Partnership For a Drug Free Wayne County

My 25-year-old son is tall, dark, and handsome. He is smart, ambitious, and popular. He is also a drug addict. Sharing our story is painful, but it is my hope that another family can be spared the agonizing journey we have traveled. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the “right” thing to do, but can only share the mistakes and successes we encountered along the way.

My son was the third of three children, and was raised in a happy two-parent home. He lived in a nice house, and had all the material goods he needed, although not always all he wanted. He was active in youth sports, and was an outstanding athlete. He attended good schools, and had many wonderful teachers. While he was often described as rambunctious, he did well in school throughout his elementary and junior high years. Looking back, it is clear to see that he was, even then, prone to pushing the limits, no matter where those limits were set. During junior high, his rebelliousness increased, which we attributed to puberty, although we had not gone through this to any great degree with our two older children. We would later discover that his first experimentation with drugs occurred during his junior high years.

While my son now describes his high school drug use as “recreational,” there were many signs which we, his parents, missed. His grades dropped, and he gradually switched from an academic, college-preparatory curriculum to a general, vocational curriculum. He had difficulty in passing standardized assessments, and had frequent disciplinary issues at school. Along the way, a teacher and a principal attempted to share their concerns about his drug use, but those concerns fell on disbelieving ears. There was absolutely nothing in our family history which would have prepared us for this kind of news, and we just couldn’t believe what we were being told. In retrospect, I can’t imagine what we were thinking – neither the teacher nor the principal would have had anything to gain by sharing these concerns. I wish we would have listened, and, at the very least, insisted on a drug test.

The next six years are almost too painful to recount. There were, at times, appearances which suggested that all was well – and trust me, we held on to those and gave them a great deal more importance than they actually represented. Our son enrolled in college, and was even successful for his first year or so. He gradually became more and more involved in drugs, and his downward spiral took us to places we never imagined we would go. Every time something horrible happened, we foolishly believed that this would be the event which would lead him back to sobriety. We have experienced shame, humiliation, guilt, sorrow, hopelessness, and, during the depths of our sadness, acceptance – acceptance that our son would likely die from this disease. To my everlasting horror, I can remember even praying that if this was to be the outcome, that it would happen quickly so that I could grieve and try to build some sort of life for myself rather than watching it happen over a span of many years.

We have seen our son endure the deaths of two very close friends, multiple arrests and incarcerations, and many attempts at treatment. He stole from family and friends, and lied so much that even he no longer knew where the truth ended and the lie began. He lost contact with all of his old friends, and his new “friends” frightened us. He became a person we didn’t know, and quite frankly, didn’t like.

As parents, although we both loved our son immensely, we were not always in agreement as to how we should be responding to our son’s disease. Addiction is truly a family disease. To say that the relationship between my husband and me was strained would be an understatement, with each of us accusing the other of somehow being responsible for our son’s behavior. The anguish was sometimes unbearable. Our other children’s hearts were broken, and the only way they could survive was to cut all ties with their brother. Our happy family was broken. As a mother, I held on to hope when there was no reason for hope, and while I now realize that my behavior was that of an enabler, I was terrified that my son would die alone.

I have heard people say that denial is a happy place to live. I can tell you, it is not a happy place, and people only live in denial because it is the only place they can bear to live. We faced the awful truth when it slapped us in the face – I have struggled with guilt and shame that we didn’t react sooner, although my son now tells me that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we could have done to have stopped his descent into hell. Although we are both educated people, my husband and I somehow believed that our son would get well simply because we wanted him to be well. We yelled, we begged, we threatened, we prayed, but nothing would change the course of his addiction. We couldn’t understand how he could love the drug more than he loved us, but we came to understand that it isn’t about love, but rather about power – the drug was simply more powerful than anything else in his life. He couldn’t begin to be well until he was ready to be well, and that happened only when he hit absolute rock bottom.

I am proud to say that our son has been clean and sober for two years now, and I am grateful for every day of his sobriety. It has been our greatest joy to see him become the man we always knew he could be. We have learned the futility of asking “why,” – why did this happen, why did he survive when there were so many times he shouldn’t have – to accepting that there truly is some greater plan. Perhaps some time down the road, our son will tell his own story.