Short version of my story with two AS: they went to treatment at 14 and 15years old (I thought they weren't "that bad" - I was the queen of denial and doing all the wrong things in the name of mother love), one just celebrated 25years of recovery and is 40 years old. The other has been in and out of recovery, mostly out - and will have a year at the end of this month. He is 41.
The one back in recovery said that if I hadn't thrown him out at 18 (and he didn't graduate from high school) he would have died. And he thanked me for never giving up on him, but also for not allowing him to move back home and disrupting our lives, and for my years of recovery in Alanon. He said that me learning to say "no" made him respect me.
So that's the other side of the story. But recovery from codie stuff was really hard for me - today I know that my mother love just about killed him. In the beginning, I was told to just do the opposite of my instincts and it would probably be right. And that's just about the truth.
Love in recovery,
Jody Hepler
P.S. After we evicted him from our home at 18, we lived for weeks with the drug dealer calling and threatening to torch our house for unpaid debts. His "friends" were very scary!