Family Matters

One thing I promised myself after my first year of recovery was that I would never be ashamed of my story of addiction and recovery. I felt it was necessary to shed my own stigma and shame of this experience in order to move forward with my life. It felt so amazing to just be honest. "Yeah, I was drinking a lot. Yeah, life got hard. Yeah, I got sober. Here I am. Take it or leave it." Only on a rare occasion have I been rejected by other based solely on the fact that I struggled with active addiction for a lot of years. I found that rejection most prevalent in the dating world. A few people had really nasty experiences with addiction and did not want to even consider a person with addiction issues - in recovery or not. The other group being those who felt ashamed of their drinking and the thought that I would not be partaking in a drink on a date was just too much. Honestly. that never really bothered me all that much because my recovery is a part of who I am. If a person cannot accept that, they will never be able to accept me. Relationship killer.

As I became more vocal, more and more people started reaching out to me. (If you know me personally, by the way, never ever hesitate to ask me any questions about my experience or what your experience is like. I am beyond grateful to help whenever and wherever I possibly can.) In the beginning, I had a lot of people reach out to me and talk with me about their own recovery. People from high school, college, former employers - all people I had known for years and had no idea that they knew what I was going through. Then, the shift happened with the folks reaching out to me being those who were still struggling. If AA taught me anything, it's that I can share my spirit, strength and hope with anyone at any time. That is truly a gift of sobriety. The first thing I will usually say to people who reach out to me to talk about their struggles is: Thank you. For one, I know how damn hard it is to reach out to someone and talk about it. I am honored that this person trusted me enough to break the silence and take a chance that something different might exist. 

As the years of my recovery went on, a majority of people who reach out to me now are family and friends of someone who is struggling. Often it's a friend of a friend who got my number or email address. The family, too, has chosen to break their silence and start figuring out what needs to happen to get their loved one help. Each situation I have been contacted about is so very different. I talked to a mom whose 16 year old daughter was using opiates and might have been lured into sex trafficking. I talked with a husband whose wife was constantly in and out of the hospital at his wit's end. These contacts are in my personal sphere and not even my professional one. Professionally, the stories of concern and fears were reasonably similar although many of those cases were coming from professional referrals such as detox centers and hospitals.

When I started to hear from more family and friends, I had to pause for a minute. I know what it is like from my perspective of being the addict. I know that my decision making process was ridiculous and frightening at times. I know how I went about manipulating people to get my own needs met. I don't exactly know what it was like for my family to deal with me. As a family, we did do a family week while I was in my first treatment. My family went into their own rock-star level recovery from me right out of the gates. One of the reasons I didn't seek help for many years was that I knew if my family knew, the gig was up. They love me fiercely and they are not going to let me down with addiction. I wasn't ready to make that level of commitment to stopping for a long time. Even when I finally did reach out, I knew the cat was out of the bag and things were going to change. And the ways things changed within my family unit basically offered me consistent level of support as long as I was putting the effort into my sobriety. The more open I became about my struggles, I think the more proud of me they became. There was no more hiding. I came out on the other side and they are happy to celebrate with me.

I did a lot of thinking and research about what type of advice or resources I would want to offer to a family member or friend in the event I was contacted. There are different schools of thought on how to approach addiction. The question becomes: what needs to change in order to encourage a person to change? What if the person does not want to change? Do we really have to let go? I am going to bet that many of the people who read this blog would go to the ends of the earth to help a loved one. Most of us can think of something extreme that we did for a person we loved. (Quick insert here because I love this story: In college, I had the lead in play. I was talking to my mom the night before the play opened who was 850 miles away about how fun it would be to have her there. I understood though. She grabbed a friend that night and drove all those miles to see me in my theater debut. If that is not love......I don't know what is!) This is what we do for love. 

How do we love when addiction is in play. Pretty much all of the nice supportive things you would normally do for a person who is suffering is not going to be entirely successful with addiction. I just haven't really been in the drivers seat, so to speak, when it comes to the family's perspective on addiction. I can only try to imagine what my family dealt with in terms of my very liable presentation and trips to the psych ward. I can only imagine what my ex-husband would have to stay about the very active alcoholic wife he was married to. I can tell you what I didn't respond to. Never make a threat you won't follow through on. Addiction is one of those things that will take a mile if an inch is available. Addiction is amazingly creative at times and we become masters of manipulation to protect the drug we can't imagine living without. When I talk with families, I often think about all the ways I tried to avoid and weasel my way out of any situation that would change what I was doing.

I wouldn't dare write one catch-all advice column about how families should approach addiction. Honestly, this is not my area of expertise, although one I would consider myself competent in talking about. I am much more clinical oriented when I talk to family members. When someone is reaching out to me because s/he is still drinking, I am less clinical and just another alcoholic in the room looking to support another person find what s/he is looking for. When families come to me, they want answers and an action plan. I totally get that. Things are generally at a really scary place by the time I speak with them. I do have a wealth of information at my finger tips and will provide any and all information I can. I just can't quite promise you that I will be the exact person to provide the plan. Just be prepared that some of what I may suggest is going to feel very uncomfortable because it is the exact opposite of how we are wired to take care of our friends and family. Addiction does turn everything upside down.

What I will end with tonight was an experience I had when I attended the Family Program at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. I attended as a graduate student. I was three years sober at that point and sat through as a "patient". I introduced myself as a patient but it became evident quickly that I was there as a student. I was accepted nonetheless. The way that HBF does there program is that the family members go through the program one week and the patient of that family attends a different week. My family week in my first treatment felt like a firing squad of the family confronting the patients in a large group setting. So I was intrigued about how this works when the patient and family go at different times. Anyway, during the week I attended, there was a mother of a 27 year old patient who was attending the following week. He was addicted to opiates and had overdose 3 times in her home and she found him passed out on the streets on numerous other occasions. She was broken and this situation was killing her. He was talking about coming back to live with her after his 21 days were up. This was his 14th treatment in 10 years. She was terrified. She, for some reason, really gravitated to me and almost had a motherly instinct toward me. 

We broke out into smaller groups at one point to have a more in-depth discussion about dealing with addiction. By not having the direct family members in the group while still having people who are experiencing addiction, the family members asked really interesting questions. "Why do you do [insert crazy behavior]?" This mother asked me "what did your mother do for you?" I thought for a second and responded: "She started to have an adult relationship with me. She will always love me like her baby; however, I was 33 when I got sober and it was time for me to stand on my own. It was the most loving thing she has ever done for me." I saw her light up, probably thinking for the first time about her own child being an adult that has adult decisions to make. She replied, "Oh my gosh, yes, I want an adult relationship with my son. How did she do it?" That question I could not exactly answer other than I know my mom listened very carefully during our family week and made some changes in her life to support my new life. I wish I could say by the end of the week she had decided to make that transition. Her son eloped from treatment on the last day of our week together. She completed the program and graduated. She announced after she received her medallion that we was going to start looking for her son because it would be dead in a matter of hours if she didn't. That's a mother's love that is hard to change in a 4 day period. The interaction, however, has stuck with me today, 7 years later. Despite how things played out, I suspect that she remembers our conversations too. I can only hope she found what she was looking for.