Love is Blind by Chris S - Thoughts on Addiction Recovery and The Family
Our staff member Chris S talks about his recollection of how alcoholism and drug addiction negatively impacted his family and how he is grateful for his recovery.
My mother loved me. She loved me and my brothers so much that she wouldn’t want to see or hear the truth about her little darlings. The truth was that I was drinking years before she would start to believe it. My step-father would tell her I was drunk and/or doing drugs and she would not want to hear it. 
The house was a strict house. There was no 'spare the belt' policy in my house. We were brought up to respect our elders. No back talk. Just do what you were told to do. We walked a tight rope around the house, but outside when we were unsupervised we were hellions. The way we were brought up there was no chance of us doing anything wrong, so mom thought. She never knew of the shoplifting or petty thefts we did.
I was caught in the first year of high school smoking cigarettes and they called my mom to tell her. She came up to me and said, “I do not want you to smoke, drink or do drugs.” I was already doing all three.
I was caught drinking my dad’s whiskey by him and she would not believe him over my lies. I was a wedge in their relationship and did not care at all about it. I had already crossed the line and didn’t realize it.
She finally realized it when I got in a fight with my step dad. I was around fourteen. She had to call the police on me. She saw her “baby” being handcuffed and put in the car. She knew I was on something then. I was knee high to a grasshopper and he was about 6’ and weighed 240.
She couldn’t see me killing myself before her eyes and pretty much disowned me a couple of times. I was ready for the world anyway. I got worse even though she tried to help here and there. I was going to have to find my way to sobriety myself. As long as I had her help it wasn’t going to happen.
She never got to see me clean and sober. She passed away in 1994. It would take another 6 years of using other people and burning bridges before I would hit the final bottom to ask for help. It was time to look at myself when I ran out of bridges.
I like to think that she is up there looking down on me and saying to herself now, “I did a pretty good job on raising him.”
- Chris S.
Read more about treatment at our rehab facilities especially our family program.
