Families & Friends Of Addicts Support Group
Addiction affects more than just the individual. This community is dedicated to the families and friends of individuals suffering from any form of addiction. Mental health professionals are increasingly considering alcoholism and addiction as diseases that flourish in and are enabled by family systems. Family members react to the addicted person with particular behavioral...
My son is a rcovering heroin addict and has almost 6 months clean. He has been doing great. Going to all his outpatient intensive treatement stuff and really opening up with us and them. But suddenly he is completely losing it and so filled with despair. He has been crying and saying how he does not know how much more of this he can take. he says he would rather die than relapse. He is so raw and wounded and is finally feeling all the pain that he kept numbed with drugs and he is overwhelmed and scared and I'm scared for him. His therapist made him sign a contract stating he would not commit suicide but oh my Gosh! He has never been like this and I don't know how to help. We as a family are keeping a watch on him and we are all reaassuring him how much we love him and that it will all be ok but I don't know if its enough. After everything he and we have been through to lose him after I just got him back would really be too much...To save him from the drugs but not be able to save him from his own despair?? I'm scared here and don't have any answers
A therapist told me one time that these feelings (whatever they are...intense pain, fear, lonliness, anger) are pieces of me that need to be acknowledged. She would have me do a sort of meditation where I would say "ok, anger, who are you and what do you want to say to me?" and then let my imagination "listen" to the anger (or fear, pain, etc.) to tell me what it wanted me to hear. I would often "journal it out," by writing both sides: me on one side of the conversation and then the feeling as the other side. Sometimes I would paint the feeling or image to give it substance.
I know it sounds a little crazy, but it was one of the most helpful steps toward my own recovery into mental health.
I think it accomplished several things. First, it immediately became clear to me that the feeling, while a part of me, was not ALL of me...was separate from me in a way that allowed the rest of me to get strong. Also, it honored that feeling as a gift with something to teach me or something to be respected and valued. It helped me identify "stinking thinking" (as they say in recovery programs).
I would encourage you to help Justin see that even though his anguish is at the forefront of his life right now, it isn't ALL of him and it does have a value for him if he will allow himself to find a healthy way to express it. (Most of our greatest poets, musicians and artists experienced great anguish in life...and used it to create incredible beauty).
I have another friend who went through a really tough time, and her solution was that she would get up in the morning and walk and walk and walk...until she found something beautiful (a flower, a bird...something that she was able to appreciate as true beauty). She wouldn't stop walking until she found "the moment of beauty." (That's what she called it.) She told me that even though her depression would return during the day (every day for months), she would try to remember and hold on to her "moment of beauty" to keep her going.
I pray you and Justin are both graced with a daily moment of beauty that you can each hold on to until this passes.