“Don’t evaluate your life in terms of achievements, trivial or monumental, along the way.  If you do, you will be destined to the frustration of always seeking out other destinations, and never allowing yourself actually to be fulfilled…Instead, wake up and appreciate everything you encounter along your path. Enjoy the flowers that are there for your pleasure.  Tune in to the sunrise, the little children, the laughter, the rain and the birds.  Drink it all in…Drink it all in…there is no way to happiness; happiness IS the way.”                                         Wayne Dyer

1.  Parent 2 Parent: Another ER Visit!

“I wasn’t going to open the letter but couldn’t stop myself. I did receive another letter from an attorney indicating my son has another pending arrest warrant. I am proud of myself for not going online and checking for outstanding warrants etc.”

“In addition, I have noticed that I have not been receiving any messages from friends telling me how sick my son looks. I am pleased I don’t get those calls but it also indicates he is avoiding them which also indicates a past pattern of his chronic addiction.”

“After seventeen years of watching his addiction in action I can usually predict when he will reach his bottom. If he doesn’t end up in jail or the hospital he will seek a homeless shelter; perhaps another try with the Salvation Army ARC program. He’ll appear to be doing good and will convince me and others, including himself, that this time he is through with drugs. Then within nine months he will relapse. His disease is so predictable.”

“Of course, I know that He is in God’s hand and recovery is possible for anyone, even my son!”

“In prayer for my son and your child also.”

2. Borderline Families: “Reevaluating”:

“I never came to her unbidden. Sobbing into the phone while walking across the bridge back to Manhattan, keys to her apartment lost, hungover and scared – I didn’t come. I came after the the quiet calls. The ones where her voice was barely audible and sadness seeped into the phone lines making it almost unbearable to hold the phone to my ear. Still, I always waited for her to ask for help.”

“What I didn’t know then, was that my daughter was suffering with withdrawal from the psych drugs that she abruptly went off of seven-eight-nine months before. I thought at that time that she was experiencing an overflow of “mental illness”. She had headaches so severe that she cried out in pain, dizziness, and mood swings that knocked her out of any social gathering she tried to attend. She had insomnia but when she drank enough to sleep, she was plagued with horrendous nightmares. Her stomach was in an uproar; nothing she ate stayed put. She couldn’t concentrate and lost time in dissociated states.”

“During those months last fall, I got too many quiet calls. Her world seemed to be crumbling and I went scrambling to save her.”

“No parent should have to discuss suicide with their child. (Where is God?, July 5th, 2010) But, I told her on these visits that I understood. I did. The pain was just too much. Months of it. Endless rage and sorrow.”

“All the while I kept searching for help.”

“After I bowed out in January, my daughter would go for long stretches without calling my husband (she calls him “Dad”). There would be a flurry of calls concerning money once or twice a month. But, the emotional crises seemed to tapered off.”

“If you do go back and read these old post, you will see that they are written in a language I which have abandoned – the labels and descriptions presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, devised by the psychiatric industry. The posts were written when I was firmly entrenched in the psychiatry-driven mental healthcare model. I believed that the professionals were going to deliver a cure. During all those crises, I still believed that my daughter would find relief by taking some combination of psych drugs and finding a sympathetic psychiatrist who would set her on the “right” path.”

“At the end of May, I was reading Susan Smith blog, A Journey, Gianna Kali’s Beyond Meds and had just bought Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic.  My world was about to change significantly.”

“My daughter called on May 23rd and needed to talk with me. Only me. She was not okay and she needed me. And, there I was, back in it her life in a blink of an eye. On the flight to New York I wrote a post, In Flight to New York, May 25, 2010.”

What unfolded was tragic but she and I were different this time. I had been reading about the concept of the neuroplasticity of the brain. I was able to see the benefits of months without me being involved in her life. She had definitely built a life with friends. She had had occasional work as a model or art director and despite being too jangled to answer it, her phone (once we replaced it) rang and rang.”

“So, what happened? Was all that hard work at making a life dashed by a fit of uncontrollable anger and anxiety? I want to believe that she can build on what what she has worked so hard to achieve. But, like in May, it seems so dire. It looks hopeless.”

“Cutting off contact works until it doesn’t. Then what?”