I found this jewel of a post on another site I visit, written by LitlGrADuck. She graciously allowed me to repost it here for everyone to read
This is what one mother believes her son would write if he could only be honest and truthful with himself and others about his using and his relationship with his parents.
The orginal post can be found at: http://www.eons.com/groups/topic/2276457-Dear-Enabling-Mom-and-Dad
Dear Enabling Mom and Dad
Dare I write the following ?
I will risk it.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I really didn't want to try very hard in detox, rehab. Heck, I already knew that I wasn't serious about it. That's why I was still using while I was there. And I knew I could count on you to bail me out. See? I got you coming and going. I got you to call more of those jerk off places you wanted me to go to.
So, ok, I admit I get so f**king high that sometimes I freak out. It scares me, and I feel like I want to get off this ride, and I tell you I want to get clean. What I really want is to come down off the bad tripping, that's all. Get back on a good high.
I guess if I have to go to some stupid treatment center, since I don't have to pay for it, I can deal with that.
I can make some good connections for later if I want to. I can see the people in there that are playing the same game I am. Just killing time, watching tv, taking some really trippin drugs, got some cool nurses to look at, and I can really work that Dr. What a idiot that one is. They believe anything you tell them.
Geez, I know I can get you to do anything for me, if I play you right. Oh, and summer is winding down. The cooler temps will get you to do more for me. Jeez, you are such a chump. But you are my chump. Glad I have you wrapped around my little finger. So, I gotta sit here and work on the next step in my plan. I gotta make it sound real good, so you will believe me. Yep, gotta sit here and think, while you do all my work for me. God, life is sooooooooooooo good.
Anyway, you are just a means to an end. Yeah, I tell you I love you, but right now, I love the high I get a whole lot more.
So, this rehab thing is no big deal. I can always do it again, play the game, anytime I feel like it. I know how to get in and I know how to get out.
Guess what Mom, Dad? I ain't ready to quit yet. It's too easy to stay this way. Don't need to work at some chump job, don't have to wake up at 6 am. I can eat what I want, when I want, I don't have to answer to nobody but me. And you will never understand how good I feel about myself when I am flying high. There's nothing like it. I just can't understand why you would want me to stop feeling on top of the world.
And you know how you worry all the time about my health? My health is super. No matter what messes up, I can get another bombshell high on and nothing hurts. Nothing bothers me.
Ok, so maybe I don't have a home, or a car. Those are just part of what society demands and I don't take demands from nobody. Maybe I just have a piece of cardboard to sleep on, but you know what? Me and my cardboard have been together on some major trips. You can keep your soft bed, warm house, all those damn rules.
See, my cardboard and I have a really strong relationship. No rules with it, keeps me off the ground. I don't see what the problem is with you. Nag, nag, nag, no high being around you. That is a total bummer and it sucks big time. Not interested in your straight and narrow crap. Sometimes your nagging at me makes me so angry I want to punch your face out. Ok, so instead I punch holes in the walls. No sweat, you don't like the holes, you fix them. You just better be thankful I didn't go for your face this time. Just so you know, if you push me too far, when I am on an all-time-high, and you try crashing me down? it can be your face. Just so you know who is the boss around here.
But I know you'd call the cops, and I don't need that number, so I will just work around you until you leave the house. See, I've been watching where you put things. Remember when I was a kid, and I put something down, and couldn't find it and later, you told me where it was? Yeah, you watched my every move then, and turn around is fair play. I watch what you do, what you have, where you put it, and when I need my beautiful highs, I claim your sh*t. Finder's keepers, and all that. Losers weepers. Well, just cry me a river. I don't feel anymore, that's why I don't care!
Wow, why am I thinking all this crap? I never used to be like this. I had a great family, a car, a best friend, loved sports and art, kept myself in great shape, and all that sh*t, and now look at me? I have nothing. Ok, ok, this is not a good way to think. This is going to get me really bombed out if I don't stop it. I know, where's that last hit? Ah, there it is. Yeah, that's more like it. What was I thinking about before?
Oh, yeah.
Thanks Mom and Dad. I knew I could count on you. Suckers!
