Did I Choose Right?

Day 703.

It’s two years tomorrow (not in date, but in day), that I last saw Luke alive.

My body knows this, but my brain does not. I check on my iPhone to verify it - over and over, I cannot retain it.

Luke’s friend Marshall is in trouble with his using, he has relapsed. Meth, his drug of choice, with it’s particular relapse pattern, is affecting others that I know of. He moved to heroin to keep the tweeking down after doing too much Meth.

His Mother is left in terror, just wanting him back in rehab. But is this the answer? They are cutting him off. It’s what the NA system says to do, and indeed it’s the only advice we have. But does it work?

The GRASP site is full of parents tortured by doing it and still losing their child as well as parents tortured by NOT doing it, as did I, and still losing their child.

So, I ponder the concept of safe injection sites that widely, many feel to be effective in harm reduction, although the US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein has declared against them, and threatens to use the full arm of the law against them, despite overwhelming evidence from other nations that 10 percent of those using safe injection sites will go on to enter effective treatment.

But if I sink deeply into how I could apply these overwhelming stats - does this apply to our families?

IF safe injection sites work, would creating a safe usage site at home, amidst our families, also reduce harm, reduce stigma, increase the concept that love and understanding, safety and harm reduction, openness would help our addicted children too?

Does the detaching exacerbate the stigma, the anger, rather than help?

As I stood right here two and a half years ago and talked to Luke, I could feel that my wish for “no drugs” was not within my power, it wasn’t amongst the multiple choice options. There was: a) drugs away from me, ostracized. b) Drugs, living here, with me. I chose the latter. Of course, this conversation was not actually spoken, but it was my understanding as he stood before me, as he asked that we stop testing him, as it was “ruining our relationship, and causing him to lie” which he hated. Yes, I see that could be seen as a drug user manipulating the situation, but was it, in fact, as bonkers as it may seem, the most honest moment.

I am not talking about the necessary detachment required from addicts that are violent and/or stealing, a detachment to save my own life or my family’s. I am talking about the detachment to save myself from enabling.

Before I detached to try and stop him using I know, probably not the right sentiment.

Is keeping your loved one near whilst they use “enabling” or providing a safe place where harm reduction could be in place, Naloxone in the cupboard, fentanyl testing systems available, at hand if they need help?

Oh yes Luke! How I hear you now, saying how I’ve bent my mind around this.

If Luke had called and told me he was struggling that night, unable to get Oxy, would I have procured a prescription and flown to Boston to deliver it to prevent him from using heroin?

Well with my 20/20 version of hindsight....hell yeah! But without that 20/20 vision......unlikely.

Or if he could’ve been honest with me...?

This is a massive mind bend, this is a massive U turn of seeing it differently.

Is this what is meant by the concept that it is the grieving mothers on this planet that will change the world?

Is our grief opening our minds? The Sandy Hook promise, the vaccine safety movement, both driven by grieving Mother’s trying to prevent others from suffering as they do.

Do we have to be THIS hard hit, to see things differently?

I think back to the story that another one of Luke’s NA friends told me 6 years ago. He had OD’d several times that week and crawled to his Mum and told her all. He begged for help. Before the drive from SF to LA, that Mum scored him some heroin so he could make the six hour drive to treatment.

At the time, I was deeply struck by the things a Mother would do for her child. Inwardly my mind imagined how that had been for her, weeding through all the agonizing thoughts and emotions she must’ve experienced as she scored heroin on the street for her son.

But out loud, we all laughed. Stunned by the travesty of the situation.

“My Mum would’ve driven me cold turkey to LA at 20 miles per hour, and maybe looped back a few times,” Luke said, laughing. John replied, “Yes, my Mom is a dreadful enabler. You are lucky.”

At the time, I was proud of myself to be seen that way. But now, I am not. Now, I wonder if that attitude caused a divide, stilting a more compassionate, honest approach. John is still alive, still sober. Luke is dead.

But that conversation right here some two and a half years back, when I chose to keep Luke close, was the start of a new attitude. I have run my mind across and through that conversation many times. Indeed it has been a PTSD moment for me that I revisit in terror and self judgment with the thought that it was the moment that I killed my boy, when I chose wrong.

But now I see it differently. Is it time to redefine ‘enabling’?

The HBO documentary This Drug may Kill You looks at that. I watched it soon after Luke died - a blank sheet as I watched. I absorbed without judgment or application to my life, and here, now, on these pages, I see that I have indeed absorbed it.

Nobody wants to witness their child’s drug use. Nobody wants their child to be addicted. But NOFUCKINGBODY wants to have a dead child.

If the brain is already rewired - what then?

Hell in using. Hell in sobriety. Is this the choice for some?