marteen

Haven’t been on SR too often these days. Just trying to keep my head above water and try to manage my own recovery.

For those of you who are new, NO, I am not a recovering ADDICT. The recovery of which I speak is MY recovery from the addictive behavior and my codependent behavior of my addict. The addict in my life is my 24 yr old (25 Feb. 06) daughter, who recently became a mother of a beautiful baby girl six months ago. Poor child – mother and father both addicts. Father currently in Fed. Prison for several felonies. AD living with baby’s father’s parents, who I suspect may be “users” themselves or at least enablers to the nth degree!!!

My AD (addict daughter), though she lives about 20 miles away, is actually living in the State of Denial (a state of increasing population). As long as she is in denial of HER problem, THE problem will continue to be whatever she wants it to be. At the present time and for convenience sake, THE problem is her parents. Unknowingly to us, we have wielded more power than we ever dreamed capable of! We have caused undue problems, created chaos, torn self-esteems from their roots, destroyed lives and were totally incapable of love, comfort, emotional or financial security. Goodness, had we known, we probably could have been capable of toppling governments and causing natural disasters!

Sadly, while we are certainly not perfect people, we were never capable of what our AD has imagined we were. We raised her in an environment of love, support, encouragement, opportunities, trust, morals, values, respect for self and others and discipline. Yes, we made mistakes (we wrote the “handbook” as we went along) but we were never capable of destroying the life of a daughter we love.

We had normal expectations of what her life could be. We certainly had normal expectations as to how her life with us would be. There would be problems to iron out and periods of “combustible” hormone episodes, but nothing we could NOT handle or work through. After all, that’s what families do – they work through the hard times and handle the problems together. It is these normal expectations that are so difficult to let-go of!

Once a parent gets over the initial shock of discovering that their child is an addict, it takes the next step – ACCEPTANCE – in order to move forward. And it isn’t just acceptance of the addiction, that is the first step of acceptance. As you move on, you also have to have acceptance of a very, very alien anomaly – YOU CANNOT CONTROL OR “FIX” THE ADDICTION!!! You discover that you have no power, whatsoever, even with money, to stop it, contain it, fix it! You cannot love, hate, fight, beat, guilt-trip, cry or scream it away. You learn, if you are one of the fortunate ones to learn it, that it is NOT your problem to solve – it is the addict’s whether it is your child or not.

Yes, it is terrible and a real tragedy but you hopefully discover that YOU are the only one you can have any control over. YOU and how you let the behavior of your addict’s behavior control you is paramount to “living”. You can choose to continually live in the shadow of your addict, allowing his/her chaos and drama to dictate your whole existence, or you can take control of your life.

You don’t wake up one day and say to yourself, “Ok. Now I am in control and I won’t let any of my addict’s behavior or decisions to affect me.” It just doesn’t work that way but if you realize and “accept” that you are the only one you can control or have any effect on, then you are moving in the right direction.

Working on YOU and your recovery takes time, meetings, talking to others on a site like this, and doing whatever it takes to bring you back to sanity. And I do mean sanity because living, dealing and trying to “control” an addict is insanity. There is no logic to it and certainly no solution. And if you continue to do it, you will find yourself nearly as crazy, illogical and sick as the addict.

So, to you mothers and fathers who come here for the first time, I and so many others on this site truly feel your pain. We have been where you are now and many of us did not think we could continue. Believe me, at first I was not sure that life was worth living. I did not know where to turn, how to stop hurting so badly and how to handle something I just could not stop. And where, just where do we go from here?? How could we be expected to continue on when we spent our whole lives trying to nurture and protect our children from something as harmful and destructive as drugs. What did we do wrong?

You didn’t! The three C’s of our recovery are: We didn’t Cause it; We can’t Control it; and We can’t Cure it! All you can control is how YOU deal with it and how much you allow the addiction to control you. You are entitled to a life and so is the rest of your family. Your addict has made choices, albeit some bad choices, but the key is the choices were NOT yours to make. When my younger, sober daughter said to me one day after trying to “fix” my AD’s problem, “Mommy, you are spending so much time on letting my sister’s problems hurt you that there’s not much left of you for me!” That hit hard and it hurt – hurt because I was making a choice to turn all my attention and energy to my other daughter’s addiction that there really wasn’t much of me left for the daughter who needed me most.

Sorry this is so long but I felt it might help some of you new parents understand that a lot of us have walked the road you are starting on. And we have survived and many of us have flourished. I love my AD but I can’t live her life for her any more than she can live my life. And I can’t have her living at home because I cannot have a front-row seat to her addiction and addictive behavior. It is a choice I make and the subsequent boundaries I set as to her or my behavior are put in place to keep my life and that of the rest of my family’s life in a sane place. Should my AD ever realize her real problem and SHE gets help to reenter the real world without drugs and works a recovery program, I have no doubt that we could start building (in baby steps) the road to a loving and caring relationship. While the drugs are active in her life, they don’t allow for such things. That is unfortunate but I have learned and accepted that those are things for which I have no control!!

Please feel welcome here. You can rant, rave, write your story, give advice and/or support to others. It may not be a club you would choose to join but we are all here because the choices of others have made it necessary. Now we need to heal and take control and care of our lives.

Hugs & prayers,
Marteen