What are the answers to a child’s addiction? No, what are the questions?

By Eliza on June 5, 2013

I was desperate for answers when teen addiction barged into my home and heart.  “Why did my child use drugs to the point of chemical dependency?   How can I make my child better? Why, oh universe, is my child singled out for this horror?” Guilt, shame and finger-pointing were the keynotes of my questions.

I didn’t have any answers.   In fact, I was not asking the right questions.  To begin my own recovery, I needed to ask, “What are the risk factors for addiction?  What is my role in the family disease? and How can I support—and be supported by–other families who are shamed and isolated by their child’s chemical dependency?”

Asking the right questions helped me get my bearings.  I began to understand addiction as a brain disease, rather than a disease of will power or character. I began to explore my role as a Blue Chip enabler.  I read many, many books on addiction and learned how to sever my sick attachment to my child and to forge instead a healthy relationship with him. I transformed my guilt into action, reaching out to other families who were voyaging through the dark Land of Addiction.  And so this blog was born.

At the end of the day, I didn’t have all the answers.  I still don’t.  But I’m asking the right questions, without judgment or guilt, and they help me stay on the path of compassion, understanding, and healthy boundaries.

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Principles of recovery for parents of addicts and alcoholics

By Eliza on May 29, 2013

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)  offers a working definition of recovery that captures the essential, common experiences of those recovering from mental or substance use disorders.  SAMHSA  also identified 10 guiding principles that support recovery. The principals, while written for and about the addict, apply so clearly to recovery as experienced by the family of the addict, as well. 

First, consider SAMHSA’s definition ofrecovery from mental and substance use disorders: a process of change through which individuals work to improve their own health and well-being, live a self-directed life, and strive to achieve their full potential. And how does one make those changes? Here are SAMSHA’s Ten Guiding Principles of Recovery:

  • Recovery is person-driven.
  • Recovery occurs via many pathways.
  • Recovery is holistic.
  • Recovery is supported by peers and allies.
  • Recovery is supported through relationships and social networks.
  • Recovery is culturally based and influenced.
  • Recovery is supported by addressing trauma.
  • Recovery involves individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility.
  • Recovery is based on respect.
  • Recovery emerges from hope.

Instead of looking for recovery– or at my beloved addict through the lens of his recovery– I’ve learned to take a good hard look in the mirror.  Do I spot the ten principals of recovery in my life?  If not, it’s time for some inner work. 

As they say, “Don’t change my world, change me.”  These principles are powerful tools to hone my own recovery from the trauma of a child’s addiction. There might be other tools, too; what is missing from SAHMA’s list that you have found helpful in your own recovery?  Please share your ideas and your power with other readers.


 

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Walking away from the blame game

By Eliza on May 25, 2013

When a child is in the throes of addiction, Mom or Dad often becomes the punching bag, figuratively and sometimes even literally.  They yell at us when they get in trouble, they blame us for their mistakes. “It’s all your fault!” is a common refrain in the homes of addicts and alcoholics. As a very backhanded compliment, young addicts tend to lash out and blame the parent who is the safest, the softest, and the most tolerant.  They may also blame and attack the parent they feel they have disappointed the most, as that sense of failure creates overwhelming, explosive anxiety.

So what do you do when your child is imploding in your face?  While it’s natural to get defensive and leap right into a yelling match, instead just “spit out the hook,” as they say.  When your child rants and raves, just say “Oh” instead of defending your decisions or actions, or trying to reason with an unreasonable person.

It helps to have some tools at your fingertips to disengage. Learn how to say, “Oh” instead of trying to arm wrestle with an agitated child.  Learn that you don’t have to say anything at all.  Know that you don’t even need to be there. And your child loses the right to be in your presence if they become verbally or physically abusive.  It’s time to take care of ourselves, and maybe–just maybe–that will help turn their tide of anger and lashing out.

Practice saying “Oh” so that it comes naturally under pressure, or just walk away altogether.  You don’t need to stick around and take the abuse, which becomes like gasoline on a fire.  It is so hard to not take the bait, but it’s harder to stop the confrontation before it starts.

