Drug addicts who love their kids

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is going to be an unpopular thread. I fully expect lots of hate and judgement and holier-than-thou shit. But I would still like to talk to fearless people who had kids, and were addicted to drugs, and did their best anyway. Because we’re not monsters, we’re just humans who aren’t perfect.

I never left my son in jeopardy. He never saw anything horrible, although he probably knew; and while I’m not proud, neither do I wallow in shame. There are far worse things.

Anybody have anything to say? I can tell you right off the top that whatever invective you choose to pile on me could not be worse than the pain I inflict on myself.

All the same, he was always fed, always loved, always walked to school and helped with his homework. The main damage was that we were too poor to live in a racially balanced neighborhood, and so he got picked on every day because he was the only white kid in school. But even if I hadn’t been on drugs, I would not have been on the fast track to a corporate career – even though I’m altruistic and intelligent, I’m just not a go-getter. Because a frou-frou job that pays well, even though it would be a challenge to my knowledge and skills, seems to have as the most important constituent the ability to pretend I’m better than other people, and pretend I’m someone I’m not.

I couldn’t do it before I had my son, and I couldn’t do it after. But I reiterate, he always had all my love and enough to eat.

Am I a bad person? Should I never have had my son?

2

I was the son of a mother who was a lifelong alcoholic. There were better times and worse times and my father being a mid tier professional for the State Department meant we never starved but he was often gone for long stretches overseas as part of his job and being the on site oldest kid was often quite difficult.

In her later years when I was in college she switched to box wine from Jack Daniels and was functional during the day and highly regarded at her job. She loved us deeply but was also addicted to alcohol.

Dealing with an unreliable, out of control hyper emotional adult is terrifying for a child and it leaves permanent psychic scars. Screaming battles are par for the course. Being left alone and not picked up from activities one too many times when all your friends are gone and your mother is drunk and not coming to get you is something that stays with you. The police coming after her for drunk driving after she left the scene of parking lot fender bender and her needing you as a child to lie for her. You don’t really get forgiven for that regardless of how much time has passed and all the other good stuff you might have done.

What are you looking for at this point? Absolution? It’s not going to happen. This is shit you’re not going to hug out. In the end children of alcoholic parent just deal an move on like everybody else.

This “Am I a bad person? Should I never have had my son?” self mortification posture you are playing at is just foolish nonsense. Just do the best you can today and get on with life. If you can be a decent, drug free grandparent that’s enough.

3

When it comes to drugs I think some people can hack it and some can’t but then you have to ask is the person who can hack it a true addict, I don’t know the answer. My Dad was and is a hardcore alcoholic but he has frequently used harder drugs as well. But he went to work everyday and made/makes good money in the six figures.

There were negative consequences, dui’s divorces, cheating and beating. But for the most part our life was stable. My sister on the other hand couldn’t hack it, dropping out of school, dead-end jobs, pregnant at 16. She eventually dropped her daughter off at the dad’s and never came back. Her life is pretty dismal now, the details are very sad. Did something in our home life and upbringing cause it, genetics, I’m not really sure, I came from the same environment and DNA and while I have tried most drugs I never felt I had to do them, or got into much trouble. I think a parent can use drugs and still be a good parent but it’s a slippery road that is better not to even chance going down. Like Louis C K says, drugs are so good they’ll ruin your life.

4

Beating yourself up will do no good whatsoever, you did the best you could with what you had and knew.
The trick probably is to expand on what you know. How old are your kids? Have you talked with your kids about your problems at a age appropriate level? That is what I tried to do with my son, when I told him that sometime Mommy is unreasonable because she is tired and stressed out. At least he doesnt blame himself, then.
Have you looked into sites like http://www.adultchildren.org and looked up if they have anything to offer for your kids?
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5

My parents were alcoholics, but that worked out great for me. Mainly because my parents would turn to mush after a few drinks.

If I ever wanted money, or pizza, or whatever, I knew at a very young age to wait until they’ve had a few. Because the likelihood of them saying “yes” was much greater.

6

Being an addict doesn’t make someone any less capable of loving their kids, though the thread title seems to imply otherwise. Of course, many addicts become so desperate that they end up hurting their family despite their love. That’s the nature of addiction.

There are a lot of drug addicts, moreover, who, on the surface, seem like regular, normal parents. This is usually because their drug of choice is acquired by prescription, so they are never seen drinking, or buying drugs from a dealer. Even though they might provide for their children materially, though, their relationship with family can still be just as bad as with any other addict–disconnected, or absent.

