It Happened Again
August 23, 2019
It happened again. I stood at the front of a strange room designed to be comforting but never quite hitting the mark. For some reason these rooms always feel old and out of style. People are huddled in tiny pockets talking, whispering, sometimes smiling or laughing, but always watching “them” – the family!
I hug a man, a father, I can feel his body tremble. I know exactly what he is feeling and asking. Why couldn’t I help? Why couldn’t I protect my child? Why couldn’t I stop their pain? Why does my heart, my life, feel so broken and empty? Why couldn’t it be some other family, far away, that I don’t even know?
It is yet another tragic story unfolding before my eyes. Another family saying goodbye to someone they love, too soon! On the day this son was lost, 219 other families in our country lost someone too. It’s tiring, it’s senseless, it’s extremely painful and it DOES NOT have to happen.
It reminds me of the ethos of my neighborhood in the late sixties. Nightly news channels would broadcast the numbers of sons lost in a land far away. Although nobody really bothered to think about it, we would wait for the inevitable news, that family two streets over got a letter, their son died in Vietnam. We often wondered who would be next, maybe Bobby who’s family lived across the street from our house? Bobby did come home, but it all was very surreal. In the Vietnam war we lost 58,000 Americans. Now the war is right next door and the children dying are our own. This year alone, over 80,000 Americans will die of an overdose.
I am certainly no expert in the field of recovery, but I would like to share a few thoughts about what I have learned through my own experience with our daughter Lauren, we miss her so much, and information I have acquired since she passed away of an overdose 778 days ago. I wish I had known some of these things 1000 days ago.
I wish I had known some of these things 1000 days ago.
First, be sure to know the science of how addiction functions. This will help influence your actions. Addiction is an incredibly complicated disorder because it involves so many aspects of a human being. A definition I like to use for addiction is as follows:
“Addiction is a bio-psycho-social disorder which demonstrates itself in any behavior that a person enjoys or finds relief in and therefore craves in the short term. This behavior results in negative consequences in the long term, yet the individual doesn’t give up the behavior despite those negative consequences.”
Convoluting the situation is also the fact that addiction for many people, just like many of the mental health issues that plague so many in our world, is a response to pain. Gabor Mate says it right when he says “The question is not: Why the addiction? The question: Is why the pain.”
There is a science to the treatment and the understanding of addiction:
Two great videos that give a great overview of how continual use of drugs literally changes, I prefer the statement “Highjacks”, the brain are “Your Brain on Drugs” and “What Happens to Your Brain on Opiods”.
Listed below are a few blog posts that highlight various treatments:
Second, do not overlook the power of improving relationships. This applies for both the addicted person and the family. Addiction by its very nature rips relationships apart. We quickly fall into a cycle of arguing, begging, threatening and constant friction, all of which tears down relationship. A very common question I am asked is “Can you help someone that does not want help”? My answer is, while you can not fix your loved one, you can effectively influence them toward recovery by changing how you respond to them. It is easy for folks to become defensive, feeling “I had nothing to do with this.” You’re right, this is not your fault, but you can be a huge part of helping the situation. Relationships matter, a lot. In the post “Through My Fingers” you can find some helpful ideas about making the relationship with some one you care about better.
A third area, learn to communicate in ways that move your loved one to getting well. The best tool I know of for that is Community Reinforcement and Family Training, C.R.A.F.T. and models it was developed from. C.R.A.F.T. is explained in more detail in the posts “I Am Sorry Honey”and “My Loved One is Addicted Now What” . You can also learn to use C.R.A.F.T. effectively by reading the book Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading and Threatening.
I wish I could stop scenes like the one described above from ever happening again, I know that’s not possible, but I do hope it never happens to you and your loved one.
This weeks feature image titles “Rise and Fall” is by Brooke Shaden
I sure do wish “We Chose Love” was available years ago. But I pray for all parents who are currently struggling with children and addiction and I pray that somehow they would all seek God and your blog!!! God bless.