No More Secrets

June 5, 2012

            My son’s arrest was in the paper today along with  all of the gruesome details. The words “active meth lab” are never words that a parent wants associated with their child.  Part of the reason addiction is called a “family disease” is because it affects the whole family. Part of the sickness is the secrecy and the sense of shame.  My father was an alcoholic, and even though I don’t remember ever being told not to talk about his drinking, it was an unspoken rule.  Somehow I just knew that it wasn’t normal, and that I didn’t want my friends to know about it.  To get away from Dad’s  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality I learned to spend as much time away from home as possible and spent lots of weekends at my best friend’s house. Even my best friend didn’t know about Dad’s drinking.   I didn’t ask friend’s to stay at my house because I was never sure what type of mood Dad would be in, and it seemed our lives revolved around the moods.  I became an expert at reading non-verbal body language so I would know if he was in a good mood or a sour mood.  If he was in a sour mood, my time was spent in my bedroom listening to music to drown out mom and dad’s arguments.  I pretty much lived in my bedroom when I was home.  Somehow I always felt to blame for their problems, because a lot of their arguments were about the “kids” or money.  Hence the shame.  I have carried that sense of guilt and shame into my adult years, and in particular with my son’s addiction.  So I have kept his addiction a well-guarded secret from everyone, even my mom didn’t know.  To be honest I didn’t even know the extent of my son’s addiction until about a month ago, so deep was my denial.  But now, the cat is out of the bag in a very public way.  No more secrets.  Anyone who reads the paper knows now, and I’m sure will pass the news on to others. 

            I’m so glad I found Alanon.  I feel so connected to the friends I’ve made there, and have learned that there really is no profile of a certain type of family or upbringing that leads our kids to addiction.  I have questioned myself so many times about the decisions I made as I raised my son.  His dad and I divorced when he was 4 and I’ve often wondered if things would have been different if we had somehow found a way to stay together, even though he was abusive and rarely home.  But I listen to other parents of addicts share their stories and I learn that most of them were good parents who raised their kids in a stable home, and did their best to teach them values, and the difference between right and wrong.  So, maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all.