I Suspect My Child's Addicted to Heroin - What About Yours?

Hello to anyone who is reading this... 

I decided to start this blog because even though I have a tremendous support system, nobody really knows what it's like to watch your child slowly kill themselves. Not my parents, or my husband (he is her step-dad, a great one, but still a step), not my friends, or my sister. Nobody knows how it feels to see your child not only be high but get skinnier and skinnier. 

My daughter took this picture before she became addicted - when she was just a
normal girl, in a normal family... 

Not one person knows how it feels to realize that your grown child does not remember simple things that happened less than a week ago. Oh sure, she is loved or was... A lot of people have really let go and I understand. And that's another thing. Not one person knows how it feels to let go of your child in a way that you have come to terms with the fact that you will very likely wind up burying them.

It's sad. So sad that sometimes it's simply debilitating. Telling yourself that it is not your battle helps a little most days, but when this child who you so loved, cared for and nurtured shows up at your house looking like an unloved skeleton something in you breaks a little bit more each time. Something, some part of you just... Hurts. It's an ache that never goes away.

Listen, if you're there, I feel ya. I have cried those hot, unrelenting tears with you. I have felt the pain of a thousand losses of my child just as you have felt yours and I know how hard - yes, just hard - it is to keep going when your child is addicted to substances or alcohol. I know how it feels to go from adoring your child to hating her in a matter of seconds and I know how it feels to be simply defeated by the power of your child's addiction.

I suspect my child is addicted to heroin. Big, mean, ugly heroin. I suspect that it is such a strong pull for this girl that she may never come back from it. I have good days and I have very bad days, but not a day goes by that my heart doesn't ache over her addiction, and the realization that I have to let go and raise my other daughter, perhaps my granddaughter and I deserve to have a good life, even if my daughter doesn't want it.

I know how it feels to not want your grown child to be at your events because it ruins your fun. It's not so much that I'm embarrassed by her, it's that I cannot help her. She will not let me and I don't want others to see how much I truly hurt every day.

If you're like me, you're tired of crying. It's been a long haul and it might be longer, still. In a way, you're hoping that there is time because the alternative is unbearable. But still, something hurts. There is no normal. There is no possible or tomorrow because your child's addiction is still going.

So, what's your child's addiction? What's his drug of choice? I want to share this so everyone out there having a really hard time knows that there are others, just like you. There are others struggling to cope with their child's addiction just like you. It won't fix it, but it might help just a little. I hope so. We could all use a little healing, I think.