My goodness little mother- you have gotten to the core of it. From one mother to another, allow me to give an excerpt from Addict in the Family by Beverly Conyers:
"Families suffer a great deal of fear when a loved one succumbs to addiction.... If the addict is a parent, they fear for the well-being of the addict's children. And almost universally, they fear for the addict's life."
"One father put it succinctly: 'We're afraid our daughter is going to die.'"
"Another parent said, "We were convinced they were going to find her body in a Dumpster someday.'"
"A mother said of her son, 'My biggest fear is that he'll end up living on the streets, that he'll become one of those bums you see lying in a doorway somewhere, that people will just step over him like he's a piece of trash.'"
"A sister of an alcoholic told me, 'I'm afraid he's going to kill somebody when he's out there driving around out of his mind. I don't think my parents could handle that.'"
How do you get over it? That's your journey. But i can say that for me the fear is less than it was and does not compel me to move me into actions that make it easier for my son to use. I kept coming back - coming back to Alanon meetings, coming back to this site, reading helpful books for me, praying the Serenity Prayer, saying the slogans of Alanon. Slowly, surely that fear started to take a back seat in my life. It does not mean that i do not love my addict son or that i would not miss him terribly were he to die.
So keep coming back because there's enough of that priceless serenity for you, too.