P.S.If I do ever decide to come off the dope, it will be MY DECISION, not YOURS. You can't make me feel guilty enough to stop. You don't have that power.When I am ready, if I ever am, I don't want your help. I will want to do it without you holding my hand like a baby. I ain't your baby anymore. I wish you would wake up and learn that. Geez, maybe I would get off it if you didn't keep me such a cripple.
Yeah, that sounds like a good future plan to tuck back for later. I will make my own way, do all the work myself, and show myself that I am someone good, someone strong, that I can overcome anything. Well, let me think on that some more.
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14 comments:
I am not sure how I feel about this one, either. It makes me hurt for those parents who can relate to this. With my addiction, I distanced myself from my parents. My mom and I would fight a lot, long distance, on the phone. My parents were on my case about things, and rightly so...but I never stole from them. I never manipulated them, and I never, ever thought they were suckers. Maybe because they were not enablers. I feel like the "author" of this letter is cold and callous. When I was in active addiction, it still hurt mt to think about how I had disappointed my parents. It pained me to realize that I was hurting people. Maybe I was just different. Or maybe my parents were different. I don't know. I do know that I was not like this, and that is coming from a person in recovery who has taken an honest look at the past. I feel sorry for the parents whose children think like this. I guess I knew a lot of addicts that were this calluous. I am blesssed that I never completely lost my heart, soul, or conscience...it would be virtally impossible to have gotten my life back without these things.
I don't know if the letter is fact or fiction but the writer sure seems sociopathic. Maybe that is what the drugs do--reduces a person to chasing the high and not caring about anyone or anything except the drugs. I don't know. I am not an addict. But I realize that paying for things, not letting another be responsible, and continuing to enable can be a death sentence.
I'm a little confused on this one also. The addicted person writing this appears too cold and calculating. There just appears to be too much of a well thought out plan. Am I making sense?
He seems to enjoy the pain he is causing. His thought processes are more like a psychopath as opposed to a person suffering from the disease of addiction. I think it is overstated and not representative of the research done on the thought processes and addictive thinking of an addict.
However, one needs to realize the disease can take on a very aggressive style to accomplish it's goals so perhaps this letter is a good warning to be cautious.
Just my personal opinion.
How amazingly self absorbed of her. I wonder where I can get a class on psycic mind reading?
She is dead wrong about what her son thinks. Maybe she should take the time to form a relationship with him and find out what he ACTUALLY thinks.
Oh wait. Then she might have to take some responsibility for her parenting, and quit being a perpetual victim. That would NEVER do now would it?
Tonjia...I think I remember you from an earlier post....and REALLY ....YOU are DEAD WRONG to be blaming suffering parents for their child's addiction !! NO,...she doesn't need to "take responsibility" for parenting that didn't "form a relationship"..nor CAUSE her child's addiction...UGH! And , sad as it is...I can very sadly relate to a lot of what this post said...from how the parent feels the addict child must be thinking....BASED UPON the child addict's behavior, whether or not that addict child really is thinking those thoughts. Remember...this post was written from a parent who wrote what she thought her child was thinking...based upon what she was seeing via that addict child's behavior.
Yes...feeling like your son/daughter must be always looking around for something to steal is all too realistic for many of us...or the anger that is so very selfish and aggressive....where they DO NOT feel like they care anymore about their own life nor yours. Again...sadly ,much of this (from my own perception) is quite realistic from the point of view of a parent of an addict,....although it vaccilates back and forth between the selfishness, sadness and even guilt and self hatred of the addict...as we observe all of it. :(
Wow. I for one can imagine my son thinking and saying almost all of this. A year ago I may have written something similar to what the first comment by Erin said. But I have learned too much in the last year. I tried to read her blog but it was too shiny and the font too small, bummer cause she looks like an interesting person and a fellow fibro-sufferer too. Thanks for sharing this.
What really got me is the part about hitting the walls - there are holes in all the doors and most of the walls of my son's bedroom and my bedroom/bathroom. He has told me before he felt like hitting "someone" when he hits the walls. One nice thing is the hole in his bedroom door is so big I can look through it and see what he's up to in there :) I am letting nature take its course, I am done. He can live here till he messed up again, so far six days no drugs, alcohol or holes in walls.