7

Something else to think about is the correlation between drug abuse and other mental health problems. I’m a child of a mentally ill individual that didn’t have her brush with alcoholism until I was grown and out of the house. Growing up with an unstable adult (who is bound to fly off the handle at just about anything) leaves scars. Alcohol just makes things worse. Oh, I’m sure she loved/loves me. But love means squat when you have to endure an hour-long screaming fit over a refilled water bottle. (Yes, really.)

My baby sister’s currently going through the same grinder I did, and there isn’t much to be done about it, but hope that sis swims rather than sinks.

8

I believe that. I was a foster parent for two kids whose Mom was an addict and whose Dad was an alcoholic, and both of those parents came from addicts, absolutely no one had their shit together. What strikes me to this day is that the concepts of stability and routine were so foreign. I feel terrible on the rare occasions I’m not here to meet my youngest when she gets off the school bus; the other kids in question found it weird that someone would be there at all, and that school was an every day kind of thing.

There are different kinds of addicts and different levels of guilt, and the worst offenders aren’t the ones questioning themselves or feeling guilty. So I don’t have any invective for you. Hope you find the answers you’re seeking.

9

The delusion drug addicts and alcoholics all have is that they never put their kids in jeopardy. (I come from a home where there was both.)

When a drunk gets in his car he’s convinced he’s okay to drive. He believes that because he is impaired. After the fact, the addict uses the lack of horrid outcome to convince themselves they did nothing wrong. Turns out no one was at risk! Because clearly no one died, right?

And addict ALWAYS say, “…but they probably knew…”, implying their utter discreetness. Sorry, I’m calling bullshit on that. That is an impaired mind making the decision about what’s discreet.

How many times did you feed him, walk him to school, do homework, or ‘love’ him, WHILE you were on the drug? High functioning though you no doubt were, that fucks a kid up. There’s a lot more to it than your love and enough to eat. These are just the rationalizations we all make to be okay with behaviour we regret.

It’s only human to do so and absolutely EVERYBODY does it. But it’s one thing to do it concerning how embarrassingly drunk you got at that wedding and your child’s home environment during their important developmental years.

I’m super happy you made your way out, and I think it was a mistake to start this thread. You may think I’m being harsh, and maybe I am. But I’ve heard every single one of these rationalizations before, MANY times. They weren’t reality then, and they aren’t now.

(I have been fully honest because your OP seems to invite it!)

10

Kids can figure out on their own if mommy and daddy aren’t getting along, even if the parents don’t fight in front of the kid. I think we can all agree that those are pretty heavy issues for a kid to deal with on their own.

You think kids won’t notice all the baggage that comes with their parents’ drug addictions? Yeah, right.

11

I, fortunately, have little experience with addicts and addiction, so I should probably stay out of this thread. But I will say that the quoted sentence jumped out at me as a Holden Caulfield-esque refusal to join the world of functioning adults because they’re all a bunch of phonies.

12

A slight aside to this, is the issue I have with criminal justice. A very large number of men in prison are there for reasons associated with drugs, if not directly. With two million American men in prison, if one assumes that each one has an average of one child, that for two million American school children, Daddy is in jail. That’s two million of the 50-million school children, or one out of 25. A child in every classroom whose daddy is in jail.

Taken as a whole, drug addicts might be doing their children less social and emotional harm than the crminal justice system is.

My wife was a child sitting in the family car, watching her father being arrested, and he spent most of her childhood in prison. It’s not something that is good for a kid.

13

I don’t think it’s possible for a child to grow up with parents who are addicts without some emotional harm occurring to the child. One of the most damaging elements is often a sense that the parent’s priority is always the drug, that no matter what else is going on in his/her life, the number one priority will be getting high/drunk. Children know when they are lower on the totem pole than the next fix.

I find it quite sad that you rationalize your addictive behavior by saying that your child was always fed, loved, and walked to school. Feeding and adequately supervising a child are not heroic feats; they are the bare minimum expected of parents. And nearly all parents love their children, but love (the emotion) should not serve as a justification for negative actions.

I hope I don’t sound unduly harsh. It’s impossible to be a perfect parent (they fuck you up, your mum and dad, etc.), and struggling with addiction while raising a child must be monumentally difficult. Is your son an adult now? Have you talked to him about his childhood?

