addiction grief – Opiate Nation

Separation Anxiety

(Fifth in a series of topical blogs based on chapter by chapter excerpts from Opiate Nation. Translation into most languages is available to the right.)

After many years of not having a dog, we decided to adopt one from our local shelter. We found a beautiful German-shepherd/wolf mix who was 18 months old. Bella was docile, sweet and quiet. The next day, as I headed out to the grocery store, I gave her a hug and saw her watch me through the window as I got into the car.

When I returned an hour later, I was met with a shock. I found her, panting rapidly and pacing nervously in our bedroom where our wooden shutters were open and had bite marks. She had tried to escape while I was gone. I had no idea why. I immediately called the shelter. “She is having separation anxiety: she needed to escape being left alone.” We found out that she had been with two families previously when she was dumped at the shelter because she continued to try to escape when she was left alone for hours on end. They gave us the name of a dog behaviorist and we started down the long road of helping Bella manage her fear when we had to leave her at home.

Children and adults can experience separation anxiety when someone they are attached to leaves them. They can have recurrent and excessive distress just anticipating being separated from loved ones and the anxiety can be so intense that it is hard to function in everyday life. Panic attacks and physical symptoms such as nausea and headaches can occur. For me and my husband, on the morning of our son’s death from overdose, standing over our son in that body bag we experienced the ultimate separation anxiety. The overriding emotion we felt was fear: fear of the unknown future we were facing. We couldn’t visualize how we would survive without our son as part of our lives and the future we thought we all had together. He had not only been an integral part of our lives for 25 years but he was literally a part of us–the combination of our DNA that formed him as a particular and unique human being. To say that it was like having part of you taken away doesn’t describe it. This was having our hearts torn out.

We would never embrace or kiss or stroke the cheek of our son again. We were facing an existential crisis, shaken to the core, questioning our reason for living. Regardless of our strong faith that had seen us through many other deaths in our families, this separation seemed incomprehensible and cruel. It was only by falling down on our faces and waiting for Mercy to gradually pick us up that we were able to survive this traumatic separation from our son and move forward again in life.

A Lament and A Love Song – for Our Son

Lament for a Son is an intensely personal tribute by Nicholas Wolterstorff to his 25-yr-old son who died in a climbing accident. It is eloquent and unforgettable as he gives voice to a grief that is both unique and universal: the tortured pain of losing an individual, a child, your child.

We lost our 25-yr-old son to a heroin overdose six years ago on August 2, 2014. Lament for a Son has been one of our go-to books since that time. Wolterstorff expresses the incomprehension and sense of unfairness that, I believe, parents worldwide feel when they lose a child – someone who is supposed to bury you, not the other way around. It doesn’t fit with the cycle of life we expect – it is jarring, unsettling, bewildering, frustrating, disquieting.

In the Preface he relates:

A friend told me he gave a copy of Lament to all of his children. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s a love song,” he said. That took me aback. But, Yes, it is a love-song. Every lament is a love song. Will love-songs one day no longer be laments?

Yet, while the book expresses the common feelings brought on by sudden unexpected death, what he doesn’t share with those of us who have lost a child to drug/alcohol addiction are the previous long years, sometimes decades, of turmoil, anxiety, fear, and depression that we experience on top of all the normal grief.

And shame.

There is no glory in being the parent of someone who is an addict or alcoholic.

CAN MONEY REALLY COMPENSATE ?

CNN reported this week that Mallinckrodt, a large opioid manufacturer, has reached a settlement agreement in principle worth $1.6 billion with attorneys general for 47 states and US territories. Mallinckrodt announced that the proposed deal will resolve all opioid-related claims against the company and its subsidiaries if it moves forward. Plaintiffs (states) would receive payments over an eight-year period to cover the costs of opioid-addiction treatments and other needs.

Compensation: recompense given for loss injury, or harm suffered. Are the settlements that are being levied against Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, TEVA, Mallinckrodt, McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc., AmerisourceBergen Corp. really compensation for the millions of lives ruined by opioid addiction? Or for all the lives lost in the past 20 years?

AIRING DIRTY LAUNDRY?

