When Addiction Comes

The worst thing is watching someone drown and not being able to convince them that they can save themselves by just standing up...

When addiction takes someone you love it takes a part of you with it. Of all the fatal diseases that plague our world addiction has to be the hardest to bear. It infiltrates a home, a family and takes the person you love and changes them into someone you can no longer recognize.

In my case it took my son.

It took his father and my mother’s father before him. It took my aunt, my brother in law and in certain moments it has taken me.

I don't know anyone that hasn't been touched by addiction in some form or another.

In my case it has touched me so deeply that it has reshaped my soul.

Once addiction grabbed hold of my beautiful boy I had no choice but to sit back and watch it eat him alive. Slowly, painfully, agonizingly I watched my son deteriorate in front of my own eyes.

At first I tried desperately to control the situation. I controlled where he went, who he was with and monitored his every move.

I installed GPS on his cell phone.

I controlled every bit of money he had, never allowing him to carry cash.

I rummaged through his belongings on a regular basis.

I put him through rehab. Three times.

I knew his lies inside and out.

I was supportive. I was angry. I begged him to stop using.

I even watched as my son, my only child, was taken to a state mental facility because drugs had made him loose all sense of reality.

And I stood tall when he asked for help and I found a way to get it for him every time. Pawning my wedding ring, using up my 401k, asking my family for financial help.

My son’s addiction not only consumed him, but it consumed me. I waited everyday to hear from him, to make sure he was alive. He began to lead a life that I could never begin to imagine.

Yet when he asked for sobriety, I opened my arms and loved him through it, every single time.

Watching him kill himself, slowly, is the worst pain that I hope to ever feel. If addiction has taken hold of someone you love then you know what I mean, because unlike other fatal diseases, addicts won't seek help.

How many times I have heard the phrase "rock bottom" I will never know. But that is what a family is expected to wait for...rock bottom...to just 'wait', hoping that rock bottom comes before your loved one is lost forever.

You see, an addict has to want sobriety...you can want it for them more than you want air to breath or food to eat, but unless the addict wants to deal with and fight their disease then nothing you or anyone does will help save them.

That fact took me 2 years to fully understand.

For those of us that aren't afflicted by addiction it is extremely hard to rationalize how someone can lose themselves in this heinous disease.

This was especially true for me.

My son Max had a good life. He had a stable home, good parents and a loving family. He was an honor roll student, an amazing athlete and an all around great kid. Max was popular, he was charismatic and he was raised with morals. Max wasn't the victim of abuse or made to survive in a low-income household. In essence, Max is the picture perfect example of a child that should never use drugs.

Yet, addiction found him. Genetically predisposed to addiction Max fell head first into the disease.

My son's death on September 7, 2011 is, in my eyes, not the day he died. My son died when drug Max was born.

Of course glimpses of Max came through over the course of his 4-year battle with drugs. We shared moments of sobriety and a rebirth of the young man that he was born to be.

Yet the darkness would always reappear and Max would once again be lost to it.

I began to grieve for my son long before his body left this earth.

And within that grief I built up walls that I am not certain can ever be broken down. Because when you can't stand the pain of watching your child slowly die in front of you the only emotion that can save you is anger.

Oh how I have spent so many angry days trying to rationalize where it all went wrong.

Then I remember again that addiction is not rational.

It is ugly. It is fatal. It is life altering.

But it is not rational.

I am now forever scarred by this disease.

I am changed.

When you lose all that you ever truly loved you can't help but learn to live all over again. For me it is about rediscovering myself without being plagued by the heavy burden of addiction. Because it wasn't just Max who was lost to this disease, it owned me too. When you love someone you have no other choice but to live in the disease with him. When they are lost to drugs, when they are sober, when they have spent months in recovery, you still live inside the disease of addiction. 

So the question arises, when your loved one loses the fight, where do you live?

Without the consuming pull of disease to consume your days and plague your nights what do you have left? What life is left for you to live? 

I have learned in the 487 days since my son left this earth that trying to live in that life, the one my son is no longer a part of, is impossible. 

Instead I can only build a new life.

A life that is abundant with the lessons I have learned, but not jaded by the pain I have endured. A new level of existence. The life I was put here on earth to live. 

I can't help my son anymore. It is now time to help myself.