At what point does a parent lose their little babies to a
drug addiction? I was driving down the
road today and a car passed me and there was an early teen sitting in the
passenger seat. I could see them for
awhile behind me quickly approaching on my left side. The teen was sticking his arm out the window
and playing with the wind with his hand.
As they passed me, I am thinking to myself: ‘wonder what the kid will be
one day? Could he be another statistic in the drug world? Is he going to be a scholar that contributes
productively to his community? ‘. As
these thoughts go through my head, I wonder if my parents would be able to tell
someone at what point they lost me to my addiction? Could they tell that same person at what
point they lost my brother to his addiction?
I had great parents. They were
parents with the proper restraints and the proper nourishment for growth and
yet, two of their children turned out to be addicts. As we know, your baby is always your baby and
they never seem to grow up in our eyes … so when they become an addict, they
are still our babies and we are still somewhat responsible to steer them back
to the right track.
Sometimes, it is the parent that
looks like they don’t care, that is actually doing the most to help their
addicted child. They won’t give them
money for anything. They won’t give them
rides anywhere. They won’t allow them to
“crash” at their house because they don’t have anywhere else to go. If you give them gas money to go to work …
the money they had in their pockets for gas will be spent on drugs. If you give them money to pay the electric
bill … yep, they probably had the money, but they wanted to use it for drugs
and by you paying that bill, they were able to.
Some call it “tough love”, other call it “starving the monster”, but
regardless of what it is, it works.
Everyone has a rock bottom and the faster they find that rock bottom,
the faster they get the help they need.
These parents that are able to
respond quickly with the “tough love” approach usually have better response
time and I often wonder what made them react so quickly. Was it the fact that they see their child as
another individual and as such is able to see immediately when something isn’t
right and isn’t shocked or embarrassed to take care of the problem? At any rate, I applaud these parents. The parent that sees their child as their “babies”
and keep coming up with excuses why their child would be acting the way he is
isn’t helping the situation.
Embarrassment and shock is not the cure.
If this was anyone else that you were dealing with besides your family
member, how would you respond to them?
Treat your baby as such. If you
give in to them in any way, you will be feeding the addiction and making the
bottom just a little further away.
A drug
addiction is nothing to play with. It is
nothing to “try”. One hit is all it will take to end up a
statistic: sometimes the statistic is the number of overdosed victims that
overdose after one hit, sometimes it is the number of years the average addict
stays in their addiction, other times, it is the number of times you were
arrested while in your addiction. At any
rate, none of the statistics are good and all of them will cost you
something. What price are you willing to
pay for that one “try”
