mle-sober

He is not pushing you. It is not personal.

He is in his own, isolated, world of utter hell. It's not about you. When he acts out the symptoms of his addiction, you think it's about you. You are tormented about how you think you may have failed him. About how he needs you to reach in and pull the real him back out of the place he's in. How you are deserting him if you stop giving him a place to live, food to eat, a cell phone to use, a pet to comfort him.

But when you think that you are interacting with him on some level, you are mistaken. You are only interacting with his addiction.

Your son, the son you raised and love and remember, is lost right now. He's not available to you. You think you are reaching him, but you're not. His addiction keeps the real him isolated deep inside and held hostage. Your actions are only FEEDING his addiction.

It's hard to understand when you haven't been addicted. But imagine that your son's addiction is a person. This is what that person is saying in regards to your actions: "The woman who calls herself my mom is my ticket to continue my addiction." You are essentially ALLOWING his addiction to reign supreme. When you step away, and stop giving him money, food, clothing, shelter, etc., he will have to face the actual and real consequences of his addiction. Until he has to face those, it sounds unlikely that he'll get well.

I know it's horribly sad. It's tragic. If you can wrap your head around the idea that your son is lost to you, perhaps you can treat the addict as if he is a kind of demon holding your son hostage. When you enable him, you enable the demon - not your son. And in fact, parodoxically, cutting the demon off from your support, may make room for your son to fight his way back to the surface. You think that you are helping your son but in reality, you are helping his addiction more than him.

Think of it this way: How bad is the situation right now? Pretty severely horrible, right? Your son is unrecognizable, he's gaunt and angry, he can't hold a job, he is free-loading off of you and you fear for his life and your own safety. There appears to be little to no hope. But, for some reason, his addiction appears to be THRIVING. Somehow, he still finds a way to get whatever dope he's addicted to. He still motivates himself for that.

Now think about what would happen if you took his keys away, changed the lock, stopped feeding him and providing a cell phone, didn't allow him to get comfort from his dog, and told him that you could no longer support him and his addiction. Are things any worse? Is it possible that he might be unable to support his own addiction and forced to go without? Is it possible that he might find himself homeless and penniless and so much more miserable that he might question his addiction? I think it's possible. I think that this scenario offers at least a tiny bit of HOPE. A tiny bit of hope that he might actually hit bottom and start clawing his way back up.

Here is the ugly truth. You cannot reach in and get him. It's not a matter of how hard you try or how much you love him. That's why I say it's not personal. No amount of caring on your part is going to change his situation. He must be desperate. He has to desperately want help.

That is why making things better for him does not really help him. Because it keeps him from being truly deserate.

Comforting words seem pretty inadequate in this situation. But, I feel for you. I know you are in your own separate hell right now. I hope your son finds recovery.