I quote from an anonymous source: “For a while I was seeing a friends husband who was a 30 year sober addict, who was a counsel at a private inpatient treatment program.
I had lost myself in co-dependence. My role as mom to our then 28 year old AS had become rescuer, jail keeper, fixer, healer, banker, laundress, housekeeper and cab driver to name a very few.
You see, I thought if I just controlled as many aspects of his life, that I could keep him away from the drugs. All the time I was walking on egg shells in our own house and my anxiety and panic attacks were through the roof all the time.
I was panicking every time my phone rang, thinking it was him needing something or the police to come ID a body. I hated my life and my marriage was neglected along with the rest of our families and friends.
We had stopped inviting friends over for fear our son would 'be in bad shape or obnoxious' or that if he was gone he would show up unannounced.
So, after I basically shared this same information with Hank, he took both my hands and looked me square in the eyes and asked..
"honestly, how's that working for you?"
I was quiet, still holding Hanks hands with tears starting to swell in my eyes. I wanted to lie and say things were getting better, but he already knew they weren't, being my friends husband.
That was the reason I went to see him in the first place, he had told me for years if I needed help or to just talk, to reach. out to him for years. But "I was the mom and I should be able to handle my own family situations and fix our son".
Pride is a horrible thing and the bible says it is sin. I had to take care of my own sin before I could clearly see Gods plan for my family, me, my husband and our two sons.
I learned that most my conversations with our AS started with things like 'I think you' or 'why don't you' or 'I have an idea' or 'I don't think' or 'I know you should' or 'we'll' or 'lets' or 'we'll do this'. They all included me.
Hank helped me understand that I needed to stop what I was doing, enabling, trying to run our sons life, trying to cure or fix him and most importantly to stop bailing our son out of his situations, everything, absolutely everything.
I learned that every time I 'fixed' a situation I was coming across as approving of his choices. Our AS took my actions as support and approval of his behavior and needs. After all, I was pointing the finger at everyone else instead of putting the blame where it belonged.
We don't fix things any more, in all of the categories we use to. We listen to our AS tell us about his choices and what he is doing to get clean
Now, my answer to him is:
How's that working for you?
AND we never forget to tell him, even when we say no to his requests:
I'm not sure why I wrote all this, but maybe, just maybe it might help another mom to pull away from her addiction to fix her child's addiction.
No one can do it except them and parents are not responsible for their adult children's choices OR fixing their earned consequences.
Written by an anonymous mom of an addict
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