Today I am stepping aside from my primary role as a drug and alcohol counsellor to talk about the other side of addiction. The families.
They are the ones who stand on the sidelines and watch, powerless, as their loved one spins around at ever-increasing speed, on the merry-go-round of addiction. Their hope is that somehow, sometime the merry-go-round will slow long enough for their ‘addict’ to jump off.
Sitting, watching, waiting and hoping that ‘rock bottom’ for their loved one is a place from which they can recover, is psychologically exhausting,
Those who have shared their stories speak of heartache and devastation and years of struggle to maintain hope. The personal cost is high. When thinking about what to share from my work today I remembered a blog I had visited some time ago that touched me. It is a letter from a mother to her daughter, caught up in the cycle of addiction.
This mother’s Letter of Hope is a poignant reminder that we never stop being parents and we never stop caring and we never stop loving.
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