I am sorry that this family lost Jeremy, a teenager, but I am equally sorry for the families out there that lose any family member to addiction. My grandmother died of alcoholism/anorexia and the toll on my parents was unending and still is today. They tried hard love and isolation as a last resort but that just made her attempts at control over the family more desparate. In the last two months of her life, she was in a hospital and would only drink liquor, not even eat anymore. When she died at the fairly young age of 59, there were worries over the should have’s and could have’s but that didn’t change anything. I don’t have any memories of when my grandmother was "normal" before the addiction but I do have memories of the bad times. As a young child in a full house, I think my parents did the right thing to throw my grandmother out.

This is also the best choice for an addicted child. It’s not just the influence on myself and my younger siblings that would have been a problem or the drunken fits but the time that my parents had to spend babysitting my grandmother while my siblings and myself watched this behavior. And while tough love was a tough choice, it wasn’t the first. First is always the invention, the couseling, the rehab, the promises, the lies, and repeat. Last decision was the isolation.

 I know that my parents still suffer for the choices they made and how they hated losing a mother, but I feel as if they gained a better life for myself and my siblings. A life free from substance abuse and focused on raising a family.

Lessons learned:  As the sister of an addict (who was born with the disease because his biological mother was too selfish to stop drugging while she was pregnant - yes he is adopted) I can tell you it’s about LETTING GO.  If you are in a relationship of any kind with an addict, you are learning at least one lesson in life about how to let go.

The only thing you can control is yourself. 

Being in a relationship with an addict will give you the biggest learning opportunity for letting go you’ll probably ever have in your life. 

People will confuse what I’m saying here so I’ll explain quickly that there are degrees of letting go.  One does not have to walk away or shut someone out of their life.  But, you can allow yourself to let go of guilt, shame, disgust, fighting, worry, allowance, etc.  You fill in the blanks.

I don’t believe anyone really knows what to do to help an addict.  My personal experience is these "experts" are like the blind leading the blind.  I don’t buy into half of the stuff they pass on.  I do believe they are doing their best, but that they just don’t know what to do really.  This is because it is out of their control.  Only the addict can decide.

Forgiveness is the hardest part of it.  People forget that forgiving someone isn’t done for the person you are forgiving, but for yourself.  It allows you to let go.  You don’t have to forget what they’ve done either.  But, you can move forward then without hanging on to emotions that won’t serve you or the addict.  This is probably the most difficult part of the process.  I’m still working on it.

Thank you for reading this post.

I agree with Frank Somsel NA is not good if you already quit. That is my opinion. Get in with a more positive group, not poor me, poor me a drink type people. Ask a person who helps others like wounded soldiers, volunteer at a hospital or soup kitchen.  In NA they reinforce that they are sick, stinking thinking. they say I am an addict every single day year in and year out. If it works for you then god bless. Others troll for drugs of newcomers to buy off of them. Some get right into a relationship which triggers a lot of feelings they are not ready to handle, and they relapse, get violent, and some have success and get married which some do last. i know a couple who have been married for fifteen years now but, they are the exception.

Many of them are newly diagnosed with HIV, some do not know yet and have sex and pass it on. I’ve seen it happen. They are dropping like flies in these meetings. They say they have low self esteem. They say they are no good. They tell them that all drugs are bad even if they need them for a number of real neurological reasons.

Once off drugs there is a lack of serotonin and dopamine in the brain, and send them into a depressive spin. I had a friend who would still be alive if he didn’t go to NA where they forced him through guilt, to get off methadone which he just started.  So he got off all the drugs and they all clapped and he struggled so hard, he was a suicidal mess, his girlfriend through him out so he went to live with father and was having a very hard time for his father was an alcoholic, but they said no, don’t go back on methadone.  His mother ran away, and his family didn’t know where she was, and then I heard he died of a heroin overdose, it hurt me so very bad, I cried and cried, and then his sister who I also tried to help also went to NA got off the methadone, and she died of a heroin overdose for she loved her brother so much. I saw it in the paper. She worked for David Lettermen eighteen years ago as the Girl on the street talking to people before the show. She had so much to live for. Another older friend who was  in the news, holding his teddy bear, was featured as a recovered addict. He got into a relationship and died by hanging himself a year later. He needed meds. It was a never ending thing, every other week people were dying because they could not cope with the lack of dopamine, and serotonin because that is what the drugs give you, so your brain can’t make it for months or years. It was never a choice of NA that they may have needed to stay on a program, or take medication for these neurological reasons. I recently learned that benadryl enhances all the other drugs like Oxycontin, Vicodin, Codeine, Xanex, Valium, and makes the respiratory system slow down that much more.

There is a new drug called suboxone which gets you off of all i mentioned without withdrawal and takes the urge away, and is not addictive but, they don’t tell anyone about it because the drug companies and the methadone clinics will lose money. Warning… you must take subetex first, and now all doctors can prescribe it. If you try to take it on your own without the subetex first for three days you will go into immediate withdrawal. So go to the doctor and ask for it. Read about it on-line. How do I know so much about these drugs is because I used to dispense medication to violent mentally ill drug addicts before one of them attacked me and i had flashes at night of the faces. I had to resign.

I said all this so maybe it will help someone reading here. 

You have my condolences, Lesley and Marcie. Please forgive yourself for you were being a good mother, and taking the best advice you could.