excuses to be in denial

I was looking over my last two postings and noticed that I used the words "our" and "us" totally without realizing it. Of course the first two words that popped into my head were "co-dependent" and "enabling." In Al Anon meetings, they tell you that the disease of addiction is the addict's disease and not to make it yours. But most of the time, people who say that are dealing with adult addicts. You are allowed to disengage from an adult who is destroying themself. I struggle from the other side. I have no problems saying "This is your problem, you deal with it." I've said it to many people over the years (maybe not out loud but by cutting myself off from them). As the mother of a minor, the law forces me to stay engaged.

Early on, I found myself saying it was "her" problem, that "she" needed to be fixed. But when a child becomes addicted, it is a family problem. I started forcing myself to use plural posessive pronouns to counteract my denial, to remind myself that we are in this together. And now I really believe it.

But talking about denial... It was a real struggle those first few days after my daughter came home from the hospital. We were supposed to go to three NA meetings a week. It was so hard to walk into a room full of hardcore addicts - people who had used cocaine and heroin for years, many who had been homeless, their bodies ravaged by the disease - and think that my beautiful, smart, talented daughter belonged there.

The first night we went to a meeting, we "suffered in silence" through it. The second night I was determined to find a meeting that felt more comfortable for us and we drove to three different locations, walking out of the first two even before the meeting started. The third one, conducted at a church in a quiet, middle class suburb, ended up being tolerable and that is where we go now for most of our meetings. Most of the people who attend here are still hardcore addicts but now I find them to be our best teachers.

Another excuse for denial is the words that were used. We couldn't go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because alcohol was not her substance of choice. We couldn't relate to people who used cocaine and heroin because she didn't use those substances. (That statement is pure denial because she "did" try the harder stuff and more than once.) She wasn't an addict because she stopped using and said she didn't want to use any more. Besides, it was "just" marijuana and everyone knows that marijuana is not addictive.

But at every meeting, they end with the words, "Keep coming back. It works if you work it." And so we did. And when my daughter tried to tell me that she didn't belong in those meetings, with those people, I gently reminded her that she WAS an addict, even though I didn't really believe it either.

So last night I was thrilled to see my daughter stand up on her own when they asked people with 30 days to come forward, totally excited to be going up to get her chip. It was wonderful to see the other members crowd around her at the end and tell her how proud they were of her. And I thank God that in this moment, we are where we are supposed to be.