Ive been lurking here for some time, and Ive learned a lot from reading all of the heartfelt posts. I have been thinking a lot about the effect drugs have had on my sons mind. He went from graduating high school with honors, athletic accomplishments, and acceptance to the college of his choice, impressive grades. After two years of heroin use the son I love is very hard to find in the shell that remains. He lost weight, had pneumonia twice, dropped out of college to avoid failing, lied, stolen from his family, couch surfed for months. We yelled, screamed, made threats, enforced boundaries, lectured, pleaded, cried. Most of it was not healthy for us, or for him. Looking back we realized we were the cause of most of our own pain, not him. His disease progressed through all of it, and at the same time his personality was gone, the light in his eyes, it was if his soul was replaced with a black hole. It only got worse as his drug use progressed.
Our son is in his second month of rehab now. His path was affected by his grandfather. My husbands father had been patiently using his influence on his grandson to talk him into accepting rehab. We watched and all the while yelled about how he was enabling him. Instead he was methodical, and found a way to reach our son. I am grateful he has this chance. We should have done our best to force him into treatment as soon as we knew. We should have stopped yelling, and started thinking without all the emotion bubbling up. Heroin use damages the brain and the body. The more he took the more the damage became obvious. If only we had understood what we were seeing. We viewed it as defiance, personality, bad character, rebellion. None of those things had anything to do with the actual changes that were happening in the pathways of our sons brain every time he put heroin into his veins. I see it now in my mind traveling right to his brain. I don’t know how his life will turn out now. He has been improving each time we see him, but only time will tell. I no longer understand why addiction is not treated like other debilitating illnesses, especially among family.
If a person has cancer, is that about you?
If a person has cancer, can they make it go away because you love them? Because you yell at them? Curse them out? Reminded them of their failures? Cry and plead? Shut the door in their face?
I know some people do not like the cancer comparison, but if our son got cancer from smoking, sunbathing, or a genetic factor, it is obvious what he would need is proper medical care. If he was in denial of his illness because of severe depression, or other mental disabilities, we would not simply give it up to Gods will and walk away, and focus on ourselves. Wish him to find his bottom. In cancer it is clear, prevention and early detection provide the best outcomes. The bottom in cancer represents stage III or Stage IV. We would not yell, threaten, and feed his depression. We would have compassion, and we would use as much influence as we could to get him into the hands of professionals. Once we knew he was getting the best medical care, then we would know we had done everything within our human power to help him. We would have done all God expected of us. The outcome would rest in Gods hands. My comments may be a little off your topic, but usually when I read here there is no mention of what drugs do to a persons mind.