I'm a recovering addict too, and I totally missed my daughter's addiction (although in retrospect, all of the classic signs were there for all to see). How come? Because we are moms, and we naturally will try to deny what is much to0 painful to accept. I didn't use for most of my daughter's life. She had a loving, calm home. both her parents are addicts and she just got our genetically flawed material.
I too, started second guessing everything - Maybe if she had been forced to participate in more after school activities, maybe if I had not let her have so many sleep-overs in grade school, blah blah blah. But it doesn't matter- in the end its just a disease that we both share.
When i first became aware of my daughter's addiction, (her BF at the time rang my bell one morning and told me she was deep into cocaine - actually it was crack by then and he didn't even know that), I was in a state of shock and crisis for weeks.
then I started to minimize it telling myself, she already knows about recovery, so she'll stop soon. She just needs to go to treatment and then she'll stop. When that didn't work, I tried to force consequences - called the cops on her, (0ver and over again), but it never seemed to get me (or her) anywhere. I ran the gamut of emotions. I was loving, I was screaming, I was threatening, i was silent, I was crying and begging, I threw her out, i asked her to come back..... then she went missing for almost a year. I had to wonder daily if she was alive or dead. i went thru the grieving process over and over. I worked the first 3 steps in my NA program over and over on a daily basis just to get up off the couch and be able to function. I needed to function because i have a life to live whether she is using or not.
But after a while, I came to realized this was her addiction and her path to follow to whatever bottom she needed to have. She's still using (crack and heroin) and has been a prostitute, stripper, homeless, and now is HIV positive. None of these has constituted a bottom for her. However, I have learned to accept her addiction and her the way she is. She knows I love her now. She knows she can ask me for help to get clean and I will go pick her up and work hard to find her a bed in a treatment facility. Right now she says "not yet".
So I come here and read stuff, and reply to stuff when I have some experience with it, and I continue to pray a lot. Most days I'm pretty OK, (its amazing what we can come to accept. but it takes time.) some days I'm still crazy, but I know what to do about it now.
You have come to the right place!