Mini Series 9 - Addiction Sucks Oxygen

Busting Addiction and Its Myths

Very recently, my ex-fiancé called me in a panic and sobbed that her son, my stepson really, was a raging addict and she didn’t know what to do. He and his wife have a two-year-old son who deserves better, while my stepson – let’s call him Jimmy – is snorting and smoking and injecting who knows what. He’s applied for a medical discharge due to joint disabilities, and it is apparent that he got addicted to pain killers coming out of his knee surgery.
So, my ex wants me to “talk to him and get him to go and get some help”. You must be kidding. First, I’m 9,000 miles away and he is defiantly rejecting any help. I said to my lovely ex:
“You have two big problems; one he doesn’t want to go into treatment, and second, you haven’t set up a treatment centre that will take him. In other words, you (mum, sister, wife) are all running around feeling sorry for yourselves and expect me to save the kid. You have no plan. We have no plan. And you’re acting as crazy as he is right now.
What we need at the very least is an intervention, either a well-planned family intervention where everybody reads the intervention book and/or we hire a professional interventionist.”
“Are you prepared to give him the choice of treatment or the street? As in: “You don’t get to see your son if you choose to continue to use and not get treatment”?
Because now they continue to enable his addiction to flourish. They are feeding it. Housing it. Paying for it (he’s stealing the money or dealing in the drug). This is how they love and care for him. I see this all the time.
Addiction just sucks any of the positive, creative, life-giving oxygen right out of the family because now “they” are all worried about the addict when they are better off worrying about themselves and what the addiction has done to their family.