Addiction is a tough taskmaster or taskmistress as the case may be
My family has a long, tragic history with addiction. My mom's natural father was a practicing alcoholic who was out of his daughter's life by the time she was 7. My dad's brother, my uncle, was a brilliant but troubled man who didn't live to see his 40th birthday. My brother, not yet 50 has early onset dementia and will soon by on disability. I spend years drinking way more than I should have. And today, I have lost my cousin, who was barely 36.
It is easy to say tsk tsk over Lindsey Lohan, who serves as the current poster child of celebrity irresponsibility and drug induced madness. But it also isn't fair. Addiction is a horrible disease which is hard to break. I don't pretend to have all the answers. But I will say that for a person like Ms Lohan it is harder to quit than for the average person. Addicts need people in their lives who while loving the addict unconditionally will also call the addict out on his or her shit. We need to work, some days more, some days less, to stay clean to stay sober. We need to remember from whence we came, while still working one day at a time. We need to plan for our futures, while still working one day at a time. We have to work on being better, less selfish people, while being selfish enough to keep some time to work on ourselves.
There are as many stories of success overcoming addiction, as there are way to fail to overcome it. Some travel the road of my uncle, the father of my cousin, who used religion to overcome his addiction. Some us rehab and AA like I did. Others realize on their own they got in trouble and get out of it. All of us who know an addict, want him or her to find the road out. But ultimately the most we can do is give them a map and hope they can read it well enough to find their road.
I am not entirely sure why I posted this. One reason is the various Lindsey threads, the rest might just be that addiction sucks. If you know an addict, it takes no more time to hold them in your thoughts or prayers, than it does to tsk tsk them.
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Unless someone suffers from addiction themself, it's impossible to fully grasp how it takes over your life.
What a lovely post. I'm glad you're okay.
