First published in 2013 unfortunately this story is as relevant today as it was then.
The Air he Breathes – Life with an Addicted Son
“My son is 23, handsome, funny, intelligent, loving - and he’s a drug addict. I call him my mad son. He calls me his crazy mother.” Sybil Thomas,* a writer and mother of six, tells us about her life with an addicted son.
My son is struggling with heroin addiction. During the course of my own life I have attempted suicide once, battled post-natal depression, overcome a cocaine habit, 'abused' alcohol and been diagnosed with bipolar II. My son also has bipolar I, which is categorised by intense mania coupled with dizzying lows. I call him my mad son. He calls me his crazy mother. An irreverent sort of family, we are kept afloat by our communal sense of humour.
He managed to go from straight edge to addict in only a few years. "It is like being deprived of air," he tells me.
It's between him and the drug. They are in a toxic relationship…
I lie awake every night, hyper-vigilant for flashing lights from the window or a muffled knock at the door. The police. "Ma'am, we have some bad news." Two years of nights like this and I'm starting to wonder if they haven't already been and I'm living in a hopeful delusion. I've dreamed of giving my son's eulogy, a big screen behind me flashing pictures of his sunny youth and wobbly teethed smiles.
The last time I saw my son, I didn't recognise him and had to bite my lip to stop from crying. We live a thousand kilometres apart, and yet through his addiction and his struggle to peel its claws from him, we have become closer than ever. My son is warm and gentle and confused about how he managed to go from straight edge to addict in only a few years. "It is like being deprived of air," he tells me as he cries into the telephone, begging me for a few dollars. I feel powerless, sitting here in the waiting room of grief. I give him small amounts. Hoping it is for food or replacement medication and nothing worse.
Every time I read another heartbreaking tale of an overdose and a mother's devastation, I feel like vomiting. My son is 23, handsome, funny, intelligent, loving. The thought of losing him to drugs never entered my head during his teenage years. He was a staunch little anti-drugs campaigner not unlike Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous, and the parallel was not lost on me as I sipped bubbles with my girlfriends.
When he opened up and told me about his addiction two years ago, the bottom dropped out of my world. Of course I blamed myself. But my other boys were fine. The mates who had led my son into the haunted forest of addiction also came from good homes with loving parents. Heroin doesn't just target 'losers'.
He has been in an outpatient clinic program of drug replacement therapy for some months. These drugs are destroying his teeth and causing other unpleasant side effects. Each day he lines up with other junkies for a cup of relief from the pain of withdrawal. He works casually, but finds it hard to hold down a job. The clinic charges him $11 a day, which is difficult to find when you are reliant on Centrelink payments. The program offers him some stability and he has not used heroin for six months. The plan is to taper him off the replacement by November.
"You can't understand the circle of hell unless you've been there," he says sadly.
I want to take away his pain, but this is his journey and he must fight heroin alone. It's between him and the drug. They are in a toxic relationship and I can only stand by and offer my love, encouragement and prayers, and listen in a non-judgmental way.
Right now he has some work and a girlfriend, and the future is becoming more of a possibility for him. He's picked up a pen and begun to write of his struggle. It is therapeutic. He sounds happy. Hopeful. I embrace my own hope like a long-lost child. But my relief that he is moving in the right direction is shallow, because I know how easy it is to slip, to fall back.
(*not her real name)
Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia
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