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Addiction really is horrible isn’t it? It has become quite a hot topic recently with many debates on what addiction is, if it is a disease, what can be done, and so on. Most people want to focus on the person addicted. We want to feel bad or make excuses for people facing addiction. But at what point do we step back and look at everyone else, who didn’t make the choice to try an addictive substance, but unwillingly get caught in the crossfire?
Our culture recently has been to focus only on the person directly impacted. Someone you know or knew is constantly high, shooting up heroin, taking pills, how sad right? They must feel awful being dependent on a substance. They must have so many psychological issues and are desperate for help. I mean, these are all valid thoughts, it is sad to be addicted. But the reality is that addicts rarely impact only themselves. Addicts are normal people. They are not isolated. They have friends, family, spouses, significant others, and children. All these people are impacted, but we don’t seem to care or notice. We only want to feel bad for those who are addicted.
This has been a personal issue for me. I don’t care to argue about the psychology or sociology of addiction. I care about people who are not addicts but are somehow STILL affected by addiction. I am from a small town in Pennsylvania and I see this problem on my Facebook feed and in my personal life constantly and I am fed up with it. I scoff when I see people defend addiction and scroll past those who post about their recovery for a simple reason. I have never been addicted to an illegal substance, but since I was a teenager, I have been affected by addiction. This was not my choice. It was forced on to me and I was completely powerless to it until I was an adult, but even then, it still creeps on me.
My parents divorced when I was in middle school and both of my parents started dating questionable people. My father, a man with constant back surgeries and painkillers at his fingertips, showed no signs of addiction until marrying my step-mother. I had to visit my father every weekend. I stopped when he and his wife slept all day, argued about pills in front of me when they woke, and started losing their jobs. I told my mother I was done going there and she didn’t argue. By the age of 16 I no longer saw my father two years later his wife would overdose and die. My father is still a drug addict and I have only seen him three times in the past 8 years because I refused to have an addict as a parent.
My mother started dating a man who just got out of county jail. In fact, he is the final push that made my mother split with my dad. I remember things being steady at my mother’s house when things were bad at my father’s. She got pregnant and gave me one of the greatest gifts ever: sisterhood. Around the time I turned 17, one day I woke up and my life had changed and there was nothing I could do. Almost overnight, or over the span of a weekend, my mother’s boyfriend had become an addict. I had known (small town knowledge) he was an addict as a teenager along with many other issues, but my mother and I had assumed that was over. There would be no relapse. But there was.
I won’t go into the details because after many years of trying to forget, some things blur into others, and I do not want to revisit these memories. I will just let you know I was a teenage girl who was scared to death every single day of her life for over a year. I have been harassed, a knife has been held to me, I have seen my mother get beaten, and I have missed school days because I got less than two hours of sleep out of fear. I have kept a knife under my pillow just in case, I have checked on my mother at night to make sure he didn’t kill her, I have worried about my younger sister, I have cried, I have begged, and I have wished for so long that I had another choice. But I didn’t. I had nowhere else to go.
I finally went to college after I turned 18 and I was so happy to finally leave a toxic life. I never had a choice until then. When I left, my mother would call me, and I would still worry. During her boyfriend’s addiction, he had no job and committed retail theft until he was eventually caught and sent to prison for two years. This news made me finally feel safe. I cannot even describe the piece of mind I felt. I finally could spend my free time enjoying life instead of worrying that a psychotic drug addict had went into a rage and killed my mother, like he always threatened to do. There was no worry for once. I was free.
But of course, two years goes by fast when you’re having fun. My mother swore she was done with him and they had broken up. Unfortunately, she had a change of heart. He moved back in with her immediately and they tried to pretend everything would work this time. I was 21 years old, supposed to be having the best time of my life at school, when I received the worse call of my life. Someone told me my mother was beaten up badly the previous night by her boyfriend. She traveled to a hospital 30 minutes away to keep her cracked ribs and bruised lungs a secret. She denied, and she protected the drug addicted man that did this to her. She covered for him for years.
Some people want to blame my mother for putting me and my sister through years of trauma. But those people do not understand the difficulty of motherhood along with the power of an emotionally and physically abusive partner. But no one has ever felt bad for her. No one has ever asked me or her if we are okay after years of these experiences. No one gave me a choice in any of these matters. I had to live with them and they still haunt me. But there is no rehabilitation for me, there never was. There was no free counseling for people like me. We just want to focus on the addict themselves. We want to tell them, it’s okay, it’s a disease. You can’t stop what you’re doing, its fine, just go to rehab. Fix yourself, you’re the only one that matters. This selfish attitude is a constant. They had no control, forget about what I did as an addict, its in the past. But I don’t get to forget or pretend everything is fine.
I don’t get to come out and see the sun shining and feel my life has changed. I get to live with this trauma forever, something I never wanted and didn’t choose. I get the nagging feeling every now and then, even to this day, that I will get another horrible call. There isn’t a thing, a single thing in the world, that I can do to stop the next relapse or the next horrible thing to happen. So, when addicts or past addicts want to throw themselves a celebration or a pity-party, I don’t join in. I don’t care about addicts. Every single addict in this world should be kissing the feet of those around them and begging for forgiveness after every single horrid act they have committed. How they made a decision to take away everyone else’s freedom, safety, or peace of mind.
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I agree. 💯 Psychiatry/Psychology/
Substance Abuse Counseling seems to have degenerated into becoming apologists for people whose behavior more often than not is nothing more than malignant narcissism.
And that “Family Reconstruction” model meeds to be completely and totally abolished under federal law.
Because depending on how much said family is an existential threat tou your safety and well being expecting someone to remain in a toxic situation reeks of malfescence if not full on criminal negligence. (And someone doesn’t need to be homicidal to be an existential threat) Sometimes family is the problem, people think you slap the word “family” on anything its this blanket waiver/excuse/alibi bullshit.
The alcohol/drug culture has brought nothing but grief and misery to my own life and I have given so many people the heave ho without regret or apology. You have a problem? Get help. The end.
Maybe addiction is a disease maybe it isn’t but I do think they were right in the 1920s when they used to think sloppy soft weak moral fiber had a lot to do with it.
We really need to start taking accountability and responsibility for ourselves as a culture...
ReplyI work inpatient substance abuse/psychiatric treatment and I can assure you that addiction is, indeed, a family disease and every member of the family needs help and support. Additionally, treatment is in no way any kind of an excuse for poor behavior and in proper treatment centers focused on a combination of healing, skills building, cognitive behavioral interventions, and accountability, responsibility and restitution. Family reunification occurs in the best of cases, and is restricted in many ways for others.
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