14

I think you should ask your son how he felt about his childhood. There’s your under the influence perception and then there’s your sober kid’s perception. It would probably help you to marry up the two. I think love in itself only gets you so far, because people love in the best way they know how. There’s no standard. Do you believe you always had his best interests in mind? If you were being honest with yourself, would the money you spent on drugs afforded the both of you a much better life? I wish you luck.

My cousin dragged his kids on his wild ride with drugs. Told everyone, including the judges, how much he loved his kids. They were badly neglected and this was disputed by no one. That’s why love isn’t a good measure.

15

And honestly that is the core of it. The child of an addict knows as a rock hard certainty where they are on that ladder regardless of whatever noises are made by the addicted parent about how much they love them. Getting the drug/drink is absolute priority #1 everything else is far distant second.

Also when a parent is addicted even if the kid “loves” the parent there is a constant frightened disgust that bores it’s way into the kid’s consciousness at having to deal with an unreliable, unstable adult and puts a permanent distance between the parent and child.

16
  • Children of drug addicts tend to blame themselves for their parents addiction. This creates tremendous psychological stress on the children.
  • Children of drug addicts tend to be embarrassed by their parents. You are their guilty secret, they don’t want anybody to know about.
  • According to the NIH, children of drug addicts are 45 to 79% more likely to become drug addicts themselves over children of non addict parents. You are creating what you don’t like about yourself.

Keep on rationalizing your good intentions. That and a $1 will maybe get you a candy bar out of vending machine.

17

I don’t know. But this, for sure:

My father was an alcoholic. Still is, in fact. What problems we had in the family were never caused by his alcoholism. I can say that, honestly, as a 42 year old mother of two. My dad is the most functional alcoholic there’s ever been. Great job, always appeared sober even when he wasn’t, paid attention and did projects with us kids without trouble.

Only one time, literally, did his drinking impact me. We were working on the yard and he decided it was time to break for lunch. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I suggested a restaurant about 5 miles away. He got very quiet for a minute, and said, “I think we should go to [place a block away] instead. I’ve probably had a little too much to drink to be safely driving.”

That was the first time I ever realized that the case of beer in the fridge was a new case of beer every day. That even when I had no idea he was drunk, he was drunk. And he was drunk pretty much all the time he wasn’t at work or planning to drive somewhere.

So that was a little sobering (pun unintentional, but apt) for me. I was probably 13 or 14. It made me realize my dad had his own struggles in life that I knew nothing about. But it also modeled for me that you do not drive when drunk, even if the person you’re with doesn’t know you’re drunk. It gave me a perfect escape clause that I’ve used many times over the years to refuse to drive when I’ve had too much to drink (which is very rare for me; luckily, I’ve never had an alcohol problem myself.)

Over the years, I’ve watched as the beer turned into wine, then gin, and now bourbon. His drinking did eventually break his marriage a couple of years ago. Hearing that your folks are Separating turns out to be no easier at 40 than at 6.

But as a father to a child, he was a great father. That wasn’t impacted by his alcoholism. Yes, he’s a good person, I’m glad he had me, and I don’t even have strong opinions about his drinking when I was a kid.

I don’t know if you were more like my dad or more like the other parents mentioned in this thread. I only offer my story to share that there are good parents with addiction problems. Addicts are just as varied as anyone else in their parenting skills.

18

The drug addict differs substantially, from an alcoholic, as they are, everyday, risking that their child lands in the foster care system. A bad traffic stop after scoring, dealer gets pinched, cops at the door on an unrelated matter, any number of simple things could land a child in foster care, like right now!

And a kid knows, with a drug using parent, that could happen to him at any time.

(Yes, yes, you know someone who’d def take your kid, but if they’re not home to answer the phone, guess what! Foster care it is!)

And, very often addicts convince themselves, all the kid’s baggage, is cause he was getting picked on at school. Sometimes that sounds an awful lot like a way to remove any ownership that the addict’s activities played a role too.

We are all chock full of good intention. But we’re not our intentions, we’re our actions. But you gotta own them, to heal them, I’m afraid!

19

Brujaja, maybe you need to forgive yourself. Nobody sets out to be an addict but once it’s there, it is a disease and very treatment-resistant. And of course there are usually reasons behind it in the first place, which is not the addict’s fault. I’m sure your son knows you love him. I think it’s not good to dwell on the bad parts of the past. Why not stay in today and the future instead. If you have sincerely apologized to your son and you try, imo that is good enough. Best wishes.

20

“You ain’t got to love me, but you gonna know that I love you.”