I'm a recovering alcoholic and I agree with BMelonsLemonade. I NEVER thought my parents were suckers. I felt terrible for what I was putting them through. I don't believe an addict thinks like this just because they're an addict. The 'addict' speaking in the letter sounds like someone who had serious, serious problems before they ever picked up the drugs - as someone said above, a sociopath.
ps: Oh yeah, and I would never refer to rehab as "stupid". from the moment i was told i should go, i said sure and packed my bags. If this is an addict being honest, well, no addict 'honestly' thinks that rehabs are stupid - they might say that but come on - you'd have to be ultra foolish to think that people in rehabs who are professionals in the field are 'stupid'.
I guess I'm pretty offended at the letter, because it really paints addicts as selfish, nasty people. There's enough of that misconception out there, making it darned darned hard for us addicts who do want to get well. Do we need more? And from the family member of an addict? I feel like this woman is angry and out to denigrate all addicts as a group - and that's not fair.
this women is just disgusting ,she is right about he will stop when his ready,I used for 20 years before i realised my life was fucked and had to do something ,and thanks to my mother i had somewhere to stay while i got on track ,i feel for this young man if this is what his mother will say in public what must she say to him.
I get the “spirit” of the letter….I didn’t take it as actual, but rather a parent’s perspective of what it can “feel” like their addict must think. I get this also because there have been times when it has felt like what is described in the author’s letter is close to what my son must think, judging by his actions and behaviors. I think you also have to consider that different drugs elicit different behaviors. Would your child ever really hit you? In their right mind hopefully not. Under the influence of some drugs? Very possible…I’ve seen my son on drugs that left him very subdued, lethargic, nearly incapable of even holding his own head up, telling me over & over again, “I love you momma.” The flip side would be the times I’ve seen him on a different drug that had him wild eyed, vacant, belligerent and angry…no resemblance to “my son” whatsoever. Addiction isn’t pretty, it’s crafty, it’s self serving, and it’s deceitful, it steals lives, it takes and takes, giving nothing in return, and it turns it's victims into people we don't know or recognize.
This letter reminded me of the forward in the book " I am your Disease". The forward was written by an addiction counselor in the context of the addiction/disease speaking.
I don't know that I agree with everything in it, but if it helped the Mom, the writer to heal, then, that's not a bad thing.
Hugs
Kelly
beachteacher,
Go to your dictionary and look up "perpetual victim" and you will see a picture of Tonjia.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I was the mother of an addict. I am now the mother of dead child lost to a heroin overdose. My feeling on the letter was that it was a bit exagerated,having being written from what the mother thinks her son is thin but having raised an addict, I can agree that alot of their thinking is calculated. But I also think it is the disease needing to feed itself. My son stole from us, from his grandparents, his brother, you name it. Its an ugly life. And the end results if they dont get help and clean, is devastating to those left behind.
I think what the commenters here are having trouble with is separating the two children they now have.
They have the child that they remember and that they hope will return and they also have an addict.
I am a recovering alcoholic. My addict person is, of necessity, a different person. I can't see the damage I cause because to do so whould require me to stop drinking. My morals decline because I do worse and worse things and if I am going to keep drinking I have to be able to justify those things. There is a reason that AA says that a using alcoholic/addict is insane. Because we have to skew our thinking to make what we do ok. After you stop drinking, you step back and say "was that me? No sane person could have done those things".
Ironically, I used to, before my own drinking was quite so insane, be married to an alcoholic. I used to say that it was like getting married to someone you loved and afterwards having them pull this person out of the closet and say "oh, by the way, part of the deal is that you are also married to my evil twin".
The problem is, that while the addict/alcoholic is using, you have to assume that all their behaviors are insane. Even if they are just using "a little". Even that phrase is insane. There is no just a little or just a little slip. And, while in that mode, trust me. You are dealing with the evil twin. Even if the alcoholic/addict thinks they are doing their best, they are still the evil twin until they are truly not using.
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