And remember, you didn’t cause the addiction, and you aren’t responsible for solving the problems the addict creates.

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The Missing Chapter in the Parenting Book

By Eliza on May 22, 2013

A while ago, I read about a book called “Dear Me, a Letter to my 16-Year Old Self.”  Amazon describes the book like this:  “In Dear Me, 75 celebrities, writers, musicians, athletes, and actors have written letters to their younger selves that give words of comfort, warning, humor, and advice. These letters present intimate, moving, and witty insights into some of the world’s most intriguing and admired individuals. By turns funny, surprising, raw, and uplifting, this singular collection captures the universal conditions that are youth, life, and growing up.

It got me thinking—what would I say to my thirty-year old self as I launched my ship into the seas of parenthood?  Maybe something like this…. “Dear Me: As you welcome your first child into the world, the good news is that you are embarking on a wonderful journey of discovery. The bad news is that you don’t get a map of any sort, beyond the wisdom offered by Dr. Spock.  And he doesn’t cover teen substance abuse.  So here is a list of tips to make the sailing smoother:

·         Be clear on your expectations and stick with consequences.

·         No matter what your kids do or don’t do, treat them with love and respect.

·         No matter what you do or don’t do, treat yourself with love and respect.

·         Holding on to past hurts only prolongs the suffering

·         Forgive yourself and others.

·         Know that you did the best job you could do at the time.

Well, that’s a start.  Looking back, what pearls of wisdom would you offer yourself (and others) who have journeyed through the Land of Addiction?

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Where ever you go, you are there (along with addiction)

By Eliza on May 18, 2013

At the peak of a child’s chemical dependency, one of my friends and her husband bought a camper so they could retreat into the wild and walk on pine needles instead of eggshells.  Other friends have kicked their kids out of their homes but permitted them to sleep in the yard or in the garage, a safe outpost that (in theory) spares the rest of the home from the insanity.  A mom friend asked me if she should move away from her family’s hometown with her daughter in tow after her daughter left rehab. Or maybe she should send her daughter away instead?   I wondered the same thing myself.

One year, I wouldn’t permit my son into our home when we were vacationing overseas, so he spent one Christmas Eve in the Hotel Honda in our driveway.   Was he in my home?  No.  Was he in my head?  Yes. So moving away from our home or travelling overseas didn’t solve the problem, which wasn’t my son.  It was me.

That’s because, as the saying goes, “Wherever you go, you are there.”  In other words, I bring my baggage along with me. At my darkest hour, I was at least as wedded to my child’s addiction as he was, and I could never leave it behind no matter where I went.  It colored all I saw and did, and I missed out on a lot…all for what??  My incessant obsession did nothing to help him get sober–it only tortured me.

If I have to lug something along with me, why not make it a dream instead of a demon?  Why not choose faith over fear?  We get to pack the baggage in our lives; let’s choose something that will nourish us, rather than deplete us, as we travel down this road called Life.

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What Dogs Can Teach Parents of Addicts and Alcoholics

By Eliza on May 11, 2013

While waiting at the vet one day, I picked up an enlightening book called What Dogs Teach Us:  Life’s Lessons Learned from Our Best Friends by Glen Dromgoole.  I skimmed through the book and found that many of these life lessons apply to man and beast alike.  Consider:

  • “Appreciate the preciousness of life.”  Addiction gives us an ongoing opportunity to practice this concept, trying to find the rainbow in the storm clouds.  As they say, practice makes perfect.  Keep looking for that rainbow to appear.
  • “Good behavior should be reinforced with complements or rewards.” My natural instinct as a co-dependent worrier is to get stressed and cranky.  Thanks to addiction, I’ve come to learn the futility of worry.  When worry bubbles up in my mind, I now try to wrestle it to the ground. Why should I let worry call the shots in my life?   I can be happier when I focus on the positive, and the people around me are happier because I am less preoccupied, maybe even more pleasant.. Win/win.
  • “Sassing back can make things worse.”  That goes both ways—you sass me/ I sass you, and we both lose.  The Al-Anon equivalent of this statement is “Spit out the hook” or “You don’t have to attend every fight you are invited to.”
  • “Run to the rescue of people in trouble.”  Uh oh. Maybe this natural instinct of mine wouldn’t be so problematic if I were Lassie or Rin Tin Tin, but rescuing people is bad for me and bad for them. This adage is healthy only if you are a dog or a paramedic.
  • “Co-dependency is OK as long as one of you has four legs.”  Amen to that!
  • And finally…“Take time to enjoy the smells and sounds and sights around us.” Life is short. If we mire ourselves in fruitless preoccupations about our loved one’s addictions, then our very own lives go passing by while we are looking the other way.

