work for him. This is his path...his cross to carry. I just wish I could carry it for him. That's the heartbreaking reality. I can not do this for him...but everything in me as his mother, wants to lighten his load.
So for me...it's back to my program, to the coping mechanisms I have learned to use successfully over the last couple of years. And the trust? Well...I'll nurture it gently once again. Attending to it with both skepticism and intensive care.
For today (I resist pulling these slogans out, but here I go), live and let live. This too shall pass. Live in the now. Turn it over. Expect miracles.
While he doesn't follow the 12-step program, he has maintained that he has smoked a little pot, drank just a bit, but that in the end he realizes that he is "over that" and isn't really into it. While in treatment he participated in Native American sweat lodges and attended a Hindu temple. In these places he found his strength and peace. He claims that what he found there is greater than anything drugs have to offer. Recently he has been seeing a woman (I say woman because she is in her early 30s) that he met at a show where LSD and Ecstacy were being passed around. They were both next to each other dancing, both passing up the drugs. They became friends, and have spent some time together since, hiking, dinners, some shows. I do not know for sure if they are romantically involved. He shared that she's a good person for him to hang out with because she doesn't like to use either.
So why is this a problem? And why is this today's blog entry? What S. found on his Facebook page were several pictures of A. with a pipe in his hand, with that old look in his eyes. On top of that there were many pictures of loads of college-aged kids with alcohol and pot readily seen. He lives in a college town. S. wrote to him...a short "Dude, WTF? How much weed are you smokin?" I am in classic resistance stage...trying to figure it out.
Trust is a strange thing. When your teenage child becomes addicted, all trust goes out the window. Addicts will do anything to get their high. A. has always been intensely trustworthy. He values honesty, fairness, and equality. He gets angry when anyone shows any kind of prejudice or makes a comment that is judging in any way. So when he started lying and stealing, it was so completely out of his character that, as a parent, I could only react to each moment, because I had no idea what to expect from the next episode or outburst. In this stage of the game, trust was being crushed more and more each day.
When I handed him over, at the age of 17, to the escorts from the wilderness program, I had hope. This was my last chance...a last good chance. Moreso, there was a huge sense of relief to get him away from the drugs and out of his environment. He would be living primitively in the mountains with intense therapy each day. At that point, the trust I had in him was invested in the inner person that I knew A. to be. I had lost all trust in the shell that he walked away from me in. It was one of the scariest things I've ever had to do: to have faith...to trust in the program....to believe with all my heart that the inner A. would battle the demons that had taken him so completely over.
He woke up in the wilderness, and his drug brain slowly moved aside for clean, soulful rebuilding. We maintained a relationship through weekly letters, which to this day, are near and dear to my heart. The A. that I birthed and raised, the A. that was joyful and honest and good to the bone....the A. that had a vivaciousness towards everything he did....the A. that was highly perceptive and sensitive....he slowly started coming back. Trust slowly started being rebuilt. Slowly. That trust continued to be rebuilt throughout his rehab. After leaving wilderness, he went to a year-long residential program. He had a few relapses, which chopped away at the trust once again, but each time he pulled himself back up off the ground and stayed with the program.
During his treatment, something began to happen to me that I had not anticipated. I had been focused on him for so long, on call for 24 hours a day essentially, never knowing when I would have to spring to action and deal with his traumas, that I had lost myself. During his treatment, looking back, I was going through a similar rebuilding of self that he was also working on hundreds of miles away in the mountains. I had been damaged. I had lost myself. So while he was working through his life, one day at a time, so was I.
Our journey together has been the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. As a parent, I can not explain the pain and sadness that resided in my heart. The wounds are there, and just above them is the underlying sadness. A feeling of loss. Just above that is fear. Most of the time, I deal with those feelings in a healthy way. Through his treatment, I learned about giving up control. I learned about being powerless. Before this, I would have fought for that control and power, never thinking of giving it up. What I found in myself, through letting go, was a peace that soothed those wounds...lightened the sadness, and slowly filled the empty spaces that had been leftover from the devastation. I was a barren, charred, dusty wasteland until then. Luckily, that life force in all of us, the instinct to live, that one piece of green that survived the explosion, emerges from the darkness when least expected.
Yesterday, I think I sensed something before I saw the pictures on Facebook. I had been feeling a sadness. Not over anything that was related to events in my life. Just an underlying sadness. Sometimes the most beautiful things break my heart. That's how it felt to me yesterday. When I see kids at the pool, of different ages, knowing that my own little ones will someday struggle for their own peacefulness just like the rest of humanity. When I see my husband and my youngest son, walking hand in hand on our evening walks. When I see the spotted sunlight flickering in my face as it wiggles its way through the lush tree in front of my window. When I see my life on this earth, knowing it is everything and nothing. In these moments...I sometimes feel a gut wrenching sadness. Yesterday, I may have been missing A. and thinking about his struggles, his self-searching journey that has given him both beauty and blackness.
And so when I see the pictures...with the pipes, the alcohol, the partying, that look in his eyes (God, that look is haunting), my trust is shaken. Has he been lying all along? Has he been using from the day he got out, and somehow maintains that he is thriving without drugs? Do I believe the pictures? Do I believe him? I start this downward spiral into the unknown....into that dusty wasteland, that black, ugly, lonely void. This morning I realized what this is for me. It's a relapse. It's completely tied to his actions. When he falls, I fall. When he is thriving, I am thriving. And I know that I must break out of this circle that ties me to his failures.
He is an addict. He will be for the rest of his life. He will struggle. He will make his own choices. He will not always choose right. And there's NOTHING I can do about that. I am not to blame. I can not do the work for him. This is his path...his cross to carry. I just wish I could carry it for him. That's the heartbreaking reality. I can not do this for him...but everything in me as his mother, wants to lighten his load.
So for me...it's back to my program, to the coping mechanisms I have learned to use successfully over the last couple of years. And the trust? Well...I'll nurture it gently once again. Attending to it with both skepticism and intensive care.
For today (I resist pulling these slogans out, but here I go), live and let live. This too shall pass. Live in the now. Turn it over. Expect miracles.