Dear Mothers, Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, Best friends, Best-Men, God-daughters, grand-fathers, and everyone else in between who love an addict in addiction....
You cannot save them. You, despite the history and professed and proven love over years of knowing your person, you do not possess the ingredients to concoct a life of recovery for them. Not alone, not together, not at all. They must, on their own accord, find the desire to get clean, get sober, or get out of their bad situation. Our lesson is in letting go. In trust. In boundaries. In loving them without wavering and always seeing their good, their beauty, their potential, but not allowing all those things to weaken us.
Recovery cannot be hand-crafted and handed to them. They must fund a will inside themselves to seek out the canvas in which to create their new life. They have to want it. Change happens when the pain of where we are surpasses the fear of the unknown -- when desperation turns into surrender, and darkness engulfs us only to thrust us forward into the light. There are times in our life, places we must go inside ourselves were no one else can follow.
I understand that watching the destruction that becomes their life is painful. Physically painful, as in, make you projectile vomit painful - deep fears, deep love, and a different form of desperation, one of martyr-ism and un-asked for sacrifice, explode forward as a last ditch effort to do - something. Our efforts of "trying to help" often enable and elongate their active addiction. One of the best things we can do for them, and ourselves, is to let them hit their bottom. At times, there is a fine line between rock bottom and death, and sometimes, that line is crossed - sometimes purposefully, sometimes accidentally.
They might die. This is a reality we must accept if we are to be able to let go and let them find their way without losing our own footing.
I have been on both sides - the addict and the by-stander. One is not less complicated that the other. Neither is easier. From being on both sides, though, I can tell you, the grips of addiction blinds us and it is typically someone new, un-related, un-involoved that sparks the addicts desire to get clean. Rarely, is it the nagging parent, the enraged significant other, or the heart-broken child. It is a moment of divine intervention, that we most likely will not be present for.
And if by the grace of God, a power greater than themselves, your person finds themselves tired enough to quit, give them a chance. Tell them you believe in them, your proud of them, and they can do it. Embrace them and acknowledge their struggle -- and yours. Because that struggle is a real one. We're all just a handful of poor decisions away from a life-changing catastrophe and landslide.
One day at a time, for all of us.
