In my almost ten year journey of dealing with an addicted child and now an adult I and my family have felt pain , and anger (what I call the seven deadly angers) and believe me for 7 years of my 10 year ongoing journey we suffered, and suffered miserably. Especially me…the dad! What I have also learned is that feeling the pain of a child or any family member addicted to drugs is inevitable but suffering from it is truly a choice … and we have control. We have to learn to get control back.
Many of us grew up wanting to be professional athletes, famous musicians , ballerinas, actors, singers. At some point in our life we had to face the reality and the pain that we may not have been good enough or we just didn’t get a break and we did not “make it”. Painful in the moment..yes. Did you suffer from it…probably at first..Are you still suffering what you could have been these many years later? Probably not. In fact you may, and I know I do, reminisce about my past musical accomplishments fondly with no pain and surely with no suffering.
This is not to say you will totally lose the pain of having an addicted child and the pain of what you feel they could have been or who they say they want to be, but, you can begin to stop suffering and help the rest of the family to stop suffering also.
I wrote the book “An Addict Within” to share my story with the 23.5 million parents and families who are in pain and suffering with an addict in their family. The lessons learned both right and wrong and how I brought my family and myself to a point where we were not suffering anymore. Again pain is inevitable but suffering is a choice.