What’s the Alternative

I received a few very encouraging notes this week from different people. I was grateful, they arrived at just the right moment.

One of them highlighted a truth regarding the philosophy of We Chose Love. It is not easily received or applied. “Loving a loved one in addiction is not easy.”, and is it not the approach most people default to in helping their loved one. I get it, but two large studies on C.R.A.F.T.  reveal that it is effective. “And Unexpected Solution” talks about them.

Last week I mentioned a tense time for our family when it would have been easy to “blow up”. Emotions were high, anger was present, and it is always easy to just “REACT” in those times, but the fall out of a reaction can be devastating.

Senator George McGovern got it right when he said “Alcoholics and Drug addicts are hard the live with, but they are much harder to live without.” He was speaking about his daughter Terry. The book “Terry: My Daughters Life and Death Struggle with Alcohol.”

Whenever I see this image of LaLa and me, which is often, I am reminded of how much I wanted to protect her and keep her safe, I could not! That is what saddens me the most!

Two eye-opening moments that, surprisingly, brought me encouragement and understanding come to mind in my battle, it is a battle, to keep showing Lauren we loved her and stood with her come to mind. I say surprisingly because the chances are very likely she was high on heroin during the moments. The first, is told in the post “Conversations”.

The second is similar. It was an evening when Lauren returned from one of her mandated IOP programs. This night was a group night but it was facilitated by a highly trained and credentialed addiction specialist. It included group talk, LaLa never liked groups, this group included education on some practical understanding about addiction and its impact on a human being, Lauren did not mind learning about the effects of addiction on her.

When she came home she was very talkative, she wanted to fill me in on all she had learned about herself that night. She was excited about her recovery, which made me excited, but as best I could tell she may have been coming down from a high. That sounds bizarre to some I know, how could someone be at a meeting and get high, “They must not be committed”,  actually they may be. What they are experiencing is called “Ambivalence”, a post by that name explains it in intricate detail HERE. Loving someone moving from addiction toward recovery requires you to understand “Ambivalence”. That night Lauren was really focused on having learned that because she started using drugs at an early age, 7^th or 8^th grade with Aderall, the impact on her brain was quick and powerful over a relatively short time.

Here is an exert from a blog post call “Brighter-Days” that explains what happens to an adolescent brain on drugs:

“Today young people are starting to use serious drugs very early. This has a huge impact on the brain, especially in the frontal lobe, the area that impacts our judgment. Lauren was greatly hampered by this because she began experimenting with drugs very early in her life, probably seventh, eighth or ninth grade. That choice literally hijacks your brain and ultimately will take you places you really don’t want to go. Here is a link to a very helpful article addressing how you can reverse these effects on the frontal lobe caused by drug addiction and many other issues we would be surprised about. Don’t let the title of the article throw you.”

That night Lauren had discovered that it would take 2 to 3 years for her mind to get fully back to where it should be from the impact of early drug use. It stood out to her that her mind was perhaps more than 3 years behind where it should be developmentally. She wasn’t discouraged by that, in fact, she was empowered, that was why I made a point of not confronting the fact that she may have been high. As someone who knew what ambivalence felt like I wanted her to hear herself talking about getting well and allow the hope she was feeling to sink deep within her. Hope is very important to the recovery of our loved ones. Read “Eyes Filled With Hope” to see how important.

I know it is a fine line we walk, but our loved one must “believe” there is a chance to change. They must believe their future is not determined by their past or even their present. We can help with that!

We have to stay in the game, we have to be the last voice of hope and sanity in the world of our loved ones because there is so much insanity in their world.

Whenever I write these blogs I can’t help but remember what George McGovern also said about his daughter Terry.

In his book “Terry” George McGovern says this “I regret more than I can describe the decision Eleanor and I made under professional counsel to distance ourselves from Terry in what proved to be the last six months of her life. …..  But if I could recapture Terry’s life, I would never again distance myself from her no matter how many times I had tried and failed to help her. Better to keep trying and failing than to back away and not know what is going on. If she had died despite my best efforts and my close involvement with her life up to the end, at least she would have died with my arms around her, and she would have heard me say one more time: “I love you, Terry.” McGovern, George. Terry:: My Daughter’s Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism (pp. 189-190). Random House Publishing Group.

Losing my daughter to a war with mental health and addiction is the greatest pain I may ever face. I am thankful that I do not have to face it with the added weight the McGoverns lived with, I am deeply sorry anyone would have to face that.

No, it is not easy to love a loved one who is caught up in addiction, but the alternative could lead to very painful places!

This weeks featured image is called “Protecting the Important” by Brooke Shaden