My husband, Mark, and I have one child, a daughter, Anna. We are both extremely close to her, as she is a mama and daddy’s girl. Throughout her 29 years of life, and even while actively using substances, she never curses, yells at us, or tells us she hates us. This makes it that much harder to disengage from her.
Having relocated from another state when Anna was nine years old, we underestimated how alienated she would feel from her childhood friends and her extended family.
Because our daughter looked like the girl next door, dressed nicely, and was poised, there was a lot of smoke and mirrors when it came to pinpointing what was going on as far as drugs were concerned. Her quick wit made lying effortless, and because she presented so well and behaved respectfully toward us, it took some time for us to piece things together.
When Anna turned 16, things slowly started to unravel. She began experimenting with drugs and alcohol with her first boyfriend, who told her they were smoking “Spice” when in fact, they were smoking heroin. Later that year, she ended up at a party where she drank so much alcohol that she became unconscious and had to be rushed to the ER. We’d hoped it was just a one-and-done incident, a foolish teenage mistake, but it was just the beginning of Anna’s 13-year journey through addiction.
We had all the reasonable talks parents could have, somehow believing that our lectures about her safety and our fears would resonate, but nothing did. We spent a lot of money on a private attorney for her first arrest and several rehabs. Holding her hand through it all was accomplishing very little.
At one point, Anna was arrested and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, along with drugs being found in a friend’s backpack that was in her car. Off she went to jail for six months, where a judge hoped she would learn her lesson. When she was released, despite attending IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) and meetings here and there, she refused to embrace recovery and eventually continued to abuse drugs, resulting in two car accidents that she was lucky to survive.
In addition, she got kicked out of two very nice apartments we helped pay for, along with having to terminate her employment with our company after we caught her stealing and reselling our merchandise online. Additionally, Anna, her boyfriend, and three other people were implicated in an organized retail theft ring, where she stole and resold merchandise to pay for drugs and living expenses. She ended up living out of hotels for about three years.
It wasn’t until I was searching online for support groups to help understand how to help our daughter that I found PAL-Parents of Addicted Loved Ones. Attending PAL meetings helped our actions begin to match our words, and we started to see things shift.
Initially, it was challenging to accept that my husband and I also needed help, but the weekly lessons at our PAL meetings lent clarity to the concept of addiction being a family disease. We realized that our daughter’s addiction had resulted in us being hyper-vigilant with her comings and goings in an attempt to control the chaos that her lifestyle brought into our own lives. We learned to say NO to her seemingly innocuous requests, like when she wanted to dump all her belongings in our garage, or spending three days trying to get her into detox whenever she would ask us, later learning these were tactics used to gain access to us because she missed us. We learned to identify that she wasn’t genuinely invested in detox or rehab.
PAL taught us how to show love differently, and in the process, we “cut the umbilical cord.” For our sake, we eventually had to block her phone calls, access to my Facebook page, and stop tracking her down when we received legal notices and bailing her out of jail.
Finally, after many long years, she decided she didn’t want her current life anymore, and she made the decision to enter treatment, where she stayed for 14 months. After inpatient rehabilitation, she graduated to IOP (Intensive Outpatient Rehab), and from there moved into a sober living apartment that she shares with a friend she met in treatment and began paying for it on her own. Today, she willingly embraces the 12 steps of AA, has a sponsor, organizes and co-chairs meetings, and is currently working the CoDA (Co-Dependents Anonymous) 12-step program.
Today, we feel extremely fortunate that our daughter is celebrating 2 1/2 years of recovery. She works full-time and is doing well overall and we have a renewed relationship.
Like us, Anna has worked diligently on herself! As a result, she has won back our trust and respect. She strives every day to be a better version of herself and to show up for others. I have the privilege of hearing her when she offers advice to those she sponsors about what worked for her, including how, through PAL, her parents set boundaries that eventually helped lead her to the decisions she made for recovery.
As parents, PAL taught us to lead with our heads over our hearts and how to interact with our grown child as a capable adult, rather than like a small, helpless child. These concepts have forever changed us and the relationship we have with our daughter.
A PAL Mom and Dad
