The statement that addiction is a family disease is so true. I have two children, a son, who is 33, and a daughter who is 39. I have been happily married for 43 years. My daughter is the chaplain at a state university and has not had any issues with substance abuse, but my son has battled addiction most of his life.

He was born with a learning disability and after neuropsychiatric testing, it was determined that he had an auditory processing disorder and a learning disability. My husband and I were shown tests results by the neuropsychology team with our son being on and off Ritalin. The results determined that he could not hear or be educated properly without medication. As a result, we decided to do what the doctors recommended. He was five years old.  I have no idea if this contributed to his addiction in any way, but of course it is a question we ask ourselves from time to time.

In junior high school, he began to drink alcohol and to misuse his meds.  He struggled terribly in school and his self-esteem declined. He was handsome and popular, but the learning disability became more and more apparent. When he was 14, he came to me and my husband and said he needed help and was considering taking his life. We began individual and family counseling for him and for us. This helped temporarily, but it seemed to him that the drug and alcohol abuse was what allowed him to mask his pain and cope best. Eventually, he began abusing other drugs, but especially used meth. When he was using, he thought he didn’t have a care in the world. When he was coming off meth, he was a terror. We had no idea how to handle the strife and craziness in our home and life in general.

My husband and I are Christians, and we wouldn’t have survived without God’s word and prayer. Despite that, I didn’t feel church was a safe place to speak about the truth of what our home life had become, and at times I felt lonely, isolated and like I was living a joyless and hopeless life.

One day I heard an advertisement about PAL on our local Christian radio station. At the time my son had just broken into my daughter’s home because he owed money to a drug dealer, and she was what the police called a “soft target.”  This was the worst situation we had ever faced. He stole guns from my son-in-law that were gifts from his father who is now deceased and that were irreplaceable. My daughter was furious that he had done this to her. She had recently allowed him to live with her after he had returned from a three-month rehab program. She blamed me and my husband for enabling my son for so long, and her husband was frustrated to the point that he felt she had put her family and her brother’s addiction issues before their family and home. There was no peace anywhere.

My husband and I began to attend PAL meetings. We found we were not alone and there were other folks out there dealing with the same issues that we were. We have been attending PAL for nearly three years now.  I have been trained to co-facilitate meetings and hope to be leading a meeting soon.

The relationship between my daughter, son-in-law and son has been mended. Through the lessons and support we have received in PAL I have learned to stop enabling. I’ve learned to communicate with all my children in a way that doesn’t negate the role I played in what happened in the past, but also allows me to explain that I did the best I could with the information I had. I also have shown them that my husband and I are learning new ways to have healthier relationships with all of them.

I have a peace of mind I haven’t had in years. I love it when we go over a lesson and I compare myself to a year ago or two years ago and I see that I am making progress. We don’t change overnight, but it’s exciting to see I’m not where I used to be.

My son has been sober for about six months. He has been in several rehabilitation facilities and has been in this battle for a long time. I don’t treat a relapse with the devastation I felt before. I am so thankful I found PAL and pray others will do the same. PAL saved my family. I don’t know how to say thank you well enough.

PAL Mom