NAB, I think it was not so different for me. I "needed" to be needed and to think that I was the one person who could save my son...from his past abuse with his birth family and from his addiction. I had a mission and set the entire rest of my life aside to fulfill it.
I "needed" the fix of being more important to my son than his past or his drugs.
Of course, I failed miserably. I could not get back the "loving, kind, funny, respectful" son I once knew.
Like an addict who uses to try to re-experience that first euphoria of drug use, and who chases it with more of the same behaviour to try to get what he will never get again...I chased the euphoria of the illusion that I could and would save my son.
The truth was brutal, I never had that control to begin with, nor should I. No matter how many times I did the same thing over and over, I never got different results. And that, my dear, is insanity...and codependency in its worst form.
I am not ashamed that my codependency led me to crazy behaviour, I am sorry it did and grateful I over came it all and came out on the other side wiser for the journey, but I left my shame at the door of my first CoDA meeting and have never gone back to pick it up. It no longer belongs to me.
The addict is our drug? Qwer, maybe the answer to your question is not so much that the addict is our drug...but that the drug our addict uses leads us all to a crazy way of living and makes us as sick as they are unless we find recovery,or they do, and we let that lead us to a better path.
Hugs