“My son is using again and I've lost the person he was”
When an adult child relapses, parents often describe mourning someone who is still alive: the son who laughed at dinner is replaced by one who lies, sleeps all day or asks for money. Hope rises with each stretch of recovery and falls with each relapse, and fear of an overdose can sit under every ringing phone. Pauline Boss, who coined the term ambiguous loss in the 1970s, counts addiction among the ways a person can be present in body and missing in mind. Jim Orford and colleagues, drawing on research with families in England, Mexico, Australia and Italy, describe the strain on family members as a response to a hard situation, with a high risk to their own health, and note that few services help family members in their own right (Social Science and Medicine, 2013).
What to check first
Safety comes first: signs of an overdose, such as being hard to wake or breathing slowly, call for emergency services straight away. It also helps to check the parent's own health, sleep and money, since years of a child's addiction tend to wear these down. Before reading it as a pattern, it helps to see what the parent is doing for the son right now and what it is costing.
What could be going on
Substance addiction: Fits if the drug use has taken over his life and changed how he acts with you.
Ambiguous loss (Boss): Check whether he feels gone even when he's in the room, there in body and absent as himself.
Codependency: Fits if your days have come to revolve around his use: checking, rescuing, covering, waiting.
Hypervigilance: Check whether you're braced all the time for the phone call, the knock, the worst news.
Telling them apart
Substance addiction: The son's use may have taken over: lost jobs, lies, missing money, a changed personality when using. Relapse is common in addiction, and one relapse does not wipe out every earlier effort. Much of what hurts the family may be driven by the illness.
Ambiguous loss (Boss): He may be there in body and absent as the person he was. The parent may grieve him and then feel guilty for grieving someone alive. Every sober spell can bring the old son back and set up the loss again.
Codependency: The parent's days may revolve around his use: checking his room, paying his debts, covering for him, waiting up. Their own needs may have dropped out of view. Helping and enabling may have become hard to tell apart.
Hypervigilance: The parent may be on alert all the time, phone kept close at night, a jolt at every unknown number. Sleep may be broken and the body braced. The watchfulness may continue even in good weeks.
Questions to carry
- The last time I felt I'd lost him, what was he doing, and what was I doing?
- What has my own life shrunk down to since he started using again?
Also said as
- my son relapsed again
- my daughter is addicted and i don't recognize her
- grieving my child who is still alive addiction
- my son is on drugs and i'm terrified he'll die
- waiting for the call that my son overdosed
- my child is an addict and it's destroying me
If your son has taken too much and is hard to wake, breathing slowly or not breathing, call 911 or 999 now. If you are worried he may end his life, or you have thoughts of ending yours, in the US call or text 988, and in the UK, Samaritans are on 116 123. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential helplines by country.