Thanks for the heartfelt and insightful post. I appreciate it, though I must say that I don't entirely agree with your characterisation of what I said. It wasn't an attempt to cast aspersions, it was a sincere attempt to address a subject that is fraught with bitterness, on both sides.
I know that this is an incredibly difficult issue, it's one that i don't ever speak to my Mum about, and almost a decade later I'm *just* starting to remember with indifference rather than profound resentment. Violence or abuse are never okay and do warrant expulsion from the family home, but short of that I find it very difficult to see how it can be justified. I know it's a difficult decision, I know for most mothers it's like being asked to gnaw off their own arm... at the same time, its difficulty doesn't give it absolute exemption from analysis or criticism. The attempt subsequent to say that the offspring in question is being done a favour... i
With regards to never lied, stolen from or tormented my family? I've never stolen from them. Lied and tormented? A teenager telling a lie isn't exactly a shocking occurrence. As for tormenting them? I wouldn't use that word. Yes, it was difficult for them as well. But I do remember, I was there. And I didn't choose it.
What I find particularly galling, and utterly reject, is that people who accept addiction is an illness nonetheless express hopes that their child will experience "rock bottom"; as if we didn't already have enough complication and misery in our life, with learning difficulties, mood disorders, substance abuse issues.... we reallly need to suffer, in the most degrading manner imaginable, to "redeem" ourselves from something that is in fact an illness, not a character flaw or a petty rebellion. The first response of any true addict to rock bottom is to pick up a drink, a pipe or a line.
In terms of light and laughter, sometimes it was. The years from when I was about age 14 to about age 18 were certainly difficult ones, though I think blaming one on the other might be mixing up which was the cause and which was the effect.
I am going to sum this up as succinctly as I can. We have a front seat to active addiction. We didn't cause it, can't cure it. We can't force them to get help. (We all wish we could. Trust me. ) We have tried everything. We can't love them out of addiction. And the more we try, the worse they treat us.
I sympathise there, I truly do. That wasn't the way I behaved.
Their addictions are claiming the lion's share of our attention & our family's resources. We don't use, but we too are enslaved to their addiction. And it would be worth it- if only it helped. Instead, it fuels their addiction & mal behavior towards us. And our jobs suffer, our marriages suffer, our sweet & innocent (other) children are brought down by the tumult of life with an addict.
Certainly difficult, destructive, upsetting for all involved. But the salient point was that no one chooses addiction, and I think young addicts with learning and mood disorders generally should be given the benefit of the doubt that they do not want to be like that. This is not some 40 year old married person running off and taking up cocaine. So I would think there is no issue of innocence; being ill doesn't taint you. It might make them an unpleasant person to be around, but it doesn't make them a bad person, and ultimately the difficult child is the one who lives with unfulfilled potential, broken relationships, memories of rock bottom, and so on.