Mom's Perspective

As a mother, it was so painful to see my daughter's addictions.  You feel helpless, you feel scared.  You read about all the deaths from oxy's.  You want to save your daughter.  At the time, she was in so much denial that I could not reason with her.  She thought she had it all under control.  I tried all the usual tactics-shaming, guilt-tripping and all the things we try to tell an addict to get them to stop.  The disease is so insidious; so frightening.  You feel helpless and hopeless. 

There is an epidemic now in all levels of society from the rich to the poor related to oxy addiction which can lead to heroin addiction.  I hold the drug companies accountable for that.  They misled doctors and patients for a time.  Then it became obvious the addiction that oxy's cause.  They are opiates-dangerous opiates.  And now we have a whole segment of the population addicted to oxy's and heroin. 

When I was young, there were no drugs like that, or maybe there were but not in my reality.  Then it was mushrooms, LSD and pot. 

When you are dealing with an alcoholic/addict, you go through so many emotions; anger, fear, guilt and helplessness.  With Sadie, I had to cop to my part in her addictions; after all, I am her mother.  I did not protect her when she was young.  Her father did not protect her.  We failed her.  All of her family that did not protect her or help her are complicit.  The emotional destruction of a child does not happen in a vacuum.

And even after all she has gone through and been through, my daughter is one of the strongest people I know.  She just kept trying in spite of the suicide attempts, in spite of the disease of alcoholism, the pill addiction.  She kept getting up to fight the good fight and she just kept losing.  And I am so proud of her.