No More Silence!

No More Silence

No More Silence. Speak the Truth. Start the Conversation.

My heart continues to break daily for my son and people like him that struggle with addiction. For all the emails, texts, facebook messages and personal phone calls and all the stories I've heard in the last month from many of you and your struggles, I am deeply humbled that you have reached out to me. I thank each of you for your prayers and for the inspiration to continue telling my story in hopes that maybe I can impact one more person in their addiction journey.

Scenes from those days of innocence often flash through my head – when as a kid my son went from one house to another, rode his bike to the playground or to the store- images of boyhood youth. Drugs stole him. My heart breaks for his children, and his sister who grew up worshiping her big brother, and all the family and friends whose lives he's touched with his bigger than life personality and laughter. Addiction has also stolen years of our family’s time with him. I know how Addiction takes over a home, because Addiction has been an unwelcome member of our family for the last seventeen years.

Addiction is stealthy. It hides in basements and bathrooms and bedrooms. It steals children and imprisons families under a cloak of silence. The addicts themselves are embarrassed and guilty and are afraid to ask for help. Parents feel inadequate, trying to figure out where they went wrong, what could they have done better. What does that say about me? I'm a mother and we are taught to keep our children safe! Guilt, silence, embarrassment – these are Addiction’s wingmen, giving it the wind needed to kill our kids, gaining strength in whispers at book clubs and coffee shops, ‘he’s an addict you know’.

 


 It’s time to Stop the Silence. It’s time to Speak the Truth. My son is a drug addict. I want to wear a t-shirt, a hat, a pin, something. I want a suffering family member or addict to see me in the grocery store and be able to walk up and say ‘me too’. I want families to not feel isolated and alone in this hell that is Addiction. It is everywhere, and we are hiding it because we feel guilty and ashamed. I have seen in people’s eyes in the past that they knew my son was an addict. But they also didn’t know if I knew, and I wasn’t shouting it from the rooftops. So the elephant was with me everywhere I went. We lived in a small town. I was sure everyone knew. I was sure my son’s name was whispered when I wasn’t there. Yet I stayed silent. Until one day, GOD whispered to me, QUIT HIDING. Open your mouth, your mind and your heart. Get smart, Find out everything you can about the drug, Tell, Ask for help, Minister to others thru your journey and so I DID.

In that small town, where everyone knew everybody, I started talking openly and I've never stopped. My son was in recovery. He had been clean and sober for 30 months. It’s a miracle he’s alive and over the years That miracle cost me a small fortune. True recovery is not cheap and it is not easy. It is not five days of detox, have a nice day. It is not a thirty day stint in rehab, have a nice life. It is a slow, slogging, exhausting crawl out of the muddy nasty pit Addiction digs under you.  None of this was easy for him. He dug deep and worked hard. He would not have been able to do this without the support he had along the way. He recognized that he would need that support for a very long time if not forever. He was beginning to see light and a future, but it certainly didn’t happen during his first thirty days – or even the next ninety. Time is the key. A huge percentage of addicts don’t have anyone (or have burned out the people they used to have) with the resources to get them the help they need.

Whatever the trigger, addiction is at our feet again. The roller coaster has begun again . For 30 months, I got a glimpse of my son back....It's increasingly harder to let go again, so I do the only thing I can, PRAY!

How are we to deal with this epidemic if we as a society leave these addicts out there to die? We all pay the price of this epidemic. Banks, gas stations, convenience stores are being robbed at gunpoint. Home invasions, car break-ins, shoplifting, and credit card fraud are all ways addicts are feeding their habit. For the families of addicts, we get to go looking for stolen possessions – sister’s jewelry, brother’s amp- at pawn shops, or we reach to pay for something only to find our money is gone. Let’s not forget the children of addicts. They pay the highest price.

The news tells us to worry about terrorists and gangs and whatever else they think will increase their ratings. I understand that these threats are real, but our society is quietly rotting in basements and bedrooms across America. Opiates and methamphetamines are destroying this country from within, stealing the next generation right out from under our noses. Kids who should be going to proms and football games are stealing from their parents, dropping out of school, and starting on a path that ends with jail or death. They are our future, and we need to start fighting for them.

