A mother wrote an email message to me. This is part of it: Those of us who love our addicted children have felt pain, love, hope, and the helplessness that take over our lives. Our son is in a treatment aftercare right now and I feel hope, but the fear is always there. Even though he is now sober, we do not know how our story ends, and with the disease of addiction the story can change so quickly and dangerously. What could we have done to change our son’s fall into addiction? What signs did we miss – or better still – could we have done anything to prevent this?
My personal reflection on the passage above, offering my thoughts today: This is the silver-bullet question: What could we have done to prevent the addiction? As parents, this is the question we ask over and over again. We are plagued with doubts, but nothing changes the fact that the addiction exists. Many medical folks call it a disease. My son has it. He’ll live with it for all of his life. I pray he continues to fight.
Today’s promise to consider for all of us who love addicts: There are some questions that have no answers. There are some ambiguities with which we must live. Maybe I could have done something differently to alter the course of this disease, but I’ll never know for sure. My son is addicted and I will learn how to stay close to him. I will accept that sometimes there are no answers.
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