Recovery on many fronts

Just a quick update.

Visited our son on Friday night....usual Friday night visit. His best friend took the trip down with us. He was very nervous going down, and confided in us that he was afraid that our son was being 'brainwashed' and he wouldn't be the same. Needless to say, he was very surprised that our son was not only the same, but back to being the way he was before the drugs took over his life. All in all it was a good visit. He has earned a 4 hour offsite for this coming weekend, and if we can swing it we are going to go visit him, take him out to lunch and go play some min-golf somewhere.....and try to act like a real family for a change.

Our son gave us a letter to give to our younger son, asking us not to read it. We gave the letter to our younger son on Sunday night and it opened up his emotional floodgates a bit. He REALLY misses his brother, more than we ever realized. My wife and I had to stop doing what we were doing around the house and spend some time calming him down because he was so upset. We are very glad he is seeing a psychologist himself once a month because he really needs a neutral person to listen to how he is feeling. We have to remember, that even though he is only 13 that this is very hard on him as well.

On a personal front, last week I finally made the call to see a therapist. I have discovered that as our son is doing better, I am doing worse. I find that my emotions range from normal to depression, feeling anxious, and sometimes non-functional......sometimes in the span of minutes or hours. All of the emotion, anger, and fear that naturally comes when your child has an addicition issue, problems with the law, and is in rehab is natural. However, I have been bottling it up for so long that it is slowly leaking out, which is having profound adverse effects on my emotional well-being. On Monday (yesterday) I had my intake interview with the head of the psychological association I am going to use and he will see which one of the doctors in his group will be the best fit for me. I need to get better. I cannot continue to live life not knowing what is going to trigger me into feeling so down, because when I get that way I am no good for my family, our older son as he gets better, and most of all to myself.

This is a horrible disease, that has intense fingers in more places than you can imagine. I have come to admit that I cannot do this alone anymore, that I cannot keep these emotions in check (under lock and key), and that I need some help. Stay tuned....this could get interesting.