...From an addicts mom

Keep me barely floating and I will learn to swim...
Prop me up and I may learn to stand...
Give me a push and I may learn to walk...
And then run and cry and laugh and maybe even live...

But remember none of it starts until you let go and barely keep me floating.

I love you more for making me do it alone than for any of the help I have ever gotten from you. This will happen; I will fix it alone or with help but I will do this. The task is mine, the work is mine, and the reward will be mine as well.

                                                                     From a letter written by a Naranon Mom...Barbra B used with permission


When your CHILD suffers from mental illness...AND addiction...their life journey becomes even harder...How to you draw the line between enabling and actually helping..when they are incapable of living in society AND they are active addicts...how much can you do for them without fast-tracking their drug use...Is it ok to make sure they get their required mental health medication? When my son, recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, goes off of his anti-psychotics... he is completely delusional and lost to this reality...there is nothing harder for me than to find him in a locked psych ward..lost to reality...soiled in puke and feces..and to only be able to clean him up and lie down with him on the floor mattress and just hold him.  The system is not set up for these people...especially the ones without families or even people who still care about them.  We often see them wandering , talking to themselves, lost in their unfathomable world...victims of abuse, starvation, physical harm and exposure to the elements.  Preyed upon by sadists and dealers...until they kill someone or try to kill themselves.  They don't fit anywhere.  They are mothers, fathers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, sons and daughters.  Sometimes they get stabilized in jails when they have been arrested after they resorted to stealing or prostitution to meet their drug habits or simply just to get the basics for survival.  We look away from them, cross the street to avoid them, pretend they don't exist... because we as a society are ashamed that we allow this to occur on our streets or we simply feel that they have 'made this bed and should therefore lie in it.'  Most of us would reach in to take a dirty, sick, starving, lost dog from behind a dumpster..but how many of us would reach out our hands to a homeless person lying there in the same condition...or look a prostitute in the eye, and smile.  A few weeks ago I went downtown and a homeless man was sitting in a wheelchair and begging for money with a sign he had made from some discarded cardboard.  I don't enable people by giving them money but i went up to him, leaned over and gave him a BIG hug.  A real strong... 'I mean this and I care about you"..  HUG.  He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and he smiled.  I'm not saying to go out and expose yourself to potential dangers by interacting with people who are using drugs and on the streets...just asking you to think about the person first..understand that whatever led them to this horrible place in life..and to BELIEVE that they have now lost the power of choice when it comes to using drugs.  No one says "I want to be a junkie when I grow up" . They are still people..and they still need our respect and unconditional love.