When we had our children – we never dreamed we would be here. Four sons: we knew that we would be busy with school, sports, family holidays, and birthdays to share each milestone.
Some years up the road, our oldest son started his journey into substance use. It’s been a 13 year battle with treatment centers, counselors, jail, prison and homelessness – and then prison again. We showed tough love we also educated ourselves on addiction and how to survive, what it does to the family.
A few years later, our second son enters his decent into addiction. We are overwhelmed. This ends in both boys being addicted to heroin and stealing, lying, more arrests, more lies, and more collateral damage to our family. We eventually face our second born being charged with involuntary manslaughter for giving someone heroin that was laced and took this young man’s life. We are overwhelmed.
We have two children in Ohio correctional facilities, we have adopted a grandson due to this addiction. We have reached our bottom. But we decide to rise! To fight, to campaign, to donate, to educate, and to forgive. We need to heal. I would like to add a post from my blog:
Heroin… This is what you left us.
What does the normal family do at the sound of the phone ringing in the middle of the night? Does it annoy you? Maybe you sleep through it? Maybe you’re thinking it’s a friend who isn’t politely displaying phone etiquette?
I can tell you as a parent of an addict, this is a terrible fear. A paralyzingly fear. A knock on the door in the middle of the night, creates the same feeling inside you. Is this the end? Please God do not let it be the final call, the final knock on the door.
You earn this feeling by being the parent of an addict. This is yours, this is what Heroin has left behind.
I wish I didn’t know this. I wish that I couldn’t relate to it. I wish that I lived in a world where it doesn’t exist. Your world, your normal world. Why is my world so abnormal? So full of fear, guilt, shame, and dread?
Because of you Heroin! You took our beautiful boys away from us and this is what you have left behind.
You have taken us on a journey through pure hell. You have left behind for us sleepless nights, PTSD, anxiety, night terrors, a child without parents, endless pain.
We can remember it from sober minds.
Raw fresh sober minds.
What heroin left behind we will never forget. The scars start to fade and then there is a straw, a piece of foil, a night terror, planning your funeral while you are still here, the phone call that you overdosed, Heroin left us this.
We’re hoping it’s foggy for you. We don’t wish you to remember all the details.
Our addicts are human beings that are sick. Sick with a disease that carries quite an ugly face. We don’t have pretty pink ribbons to show our love. They are usually black.. In remembrance.