Slow Train Comin | We Chose Love

The title of this week’s post comes from an old Bob Dylan song, “Slow Train Comin”. There is a line in that song that says “Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down all their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?” There is most certainly a cost involved in helping someone I love from addiction to recovery, and it is not cheap!

This week I met with a family that had recently discovered that someone they love is addicted to opioids. I tried, as I often do, to highlight some of the important pitfalls to avoid. The most common are: this is a long battle, 28 days in residential is just the beginning of the process. Often when Lauren, my daughter, would come out of a residential program or IOP (Intense Outpatient Program) I would slip into a false ideation that “she was all better now.” That’s a mistake, for you and your loved one, you can learn ways to more effectively approach the situation in “Danger Zone” . In addition, I explained that it is important to find the treatment that is best for your loved one. Treatment has several main categories, they are: Residential (often 28 days born out of the limitations of insurance coverage), OutPatient, these are often 30 to 90-day programs, 12 Step programs, the most famous of these being Alcoholics Anonymous, or individual treatment through a Psychiatrist, Psychologist or Counselor/Therapist. They all work, but they do not all work for everybody, find the one that works for your loved one. For Lala, Lauren’s favorite nickname, individual treatment was the most effective.

Then we began to talk about the cost of standing with someone you love fighting addiction, and the reality that the investment to help a person we care about reach wholeness is very high. When endeavoring to do that you are about to get on the most violent and scary roller coaster you have ever ridden on. Helping someone I love overcome addiction is a marathon, not a 100-yard dash, and it hurts, but it is worth the investment when you are able to do it. “Why We Chose Love” explains this in detail.

There are three other things that come with the territory. Accepting these can help maintain your sanity through the process and that is important.

The first is lying!

I do not mean that to be anyway offensive, it’s just the reality. Addicted people lie, a lot, the surprising thing is the reason isn’t often to hurt us. In fact, it might be the exact opposite.

One of the things we always talked with Lauren about was lying. We would often say “Honey, why do you lie to us. There is no reason to, we know about the heroin. Your lying hurts us more than anything.” We all get that right? Well, I got it until one day Lauren said something that opened my eyes forever. We had been talking about something she lied about and she finally said “Dad, you don’t get it. I don’t lie to you because I want to hurt you. I lie to you because I am sick and tired of hurting you. I am sick and tired of seeing my mom in a heap on the end of her bed crying. I am sick and tired of my brother asking me “What can’t you stop, why are you hurting our family?” I am sick and tired of seeing the brokeness on your face every time U mess up. That’s why I lie to you!”

Once I saw that I stopped focusing on something that i could not fix, the lying, this freed me to focus on building a better relationship with LaLa which is the most important thing we can do. Relationship MATTERS!

The second is lapses.

I don’t like the word relapse. The reason is relapse means I go back to what I was before or worse. That is often not the case when someone goes back to using drugs. The cravings can go on for years. “A Hard Fall” explains this deeper. This article helps in understanding the difference between a lapse and a relapse. Here are some other helpful tools to understand this “I Re-Lapse Normal” – “Inside the Brain of Your Addicted Loved One”.

The third thing we must accept is Love is work, but it must happen.

In his book, “Terry” George McGovern said this “Alcoholics and Drug addicts are hard the live with, but they are much harder to live without.” It’s true addicts and alcoholics are hard to live with and harder to love but we must not fail in loving them. There were many occasions where I could have said things to LaLa that would have annihilated our relationship, on many of those occasions I may have even been justified in saying what I could have said, but it would not have helped. The chances are that we probably would have ended up with no relationship or contact with Lauren. Just imagine for a moment what that might look like now for me and my family. I wish I could say I was perfect in this, but I was not, fortunately, the failures were very few and far between.

Helping someone you love to reach wellness and recovery is a long, slow, and painful process. Is it worth it? Yes, in fact, I wish every day I still had the chance. If you do use it wisely.

This weeks featured image is by Brooke Shaden called “Fast Train to Nowhere.” Getting to addiction is a fast train moving to recovery is a very slow train coming.