Living with addiction.

I forgot when I started this log, whether it was a year ago, or a month. To be honest, I didn't really keep up with it like I expected. On some level, I think it was a place for me to vent after my father's death, to scream, to yell, and yet it never came to use. Tonight I find myself finally using it now that I have rediscovered it. Reading through my "Random Thoughts" and looking for answers. With no posts, there's no answers to my questions, no solution to my pain.

I live with an addict.

My mother is an addict. She's not into drugs, at least not the illegal types. My mom is addicted to pain medication. In particular Loracet. I...I don't quite know when this all began, though I have my own suspicions. I don't remember her taking any medication for pain prior to us moving down to south Georgia, at least, if she did I didn't know about it. It was only when we moved down here that she really got into it.

Mom's what I'd call a Hypochondriac. What's worse, she does have one thing wrong, but she's decided (as she has often put it to me) that it's serious enough that she needs the pills to make the pain to stop. Her disease is serious, but having spoken with others with it, I've come to the conclusion that it's not as serious as she would lead you to believe. Describing the cause of her addiction isn't as easy as I thought it might be. I can sit here and postulate the ways I want to put it out there, but in the end they all seem petty or weak. Oddly, it's easier for me to describe the symptoms than to get into the whys or hows of it. However if I had to put a singular reason down for it, I'd say jealously.

To understand, you have to first understand my father. Dad passed away in 2007, after a long suffering disease. (Mostly due to medical malpractice.) In the end, I was caring for him and her, and spent most of my time working to keep them happy. I remember taking him to the doctor once, and having him tell me that mom was angry with him. Not because he had done anything wrong, but as she had put it to him "You were supposed to take care of ME!" (her) This struck me curious, but Dad went on to explain that my mother's side of the family lived by this philosophy, that once you reached a certain age, then your spouse (always male) had to take care of and support you. Sounds good in principle, but in practice it meant that my mom expected she should be able to lay in bed all day, and dad would do all the work. When he got sick, mom had to work, and that made things difficult.

She tried, more than once, to one up the attention dad was getting. I remember what we came to term the "hospice" incident. Long story short, mom decided she was dying and wanted Hospice. They came, she got stoned off her arse on morphine, and then after a sobering up period that would scare anyone to death, she sent them packing. (She only did this when she found she'd have to repay them for their services.) In another incident, Mom went so far as to attempt suicide. To this day I don't know exactly what happened (she has no memory of it, though she has rationalized it a dozen differen times and ways) but I've managed to piece together some of what went down.

Best I can figure, mom took several of her pain pills and drank brandy ontop of them, in an effort to get back at my dad for taking my side in an argument. The great irony is that it was my doing that saved her life. She's never thanked me for it.

So now, we come full circle. Mom's back to her old ways, minus the brandy, and I'm spending long nights sitting at a computer looking for answers that people can't give. In some way this is cathartic for me, to write it out even if no one ever reads it. In others, I know it may help some. To show that you're not alone.

I live with an Addict.