Desperation

I will say that during the years of my son’s raging addiction I tried everything.  I spent most of my days thinking about what I could do or where I could go.  I talked to countless people about him.  

One night I called a counselor’s office after hours and happened to get him on the phone.  I rattled off my story, as I had many times before.  I will always remember what he said to me.  “Jill” he said, “He won’t stop until he’s ready, no matter what you do.”  Silence on my end of the phone.  How could that be? I’m his mother, I have to do something.  He is gonna kill himself or someone else or end up in prison.  He calmly said.  “People in addiction will not get help until they are ready to change.  I have seen so many parents spend their retirements sending their kids to rehabs and camps all for them to come home and continue in their addiction.”  Then he continued, “You just have to set boundaries with him.  Set rules of what you will and won’t put up with and hold that line.  That’s all you can do.  He will decide when he’s done.”  Somehow that was and wasn’t comforting.  I now know how much wisdom he shared with me that night.  But, when you’re a Mother, seeing your child so dangerously out of control and fearing for his life, you get tunnel vision.  You loose a part of your common sense.  You literally feel an instinct kick in like the Mother Bear who will stop at nothing to save her cub.  It’s like you can’t help yourself.  Looking back I see that head space I was in.  It didn’t necessarily help him or me.  

Addiction isn’t like you as a parent can go fight the enemy or talk your child away from a dangerous situation. Their brain chemistry changes. You can remove him or her, only to have them figure out a way back.  I have done many things to try to save him.  I have lectured his friends, chased them in my car, never gave him money or a license, took his door off his room, sent him to a boy’s ranch, locked him out of the house, called the police on him, confiscated his drugs, took him to counseling.  This is just an example of a few things I did.  Nothing worked.  

In the end I tried to set boundaries and he wouldn’t respect them, so he had to leave.  I  told him to come back when he was ready to get some help.  There is so much that happened and so much emotion between those last two sentences.  It looks simple.  He had to leave.  It wasn’t.  It was heart wrenching and terrifying and awful.  I managed the strength, only because it was all I had left to try.


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