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Stepping or Talking Your Way to Recovery?? Which Works Best?

By Eliza on May 4, 2013

Photo of two women talking.Working the steps has offered powerful tools against addiction or alcoholism ever since they were invented by Bill Wilson more than 60 years ago. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can also be a powerful ally in the quest for recovery. Turns out, “the 12 steps and cognitive behavioral therapy have a lot in common” according to an interesting article posted on The Fix. Guided by a therapist who works with the chemically dependent, this article points out where the two meet and where they diverge.

I found this article thought-provoking because, as a Blue Chip co-dependent, I have been addicted to my child’s addiction. We all know that drill: if they are sober, we can be happy; if they are using, our world falls apart. If they relapse, so do we. And sometimes we relapse even if they don’t. For those reasons alone, I need the twelve steps as much as my child.

At a minimum, this article was thought-provoking because it reinforced the notion that Al-Anon and AA are not religious; they are spiritual.  The fear of getting cornered by a religious zealot has kept people away from 12-step program unnecessarily.

Take a look at the article and see if it makes sense to you. As parents of beloved addicts or alcoholics, can the twelve steps replace our therapy, or can our therapy replace the twelve steps? Or maybe they work best hand-in-hand.  Only you can tell.

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If I Knew Then…a Mother’s Reflection on her Daughter’s Addiction

By Eliza on April 27, 2013

You can learn more about guest blogger Linda and her daughter Tiffany in the Emmy award-winning documentary Collision Course.

I am often asked, “What do you wish you knew earlier about your daughter’s addiction?” by parents I meet at treatment centers in my community. I think back to how naïve I was and how little I knew about addiction.  First off, I was surprised that the pills prescribed to Tiffany were so addictive.  The labels on the sides of the bottles warned of the possibility of respiratory failure or liver damage if not using the proper dose.  They said not to drink alcohol with this medication or take other drugs with acetaminophen because there could be liver damage. But I thought surely her doctors would monitor her closely, and because I was home with her, I made sure she didn’t take more than she was prescribed.  The two pages enclosed with the prescription never mentioned the word “addicted” – only “habit-forming.”  I take an aspirin a day and this is habit-forming for me but not addictive.  Tiffany was taking pain meds for the pain from her broken neck.  I didn’t see this as an addiction – not yet anyway.  I didn’t really notice what was happening until she moved out of the house.  She was still on Paxil for her panic attacks, and  Ambien to help her sleep – both addictive drugs prescribed by her doctors.

I could understand the reasons for Tiffany’s medications at first because breaking her neck in the car accident was both painful and traumatic. Many more prescriptions continued from that point on.  My husband and I were clueless at first.  Tiffany couldn’t just stop taking her pain medication without going through terrible withdrawals.  I wished I was more educated.  At first I thought this was the only way she could stop. I didn’t know what detox was or what an interventionist or intervention was all about.  When we first came to the ER because Tiffany had overdosed, I thought they would keep her overnight and help her get well.  They never gave us places to call or a list of places they recommended for us to go get help. We didn’t know where to look except on the Internet, which offered a multitude of listings.  How can you tell the good treatment centers from the bad?

Summing it up, I wish I knew more about addiction – that it is an illness –that Tiffany couldn’t just stop.  I had seen addiction in my family tree, but I didn’t see it as an illness.  I saw it as making bad choices.  I remember thinking – I wished there was someone or somewhere I could go that would teach me about what’s going on in my daughter’s life.

