Addiction is a family illness and its power distorts every family member it touches. Mothers and fathers of addicts who have suffered, struggled and coped for years often play an unwitting role in keeping the illness going and serve its ends. They have become as lost to the addict's illness as the addict themselves. They must be set free for the benefit of the addict and their parents; to break the hold of the illness over the addict, the entire family must change.
Dear Mum and Dad,
I am writing you this letter to tell you that after everything that has happened, I am going to be OK. I know you have heard this from me before, I know that you have been bombarded with promises and sorrys, I know that at this present moment in time my word has no value, no currency. I know you’ve heard that this time it’s different before, but this time it actually is. This time it’s different because I have finally accepted the truth of my condition, my addiction and I realise that I cannot defeat this illness on my own. I have found other people like me and am working a programme of recovery on a daily basis and I know that I cannot promise myself or anyone else anything at all. After everything I have taken from both of you, I’m writing to ask you for one last thing.
Let me fail.
Yes, that’s right. Let me own all my mistakes from now on, let me graze my knees and pick myself up. Let me pay off credit cards, car loans, council tax demands and angry landlords. Let me deal with workplace disciplinaries and magistrates courts on my own. If I don’t own those problems then I stand no chance of getting well and when I overcome problems myself, this will actually have some meaning.
I know that throughout my life you have only ever been motivated by love and compassion and that is why you have shielded me from life’s difficulties, but that has been precisely what my addiction has craved. Every parent of every addict has invariably done the wrong things for the right reasons, and your love and compassion has fed the illness. I don’t want you to stop loving me, but I want you to love me differently; saying no is the greatest act of compassion you can show me.
I am telling you this out of my love for you, because I want to set you both free from my illness, because if we’re being honest, you are both ill as well. Dealing with my addiction has caused you immense suffering and heartache, it has led to anxiety, depression, fear and lost years. It has resulted in something more insidious as well; mental obsession.
How many hours, days, weeks and years have been lost in your lives to a fruitless obsession with me? Asking yourself what I am doing, where I am? Where I am getting money from? Is my partner going to stay with me? My addiction took over my life, but it took over yours as well. I need to get well on a day to day basis, but so do you. Time to let me go.
A time will come one day when I will try to repair the damage I have caused and I am fully aware that not all of it will be repairable, but I will try. Until then I want to assure you that I will not offer any more promises that I cannot keep. All I can promise is that today, I am sober and I am owning my problems, as we all must.