What prompted this somewhat belligerent thread? Who are you arguing with?
Is this your son’s view as well? Have you actually talked to him candidly about his experiences in dealing with your addiction? If this was the extent of the damage, then why are you inflicting all that pain on yourself?
This comes across a bit like fishing for compliments. It also seems worth noting that you’re presenting the counterfactual as “not having your son” rather than “not doing drugs.” Overall, though, as others have emphasized, you can’t change the past, you can only learn from it and grow toward the future. I hope you and your family are in a good place now, and that you have solid relationships going forward.
I’ve never heard people criticize drug addicts for not loving their kids. Not saying this doesn’t happen, but if I had to pick a criticism, that wouldn’t be the first one to come to mind.
I have heard people criticize drug addicts for not being there for their kids, though. And I think this is something that is practically impossible to argue against. Even if a kid is happy and healthy, the fact remains they have a parent who is not always responsible. The kid may not know they are around an unstable person, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t in a high risk situation.
But all parents are imperfect. Drug addicts don’t have a monopoly on suboptimal parenting. Sometimes I look back on my mother’s mothering and resent that she was such a workaholic. Sometimes I think my childhood would have been better if my father hadn’t been such a rage-aholic. Some parents are addicted to parenting (we call them “helicopters”) and end up screwing up their kids. I think it is the rare parent who is completely blameless. And yet most of us grow into people who aren’t irreparably damaged. We are incredibly resilient.
Seriously, to the OP - if you haven’t seen Moonlight, do so. One of the major themes is the main character’s mom’s descent into drug addiction, and how that affects their relationship. You might want to use it as the starting point of a discussion with your son. He’s really the only one who can give you the absolution you seem to need.
The devil is in the details. How old are your children? Are they already out of the house? How bad is the addiction?
I have known a lot of alcoholics and ruminating about if it were better to not have had kids is less productive than trying to do something about it.
Good for you!
I grew up with some strange folks. Gratefully, I had food and clothes.
But, I never saw the “love” part. Neither demonstrated or vocalized.
In general terms, it’s not that the addict doesn’t love their child, it’s that when it comes down to it, that child will always be second to the person’s active addiction.
Apparently I’m abnormal. My parents were both alcoholics & I didn’t even realize it until much later in life. I just always knew that things like wine, beer, cocktails, & coffee were things that only adults drank.
However, they were high functioning and always kept their commitments to us. Also they were not mean asshole drunks, but rather it made them less stressed and relaxed after they got home from work. For us this meant that things were very lenient and I had a lot of freedom that I loved.
I remember you from another thread you posted about your family taking your son away and alienating him from you. It stuck with me because your pain was clear. I don’t know you or how much time elapsed between you parenting with an addiction and losing your son. For what it’s worth, have you considered the possibility that your son’s belief that you couldn’t raise him, due to your lifestyle, came about as a result of his memories and not because of your family’s lies? Was your drug use one of the reasons you were unable to find a way to remove your son from the unhealthy environment your parents created?
If the threads aren’t related, or introspection won’t help you or your son, don’t keep dwelling on the past. You’ve had your son, and unless the threads are about different kids, he’s an adult, and there isn’t any going back.
In reading that thread I’m a bit confused by this thread. In that thread she was (it appears) the black sheep child of a middle class family living with her son on the margins in rough neighborhoods with a sketchy man with mental issues, but is not a “drug addict” and saw no reason to take any drug tests, although accused of being a drug user by her mother as the rationale for removing the kid. The “everyone is too stupid to get me” tone of that post is classic addict ranting. Now in this thread she’s a confessed chronic drug addict but she loves her son and took care of him as best she was able to as an addict.
Per the OP of this thread it seems (unless there was some note I missed where she got clean) she is still a hardcore drug addict who is functional within limits and who misses her son and has no power to bring him back into her life. It would seem the only way this is going to change for the positive is if she cleans up and makes humble nice with the grandparents to re-engage her kid. None of that is going to happen as long as the drug use continues.
Never mind in reading the other post to the end I see he’s 23 now and was/is staying with her. This is all after the fact stuff at this point.