What to do with the addict in your life

Take a chance.

I might be a bit of a curiosity among some of my mom’s friends. A real ex-junkie, in the flesh.

And for some, maybe I’m more than that — a living, breathing manual on how to deal with someone like me.

They’d have questions for this reformed addict. Like how the hell did I ever get clean? And how did my family handle me when I wasn't?

They ask, of course, because they have a drug addict in their life. They were never given a manual. Being around someone you love, who has a problem must be so confounding and cruel and impossible to navigate.

I guess someone like me could come in really handy. If only I had the answers.

For what it’s worth, I do have perspective borne of experience. Maybe that’s helpful.

When I was using, I was just as terrible as anyone could be in your life. But bound by blood, and maybe a modicum of tender memory, my family still suffered me.

My sister would say it often though. “Mom, I just want you to be prepared. Your son won’t be around one day.”

She wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

I even knew that.

But how do you stop someone from committing suicide in ultra-slow motion? In fact, it’s such a long fall you wouldn’t be blamed for wishing it would just be done already.

I wished it for myself. But as an addict, I was too afraid to live, and too afraid to die. Purgatory proved a proper hell.

Especially for those forced to bear witness.

“I knew that any day I could get a phone call and you’d be gone,” my mom recalls.

“I knew you were doing it,” she adds. “I just felt so helpless. I thought the best thing to do was just sit back and let it develop.”

But develop into what?

Considering that many of us end up in jail or dead or out of our mind, that’s an excruciating risk for a mother to take.

And yet, I think it’s a necessary one. You see, the reason why it’s such a gamble isn’t on my mother. It’s on society — the conversation around addiction is so toxic, there’s little else available but death, jail and madness.

It’s criminal that families should have to take that gamble.

But I’m not sold on intervention.

There’s growing talk of mandatory treatment. In fact, Alberta is already taking a page from U.S. jurisdictions and China and moving to force addicts into recovery programs.

The idea is that a police officer or judge could make the call on an individual basis — and send an addict to a facility for anywhere from a week to a month.

I get it. We’re faced with an acute drug crisis. From a policy perspective, it might ultimately be about exhausting all choices. And while there’s a case to be made for personal freedom — this really amounts to narco-ceration — when you’re high all the time, freedom isn’t quite so black and white.

As an addict under considerable financial, personal, social and even health strains, I doubt I was able to make informed decisions about my well-being.

So, I can’t plead my-life, my-decision here. I can suggest that, based on my experience of addiction, a forced intervention would have dramatically increased my odds of meeting a bad end.

Being isolated, among strangers with no control over my life, would have felt like prison. I’m certain it would have only deepened my despair. And what’s my go-to despair-suppressant? Crackynol 1000. But what would happen, I wonder, if I couldn’t get my dubious medication? Simply, I would have suffered — waiting and thinking only of my medication.

That’s how I see mandatory treatment — suffering imposed needlessly on people who already know more of it than most. In fact, addicts are professional sufferers. It’s their specialty. I expect we’d have little trouble suffering through involuntary treatment and even telling our wardens caretakers exactly what they want to hear. We’re really good at that too.

What’s a month, a year more of indignity and deprivation to a crack addict? I’d be scratching the days on my prison wall, counting down to freedom. And when I finally got out of there, look out. I’d be a crack-seeking missile — wild-eyed and primed for an overdose.

Little wonder overdoses are so common among those coming out from a period of abstinence.

But maybe that’s just me. Maybe other addicts will respond more agreeably to narco-ceration. It doesn’t look promising though. I just find that the story of addiction, despite the myriad ways in which we come by it, has certain universal truths. One of them is that it’s generally a bad idea to lock us up and snatch away our medicine.

My mom didn’t do that. She had no choice but to roll the dice on love.

“All I did was let you know that you had a home and the door was always open,” she says. “You didn’t feel that way. But you should have.”

No, mom. I didn’t. But that wasn’t on you. At the height of my addiction I didn’t have a choice in how I was treating my body. My perspective was so skewed, nothing around me seemed real. Not even your love.

Ultimately, the gamble did pay off. I didn’t die. The jury is out on whether I lost my mind. I can’t tell you exactly what brought me home. I was broke and living in a dark place. But lots of addicts, as expert sufferers, can work with that. No physical hardship would have brought me home. The best I can offer is that something deep inside of me broke through — a lucid moment, if you will. Maybe my head had cleared when I was out of dope for more than a day. In that moment, I understood what I truly needed — physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I needed love.

For the first month at home, I did breathe fire though. Friends and family warned her that it would end in disaster. Even my former partner, who endured a decade of living with me, expected it.

“She knew what it was like to live with you,” my mother says. “She knew what a monster you could be. She thought, how was that going to be any different?”

I should note that my former partner handled the catastrophe that was me with heroic aplomb. I credit her family. They raised her with a fortifying love, sensibility and sensitivity.

Many people don’t emerge from this kind of disaster intact. They bury their rage and frustration and grievances deep inside. And let it leak out slowly over the rest of their misshapen life. Like a crippled, leaking reactor. My ex, on the other hand, is radiant love.

And she was right to warn my mother. I was the kind of rock you weigh down angels with. How was anyone supposed to feel good around me?

But the dope eventually left my system. My dreams of using dried up, mostly, too.

I’m not an exceptional ex-addict. The only thing exceptional was the sheer amount of love that paved my way here.

And seeing clearly the road ahead, I feel empowered to make my own decisions about what’s good for me.

Staying here, in this world, is good. For as long as I last.