A Parent Support Group

She opened the door tentatively and shuffled softly into the room, slipped quietly into the chair moving in seeming slow motion as if her lack of haste would somehow disguise her tardiness. The parent support group meeting had started some fifteen minutes before but no one took much notice of when she had arrived, they were simply glad that she was here.

We had started the group a year after David died of addiction, barely 3 months after he had been in treatment…barely 6 months after he got into recovery and barely 7 months after he turned sixteen. When David got out of the adolescent intensive out-patient program he entered the Treatment Center’s “aftercare” program that was to help him make the transition from treatment to recovery.  But there was no “aftercare” program for parents to help us make a similar transition…and soon realized, much to our regret, how ill prepared we were.

So we started this Parent Support Group and some six years later here we are every Thursday night at 7:30 PM, a group of parents whose children have been in treatment for substance abuse.  Some a little farther down the path than others with no magic bullet, no answers, only suggestions based upon our experience.  No experts in the disease of addiction just parents who are survivors from it, on our own odyssey of recovery. 

She settled into the chair crossing her legs and entwining them around one of the chair legs.  She held one hand to her mouth and wound her other arm around herself so tightly I was afraid she would suffocate. She looked so frail and small wearing her countenance of fear and worry like a dark veil. 

When it came her turn to speak her story rushed from her lips in a torrent of words and emotions.  Her 18 year old son had relapsed, he’d been dismissed from the treatment program and when he had returned home she handed him a small bag, clean underwear and socks, a few essentials and told him that he could not continue live in her house while he was still using.  Her words turned to sobs as she spoke of the grief she felt as he walked out the door, the plea for him not to go that choked in her throat, the haunting feeling of not being a good parent and then the unspeakable fear of what would happen if he dies of his addiction alone and without her arms to protect him.

TBC