Up Close And Personal
My name is Louise, and I was set to this path as far back as I can remember. It’s eerie how clear it is to me now. I picked up my first drink at 10 and it was the balm that got me through. Alcohol and later drugs turned on me, and by the time I was 17 I was sitting in my first, and last, rehab. I am a teenage addict with a 32-year recovery story. One Day At A Time.
Long term Recovery is possible.
I moved through the ages of life with everyone else but not like them. I got my GED, went to college, got my bachelor’s, and then completed my master’s degree. I spent my evenings at work or rehabbing addicts in my apartment and getting them to a detox. I remember a time where I was studying for a Chem exam while a friend of mine was groaning in pain in my spare bedroom kicking dope.
I was never far from the recovery process. It has been the foundation in which I built my life upon. We have a saying in my chosen circles, “If you want to keep it, you have to give it away.” I started working in the field of addiction about 25 years ago. I have been professionally and personally connected to recovery for the entierty of my adult life. I thought I knew all the ins and outs of recovery. I thought I understood all the devastating consequences of addiction. I had no idea how ill prepared I was when I found out that my son was getting high.
32 years of recovery and the hospitals, detoxes, halfway houses, prisons, funerals, and successes. 25 years of counsel and the hospitals, detoxes, prisons, group homes, funerals, and successes. It all became so distant to me, apart of my life but not powerless to it. I participated and always played an important role that saved a life for 24 more hours, but it was someone else’s story. Being the parent of an addicted teen is different. The powerlessness is crushing. We have to become the Director. I found that everyone was looking to me to answer questions, and very uncharacteristically of me, I didn’t have the answers. Not one. I was in shock.
Doctors, clinicians, therapists were all asking me what I wanted to do. My son, my beautiful boy, was spitting vileness at me that I had never heard before and all I could do was cry. All up until the fentanyl incident. I watched, in heartbroken horror, as my addicted teen went on a rampage behind the plexiglass in the ER. And just like that, I traded places with my own Dad.
You see, I have had this moment once before, except I was the addicted teen spitting vileness. My moment took place in a courtroom 32 years earlier. What my Dad said to me on that horrible day saved my life and saved my ability to love and recover. He was not disgusted with me, nor was he ashamed or angry. He was scared but even more, he was true to his love for me, and he told me so. I stood shackled in front of him sick and dirty, snarling and telling him to go away and to give up on me. He did not. He did the opposite. He told me he loved me and that he did not know how to help but he would not stop until he found it.
I said the exact words to my son, that my Dad had said to me so many years ago. I am here to tell you, it is working. Not perfectly, but it is working. There is hope. Miracles can happen.
In the moment I shared my Dad’s love with my son, 32 years of experience and 25 years of education came together and I became the Director. I wrote this program so that you too can become the Director that your kiddo needs you to be. That your partner and your other kiddos need you to be. Most importantly, it’s time for you to take your life and your love back. It’s time to really learn about this disease and to get some sleep.
I’m here because I want to keep it, so I have to P.A.S.S. it on.