I wish I knew who to turn to for help.  Seems like even the family doctor doesn’t really understand addiction.  I once went to an addiction specialist who decided she was going to handle Tiffany’s pills and give her 1 pill every 4 hours so that Tiffany didn’t take too many.  Even I knew by then how crazy that sounded!

I wish there was a way to find out if you have a predisposition to addiction.  Did Tiffany have this OR does addiction just happen if you continue to take addictive drugs like Vicodin over a long period of time?  The answer to that question is too late for my beautiful Tiffany, but it may save other children.

 

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Finding Hope When Your Child’s Addiction Feels Hopeless

By Eliza on April 23, 2013

I found my first glimmer of hope when I finally mustered the strength to tell my son, “Choose rehab, or choose a life without your family. “ My hope did NOT arise from his response (which was three days in coming) but in the fact that I finally knew in my heart of hearts that things wouldn’t change unless we changed…and I garnered the strength and conviction to draw that line in the sand.

That strength and conviction had eluded me for so long because I was so afraid for my son. I was afraid that if I kicked him out, he would get hurt.   I was afraid he would get into even more trouble if he didn’t have somewhere to live.  I was afraid he would fall in with a bad crowd, which was such an unfounded fear because he was bad enough on his own.  And on some level, I rationalized that confronting his addiction—drawing a line in the sand—somehow made it more real.  I know that sounds strange, but a little voice in my head whispered that  if I didn’t need to kick him out, then his problem really wasn’t that bad, was it??  That’s denial at its best.

Once I mustered the strength to offer one or the other– drugs or family– then our family had a chance to get better, collectively and individually.  My son could choose to seek recovery and I could choose to deny entry to his substance abuse in my life.  When I claimed that power, I found a hope that sustains me, one day at a time, no matter what my son does or doesn’t do.

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When Grief Gets in the Way for Parents of Addicts or Alcoholics

By Eliza on April 20, 2013

Photo of Ricki TownsendRecent tragedies in our nation are stark reminders that life is precious and fleeting. At the same time, it is important to seize life’s joys in spite of the worry and sorry that lies can lie so close to the surface when our children’s health is at stake. But what happens if we find ourselves clenching grief or loss—or the fear of loss–so tightly that we cannot embrace happiness or joy?

Ricki Townsend, a Parent Pathway “Expert,” grief counselor and interventionist, shares some ideas about letting go of grief. “We have dreams and hopes for our children as they grow and discover life. Then one day we wake up to find they have become involved in the battle of addiction. And so our life as we hoped it would be has changed. As parents, we may find we have trouble sleeping, we may start to have health issues, we may find ourselves crying or even angry over the simplest of things. Please look at the possibility that you are grieving the loss of your child as you knew him or her. Grief and loss are naturally interwoven into addiction. Grief is different for each one of us, but please don’t discount it. We put so much energy into getting back our child that we often forget about ourselves.

Here are some ways to deal with your grief: If you acknowledge that you are grieving, I invite you to work through the grieving process with a counselor who will help you understand your losses and deal with them in a healthy and constructive way.

  • Grief can feel suffocating.  A good exercise to release grief is to take a very deep breath hold it tightly and then release it slowly. You will feel your body calm down. It is also therapeutic to cry in the shower or yell in the car or smash pillows with a tennis raquet—anything physical to vent your sorrow, your anger, your disappointment.
  •  You might also want to write a letter to whatever is running your life—addiction  fear, remorse—and tell it that you are taking back your life.  You can also write down your sorrows and regrets and burn them in a fireplace or “burning bowl.”  The important thing is to symbolically purge your “if only’s” so that you can free yourself to live more in the moment.
  • There are also some great books that will help support our recovery. Check out the Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James and Russell Friedman or The Precious Present by Spencer Johnson.

It is up to each of us to ‘push the clouds away’ in order to be happy. Don’t sit on the sidelines and don’t become a victim—you have the power to reclaim your serenity.  If you have other questions about grieving, please feel free to contact me.”

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