Last weekend, your husband and your three girls spoiled you rotten. A note started your day saying thanks for being “hour” mom followed by a surprise or activity every hour! So very clever! Perhaps the best gift was that your husband had your VHS tapes of your older two daughters as babies and toddlers made into DVDs. We ended the day watching those videos! There were tears of joy, sadness seeing your husband’s dad hold the girls, and too many laughs to count! Nurture verses nature was never more evident than in the personalities of your girls, and the videos showed that these traits were determined pretty early!
Your oldest was so cautious, always singing, always dancing, a born leader and was already a second mom to both of her younger sisters. Watching her love on them and care is exactly why they are best friends today.
And your second daughter was the epitome of the sunshine! Every video you have of her is her positive energy and her beaming with joy! Her personality is exactly her today, always smiling and having fun! We watched her at 11 months old get in and out of a basket, the same persistence and risk taking then is exactly her now!
Your youngest daughter has always been so loved and cared for by her big sisters! Her personality as a baby was calm and cautious. She was an observer then and still today, always watching and thinking before doing! It was so obvious from the videos how she just completed the family.
What Happens When Families Deal with Addiction?
That day of looking back on videos was just what the family needed. For while you still remember and treasure all of those great times together, you also acknowledge that not everything has been easy. Today, that risk taking middle daughter is not living her best life. As you watch the videos of the carefree younger days it is evident that this middle daughter was already wired a little differently. This realization does not make her recent pain pill addiction any easier to swallow, but it does provide some insight. Not only was Mother’s Day weekend a time to remember happier times, you were also given a window into how three girls raised by the same parents could so quickly become so different.
As you navigate the difficulties associated with treatments for addiction, it is good to reflect back on happier times and use the energy provided from those images to power through the decisions you face today. Most recently, you have had to weight the costs and benefits of some of the best available treatments for addiction knowing that any pain pill addiction treatment option does not always work the first time. A month or two at even the best pain pill addiction treatment center is not often the easy fix.
Whether you have a loved one who is addicted to heroin, addicted to opioids, or addicted or pain medications, you may quickly find out that the road to recovery is often a long one, full of many unexpected turns and detours. One of the most scary recent statistics is that four of five new heroin users started out misusing prescription painkillers. Battling back after an injury or surgery, for instance, some former athletes find themselves in a hole that is difficult to climb out of own their own. With the help of family and friends, and often with access to the best available treatments for addiction, some people are able to return to a normal life fairly quickly. Unfortunately, these lucky few are in the minority. As often happens with addiction, a family will invest time, energy, and money in two, three, four, and sometimes even more treatments for addiction.
More specifically, of the 20.5 million Americans 12 or older who had a substance use disorder in the year 2015, 2 million had a substance use disorder involving prescription pain relievers and 591,000 had a substance use disorder involving heroin. Understanding how to navigate the challenges of addiction when it seems like only yesterday your children were young and carefree like they appear on old family videos is hard. Being ready to answer tough questions and face tough decisions, however, is a start.