The front line of this fight is to Stop the Silence. Scream the Truth. Let people know that Addiction is in their own towns. It walks the halls of their schools and sits beside them in their workplace. It is teaching their children, driving their buses, policing their streets, and killing their neighborhood kids.

If we stop the silence, people will start fighting this battle together instead of feeling ineffective, isolated and alone. If we speak the truth, society will begin to recognize the crisis we are all facing as this epidemic of Addiction stops hiding behind walls of silence and is driven into the light. If we start the conversation, we as a society can put our efforts toward a solution.

Share your story. Let people know how Addiction has touched your life. It has probably touched their lives as well. Help save our children. I'll share first -My son is an addict.
Stop the Silence. Speak the Truth. Start the Conversation. PRAY!

By Addict's Mom - Junann Smith

COPYRIGHT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2016

Duplications and Publish requests must be in writing.

Deliverable June Amaral: junannamaral@gmail.com

 

You stole my child!

You almost wake up and get this haunting feeling, this horrible feeling that my God, I just wish I wouldn't wake up today! Not that I would ever take my life but you're just so scared. Petrified, really, but not for myself. For YOUR child! It's like having someone punch you in the stomach. ... You're never the same from the second you find out.

 



I got asked several times yesterday, How does the mother of an addict cope? How does she juggle the challenge between supporting a loved one and not enabling their habit? And how does she deal with the stigma of having a child who is an addict?
Let me make this perfectly clear, that being the mother of an addict is an incredibly lonely and isolating place, and that often the only people who understand what I'm going through are other mothers who are going through it themselves.

The fear of getting the call, that's the worst! The call that says, Your son's dead! When you really start to understand that it is a disease ... you can start looking at your child in a different way, loving them for who they are and hating the disease. Sadly, the stigma of having a child with addiction is all too real and incredibly painful. Announce to your community your child has a disease like cancer and people will jump to help. Not so when you tell them your child is an addict.






"There are no little girls selling cookies for addiction. Nobody has bumper stickers on their car. IT'S AN intense struggle between supporting YOUR addicted child and not enabling their destructive habit AND IT'S the hardest thing in the entire world! IT TOOK AWHILE FOR IT TO SINK IN that I was last person in the world who could ever help my son!

As far as enabling, I think you need to lay it on the table for them. This is what you can do. Here are your options but I'm not going to sit here and let you take advantage of me and lie to me. Eventually I realized the longer I enabled my son, the longer he wasn't going to face the consequences. It took the line in the sand, telling him I love him and if he was ever ready to get the help and really wanted it that I'm here for him! But the enabling isn't just about the addicts. Parents need to realize they are enabling themselves and are risking losing everything by thinking they can save their children.

There are moms losing their lives to save their children. ... They're spending their whole paycheck trying to take care of their child. They're not taking care of themselves. That's just a ripple effect. I have gone through the range of emotions that most mothers of addicts experience: the guilt followed by the intense sadness and then the anger. It's just a very, very sad and a very lonely place!





Then the day came when "I said, you know, God, if my son is going to be living this life and be destroyed by this, I'm going to tell every mother and help every mother I can think of. I'm not going to keep it a secret. I know what I am and I know who I am and I know there have to be a million mothers just like me who are addicts' moms". I understand the parent's pain and for me if I can help one parent ease that pain, then I've done something. It definitely was a life-changing experience to start talking about it and getting educated about "the drug".

There's lots of treatment out there if your rich and can afford it. If not, it's called jail! We are seeing an alarming rate of death in our society. We have to break the stigma. It's a disease! Addicts are not bad people. We have to get the word out. Raising awareness and helping other mothers helps me stay focused.
                                                                           

Thank you, all of you for continuing to walk beside me and the outpouring of love and support! Every text message, phone call and comment has truly touched my heart! For your continued prayers and blessings, on behalf of my family, thank you and love you all!

By Addict's Mom - Junann Smith

COPYRIGHT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2016

Duplications and Publish requests must be in writing.

Deliverable June Amaral: junannamaral@gmail.com