When I was growing up, this metaphor was commonly espoused: “Don’t air your dirty laundry in public.” That is, you shouldn’t reveal things from your private life that people usually don’t want others to know and they don’t want to hear anyway. Things like inappropriate confessions and unpleasant family secrets. Everyone will be embarrassed and people will feel ashamed.

Now we are more likely to hear someone respond with “TMI – Too much information” when someone goes beyond the bounds of information that no one wants to hear – either too creepy or medical or personal. Totally understandable.

But is it airing dirty laundry for us to speak openly about conditions or situations that are of a communal nature? Topics such as physical or sexual abuse, or complicity and criminal behavior by politicians or leaders, or suicide, or addiction? Of course, there are some details about issues that plague us as a community that do not need to be part of the public discussion in certain situations. But that is different than bringing an issue into the light of day so that it can be discussed in order to work towards a solution.

Memories

I am surprised when, although it has been over four years since our son died of a heroin overdose, memories surface and grief follows. The surprise comes because the memories seem to come ‘out of the blue’, from no particular trigger and for no particular reason.

My husband just had a memory that was triggered when he heard our seven year old granddaughter express trepidation over seeing a bird that had died and fallen into the back yard. It was as if our son was seven again, full of wonder and normal childhood fears. His voice, his emotions, him.

I have had memories of our son as I’ve been working in our daughter’s garden or driving to the grocery store. JL as a young adult, just his face in some everyday interaction, triggering the sadness that he is no longer on this earth, part of our life, living the life that most 29 year olds are living.

It seems that memories don’t need a reason to rise to the surface from out of our hearts. Our son has been in our hearts since the day he was born and he continues to live there. It is the strongest ‘evidence’ we have that life does not stop after we die and physically leave the land of the living. We are eternal beings and I am very thankful for that.

Grieving The Living

For many, 2017 was a year of loss: a job, a home, a relationship, an opportunity. For between 120,000 parents to well over a million friends and relatives of the 60,000 persons who died from opiate overdoses in 2017, the new year will be a continuation of the grief process. Once we are forced to enter this unexpected, unwanted, and uncharted new territory, we have no choice but to travel through it. With support from our communities of friends and God’s love, we will somehow come out on the other side. If we have grieved honestly and fully, we will be better people who see others through different eyes.

But what about those who are living with a loved one in active addiction, or in a recovery program for the umpteenth time, or whose whereabouts are unknown? What is their 2018 going to be like? I can tell you, because my husband and I were there a few years ago. We were in constant flux between hoping against hope as we prayed and waited for a miraculous change, and discouragement and depression as we watched our young adult son struggle against an unrelenting foe. We were grieving the loss of the son we loved and raised and had hoped to see move successfully into adulthood. We were grieving the living.

Dr. Susan D. Writer wrote an excellent article on “Grieving the Living” posted on the Coalition For Healthy Minds website: http://cahmsd.org/grieving-the-living. The short article is well worth the read, but here are a few highlights:

“For those of us who have a loved one who struggles with mental illness or addiction, we are all too aware of how we can ‘lose the living’. When that individual is in the throes of…any unmanaged mental illness or addiction, their behaviors are altered. They are not themselves – or at least not the version of the people that we have grown to know and love. In some instances…we can only watch as they spiral down a dark or dangerous path. No matter what the outcome, our relationship with this loved one changes as a result of what we are experiencing, separately and together, and we often feel a deep sense of loss. But we must grieve the relationship of the past if we are to create a new one in its place for the future…though there may be remnants of the person we knew ‘before’ the illness or addiction, the change has occurred and all of us must learn to adapt… But we all must honor these changes in our loved ones and recognize that if we are to have any relationship with them we need to learn to adjust and adapt on our end… Grieving is a process and a necessary part of life…In order for us to realize the potential for a new relationship, with new opportunities for connection and intimacy, we must grieve the old relationship, and essentially ‘grieve the living’ to allow for life to move on… On the other side of grief is growth. And on the other side of grief is also acceptance and peace. But most importantly, on the other side of grief is love.”

I don’t know if while grieving our living son we ever got to consistent acceptance and peace, but the love between us all remained, even up to his last phone call to us the night before his death. And for that, I am eternally thankful.