When addiction first crept into our household 11 years ago, I started keeping a journal. Retreating to clean white paper became my refuge. The blank pages stared back, non-judgmental and welcoming. On their unvarnished surface I poured out my anguish, fear, confusion and shame. It was the only place – until many years later – …
So much is written about how to survive when someone you love is in active addiction. But what happens when recovery begins? When Jacob was using, I lost him. The son I’d raised, the son I wanted, was gone. But once he stopped abusing alcohol and other drugs, the son I loved began to re-emerge. …
It haunts me every time. Recently, it was a close friend, a father who is living the nightmare of his son’s active addiction. Complicated by the young man’s mental illness, this father’s not sure which came first – the drugs or the mental sickness – but the heavy marijuana use thwarts any effort to find …