I don't think you have a clue at what our addicts put us through. How can we treat you with respect when you steal our stuff in the middle of the night. When you get into our purses and steal the last little bit of money we have? How can we respect you when we wake up and find that our car is missing? Or when you put your little brother or sister at risk because you leave drugs or needles laying around. How can we respect you when we lose our home due to the financial stress of having to bail you out of jail so many times or pay your court fees because you certainly don't have any money to pay it yourself. Yet we love you enough to put all that aside. After you have stolen things, called us ugly names, said you hate us, used when you promised not to...we still love you. We love you so much, we let our own health and sanity go and pray that by giving you every breath we have that it might somehow help you. When do we give up? NEVER! We give up when we die. Some of us only keep living in the hopes that we may get the chance to see YOU as the wonderful person you were BEFORE your addiction. I don't think you have a clue at how much we hurt. You cannot excpect to get respect and equality when you give us none of those things. It is not about respect and equality...we live to make sure you live and there is nothing that hurts us more than an addict who we love with every bit of our hearts. I am proud of you for being clean since January. I wish I could say the same for my addict.....

I get where your coming from kiralind and you have a right to feel that way in many ways i did everything possible on that list but more to my dad,but as well i see you still have alot of anger built up to and it make take time but one day u have to learn to forgive,we struggle everyday just to stay sober and alot of people do judge us especially people who aren't addicts we really didnt want to be known as a thief or hurting someone we just brought our self there bcuz we knew that was the only way for us to handle our addiction without being sick,i grew up with an alcoholic mom and i built up so much anger and resentment towards why she couldn't b the mom she needed to be for me now as an addict i understand why she put me thru some of the things she did she was physically and mentally ill from the disease of addiction

It has taken me 7 years to truly accept that intense suffering occurs on both sides of an addiction, to be able to feel inside what hopelessness and addict-like desperation my family members felt at trying to undo my addiction. That being said, I do believe it is easier for a recovered addict to find compassion for the other side than it is for the family of an ex-addict to accept that their addict is healed and they are NOT the person who did all those things anymore. Some family members don't understand themselves apart from being the savior of an addict or the abused participant in an addiction. They too can't let go of their role in an addiction. This mentality can be verydamaging to our recovery. So, in that respect I completely agree with the trust and equal-treatment comment, although I am not sure it can be earned any other way than by doing hard time sober, and taking the reverse-abuse dished your way once you're there, staying put, and able to receive all their hurts. Earning respect is noble, and takes courage. God is with you. There is no suffering like that of a lonely heroin recovery. And in my case it was dual, i was working to get my son back too, people telling me left and right I was unworthy to be a mom, treating me like I didn't know what love was. I do understand, but I resent that I was not and still am not understood as one suffering intensely. That being said, if we are serious about recovery and God, He will make a way for us in time, and angry family members will step down and respect us more than we could ever immagine. Then and only then will we be humble enough to hold their respect. All I ask is for any family members of addicts reading this to please know that we are HURTiNG inside...this is a disease of demonic proportions, it is done to or at you, and it is not fair to continue reminding us of the harm we caused years ago. My parents do this to me still 7 years later, it is debilitating, and it is a miracle I am still clean - a testament to the grace of God and the purifying heroic love of a child. I know that addiction is strong enough to overshadow a mothers love, but a mothers love is stronger and can triumph, overthrowing that addiction and all other darkness in the way of us and our progeny should we "endure to the end". Stick with recovery friends, try lots of differ methods, but be committed. Relapse will try to jump you and when it does remind yourself of the horrors of dope sickness, go eat some sugar and buy a new shirt or jeans with that strange churning energy, write on this site, pinch your arm with a fingernail, and go get around other people. Resist, and that monster will flee from you! I promise. I have 7 years clean next month, these have been the hardest years of my life but the most beautiful - the ones where I learned who I truly was in my heart. Love to all my heroin mommies...love to all the still suffering family members. There is hope.

Lindsay-that was a wonderful post. I have been around a drug addict most of my life. Your post is a reminder that we (family) cannot just snap our fingers and make you better. We love you so much that we want you to be better. We don't know what else to do. If we "let you be and leave you alone" like you ask us to, then you will say we don't care and if we get onto for anything or ask questions then we are "nagging". It is so very difficult to judge your moods and we have to walk on eggshells because we are afraid that we may upset you and you could become angry and hurt us or yourself.

I really loved your post, and it is wonderful to hear that you have a 7 year anniversary coming up. It is people like you that give me the strength to go on another day with my addict.

Thank you!

I think it just takes time. we didn't become addicts over night and our familys have been through Hell. How do you watch some one you love kill them selfs and not be effected. I have 7 years clean now and belive I am just earning thier trust. I would have understood if they never trusted me again. All of the lieing, cheating and stealing of addiction must be hard to forgive. I lost my mother while I was in treatment and will always be sorry she never had a chance to know her little boy could get clean. I had been in treatment so many times. So it just takes time.

I know exactly what you mean, and the first respondent was stereotypical. She assumed you rob and rape. I specially feel stigmatized and stereotyped by treatment facilities that believe in the addictive personality and put us all in the same box. Prior to this war on drugs there was no issues with all of these situations we get blamed with. Turns out that we responds according to how we are treated... We are made to identify ourselves so much in these "programs" that we start believing that we are especially bad. Nonsense... turns out that persons who become dependent on substances have the same range of intelligence, personalities, goodness or badness that you will find in the rest of the human population. We are not especially bad. Treatment staff is confrontational, forceful, unethical, and extremely manipulative. There is a gigantic gap between scientific research and what is being practice by clinicians. I believe there is such a thing as an Ego Sintonic substance user. We need to stop beating ourselves, and begin to stand for our rights for better treatment. The new director of the NIDA Dr. Nora D. Volkow stated that historically when society does not understand medical conditions well, they have always blamed it on the patients... Of course, when a doctor does not know what they are doing, it is always some characteristic in the patient that keep them do-gooders from getting "results. After all, they are the right person and we are the wrong persons. Don't give up the fight, standup for your rights. Look at all of our responses, we assume we are all the same in the way we have lived our lives. Although humans have many similarities, we are not all steal from people; we are all not aggressive or violent. We must stop stereotyping ourselves and begin to see each other as individuals, not as tiky tack houses in the suburbs. We often do harm to ourselves because we are so stereotyped http://www.bluelignt.ru
I hate to pop the ballon, but we are not all that special, we just are human.

Terry & Lindsay, wow! Amazing testimonies to your strength. God bless you both on your 7 years, (and many more to come) ! Stories like yours help those of us with kids we are still unsure of.. Thank you