It’s the morning of New Year’s Eve 2024. I have been thinking about writing a blog for many months now as despair, anger and sadness have taken hold. The truth is, I have nowhere to turn with the overwhelming emotions I am feeling each and every day. I am exhausted and, although I have close family all around me, I feel desperately alone and hopeless as I look forward. I am writing this blog, because I need to put what is inside my head, somewhere else. Or I fear it may be a very long time before I get a decent nights sleep again.

I am mother to a 19.5 year old son and he has been struggling with substance abuse issues for around 2-3 years. It began in a fairly typical way, getting drunk with friends and occasionally smelling weed on him at the weekends. Fast forward to present day, and he is chronically smoking weed, unable to control himself when he drinks (which has been frequently), and when he does drink, he takes cocaine – and things start to get really funky for him (and us) when that happens. He lives at home with me, stepdad of 10 years and his younger sister. He is working at a local supermarket and attending college. It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? For context, my son had no friends (he did at one time), he has no girlfriend, he has no hobbies or interests anymore (other than playing on his games console), his interest in college is minimal, he has withdrawn and isolated himself from our family, his emotions are all over the place and his perspective of the world is becoming increasingly strange. And, when the wheels really come off, chaos reigns and bad things happen. I live each day teetering on the edge. I worry everyday that something awful will happen, that he’ll be arrested, go to prison, hurt himself or someone else or, that he’ll die. And each and every day, I watch my beloved boy become a young man that I do not recognise.

I have thought carefully about what I will and won’t write on this blog. I will not share any details of my son’s experiences – they’re not mine to share. I will not share anything that may identify him or our family. What I can do, is share my own thoughts and feelings and speak in general terms about the chaos in our lives. I want to chronicle my attempts to find ways to cope, my efforts to support and help my son and, somehow, to find a way to live my own life amongst the terror I feel everyday. Perhaps someday, someone who really needs to feel like they are not alone, will stumble upon my blog and find some solace here.

This morning, I attended my first online Al-Anon meeting. Last week, I attended my first Al-Anon meeting in person. I didn’t contribute, I didn’t speak, I only sat in a circle with a group of kind people who shared some of their experiences. I simply sat, doing my level best to hold back the flood of tears that had threatened to send me running out of the door almost as soon as I had arrived. It’s early days, but so far I have seen that Al-Anon is about accepting you can’t control or change anything but yourself, and finding ways to live your own life in spite of your loved ones addiction. I am going to go back. I did feel better afterwards too, because I didn’t feel alone in the meeting in the way I do in my day to day life. However, I know already that I will struggle to accept what is and let go – after all, he is my son and still in the messy age range between adolescence and full blown adulthood. If I don’t try to help him, does he have the tools to help himself? Truthfully, no, he doesn’t. Not yet anyway (that was attempt to sign off today with some hope, poor effort but as good as I can muster today).

Now I will leave things there for now, it’s NYE and I need to go and get through the day. Until next time.