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This is probably not exactly what David was looking for when he made his call for articles, but we believe that it’s important to recognise that recovery is not only about users, but also about those concerned about their use. These parents, siblings, partners or others dragged into the user’s world of dependence with all the negative impacts that affect them too.
Our story, as some of you may have read on Wired In, was one of the relatively brief addiction of our younger son Robin, which tragically resulted in his death by a heroin overdose after about three years.
So why is this a story about recovery? Because we too, as his family, had to recover from the trauma and the gap that he left in our lives.
We were devastated, arguing between ourselves, and most of all we carried an enormous burden of guilt and shame – for what we were not really sure, but we were convinced that it somehow had to be our fault and not his.
His death, in our eyes, almost made him immune to any blame, and because we had not been estranged from him, suffered financially, or ‘lost’ him while he was still alive, it was very difficult to find a path to ‘recovery’.
To read how we dealt with it see our personal stories on this site, and what we’d like to say here to others is that we are now ‘in sustained recovery’ and have found acceptance of what happened, and life is once again good for us.
It’s not what we envisaged, but it’s different – we manage, and we are content. As Mindfulness teaches, we don’t dwell in the past, but live in and deal with the present, and don’t look too far into the future, and this seems to work for us.
What our experience has done, is to give us a great insight to, and an absorbing interest in, the substance misuse and recovery field. We’ve been able to translate that into a service we now provide for others who are in the position that we once were.
Whilst we will never get over Robin’s death, twelve years on we feel that we can genuinely say we are accommodating it, and are getting on with our lives.
So yes – we too are in recovery and belong to a thriving community of recovery in Wired In.
Check the Wired In site for:
A husband and wife tale: The wife – From bloody pest to esteemed colleague in 12 years by Irene MacDonald
A husband and wife tale: The husband by Ian MacDonald
When I say to others we are in recovery they look puzzeled any say in recovery from what? To be a carer of a substance misuser is some thing you have to experience to know the pain the sadness the loss. I often try to explain to people its like a greiving experience we mourne the loss of that person but we can’t lay them to rest its hard to explain.
So when we learn about addiction and this is often when we seek help when the pain is too much to bear that we start our journey back with small steps.Every journey starts some where. Sometimes we get lost and have to start again. We start to look after outselves we learn to say no we start to get tough then we have bad days we have relapsed we pick ourselves up and start again. We learn to live with addiction we adapt.I hear people say if only we could get back to normal what is normal? Things will never be the same again no they will not but something else will grow from these experiences something different maybe something unexpected that will give something wonderful.
I like my sons have been in the cycle of change for years but ho what I have learned in that time and what I have been able to pass on to others.
I now have a new life I get up on a morning and I can decide what kind of day am I going to have well most days I decide to be happy who wouldn’t. I still have days when I feel sorry for myself but i don’t let them get the better of me. I put my life on hold for so long and nothing changed it only changed when I decided it was time to change me.
I suspect that most substance misusers can relate to some of this. So yes i am in recovery too and I take one day at a time.I look for the good things in my life and I stay posative even when things around me are not too good.
Just to summerise because I know I can waffle.
After years of living with their addiction in a negative way because we didn’t no any different. We moved on learned to cope with help decided enough was enough we went into recovery we changed slowly and eventually started to live again.
June C
