Today's Random Thoughts on Drugs

I wrote a poem on Easter a couple of years on what I have lost to drugs. The list of things that I lost included Happy Mother's Day, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday and so on. My son, who is now thirty-two years old, is in rehab and I am so thankful. But for the last ten to twelve years our family has struggled with this demon of addiction.  As any parent who has had to deal with this in their family knows the person who that takes the drugs rarely sees the impact it is having on everyone else. The addiction demon is selfish, manipulative, often threatening and always scary. Its hard for someone who has never dealt with addiction to understand but if you can think of it as a demon that has taken over and lives in the body of its victim then you can begin to to comprehend the power addiction has. The person still looks like the adult version of the little boy I knew and loved but he would say and do things that my son would never do. It is only when you see a glimpse of the real person and their struggle to free themselves from the addiction do you realize that it is truly a demon that would rather kill their host than give up and leave.

This is on my mind today because my son just celebrated sixty days of soberity on Saturday. He has been in rehab for most of that sixty days and now believes that he is ready to leave. He thinks he has learned all he needs to know and now has the skills after sixty days to live a sober and productive life. He was in a court order rehab a few years ago for just shy of a year and I know he has read most of the big book and has worked through the lessons. And he was sober for 18 months before the demon convinced him that he was smart enough to be a casual user again. Of course the demon knew what he was doing and that was all it took. My son disappeared right in front of our eyes. And now the demon says "hey this rehab place is uncomfortable". It's true that he has a clean place to sleep. My son is a diabetic and for the first time in several years he has his diabetes under control. He gets three meals a day and has friends who have a genuine interest in his future. Of course in comparison to the living conditions that he and the demon created and lived in for most of the last 10 years this is a vast improvement. And yet he says he's uncomfortable and wants to leave. Of course it looks like my son is the one saying these things. He looks and sounds convincing. So I have to remind myself that it is the demon that is uncomfortable. The demon is fighting for survival. The demon knows that the goal of an extended stay rehab is to eradicate him, drive him out completely. But the demon is cleaver. He is willing to stay quiet, sometimes for a very long time, in the interest of his own survival. So today, I pray that God will give me the strength to not give into my son, the son I haven't seen in so long that like the father of the prodigal son, I want to run to him, greet him and throw a party in his honor for he has returned. Rather, I must recognize that the demon is not dead, he is quietly waiting for his moment. He will tell my son that he is leaving but he is only hiding.

As I continue to plan for the second half I want it to be a drug free second half. Drugs have stole so much of mine and my families happiness and I want to just say No to their future in my family.