Where Did We Go Wrong? Part 6

Every parent ask this question over and over when confronted with an unmanageable family member,usually an adolescent child. Deep down when our children have mounting and seemingly overwhelming problems we all question ourselves. I guess that is just parental nature,we think. But it is really more than that-,much much more. Parents tend to blame themselves when things do not go right in the family. So right from the get- go an addict child becomes our fault." If we had only"....... is the endless psychological intrusion into every parent's thoughts.It becomes a constant drumming inside our heads. "It must have been something we did or didn't do". And that's the origin of  enabling.  It is this dynamic that sets us off on the absolutely wrong path in dealing with addiction.
And this is where we start to go wrong. Many of us have raised normal and successful children already . A little enabling for them doesn't really interefere with their growth and independence. But with an addict everything we thought we know about parenting is turned upside down and we do not understand that inversion. We believe that if we keep doing what parents are supposed to do,help their children,we can solve the problem. But with an addict,nothing could be further from the truth.

It takes a lot of help and education to jump over the chasm of  total misunderstanding which belies  what we are supposed to do under this new circumstance.We do not realize that drug addiction is a completely different disease ;it is not something that follows the rules of normal parenting. It is a cancer that eats into the entire family destroying all relationships. It is not like diabetes or an infection. In those cases we would make sure our children received the best of care,all medicines appropriate and we would arrange for all of it. But when we leap into the fray with a drug addict,everything gets worse. And so much worse than we thought in our worst nightmares.It is our failure to recognize the presence of addiction and that  it is something we have never encountered before-that is where we go wrong. We cannot, without help, understand how bad this problem is and how important it is to stop trying to fix it.We need to understand  that we need help with this problem. No family can do this alone.


Mort