I feel a bit stupid about this. I feel stupid because it’s taken me so long to figure it out. For years I’ve been trying to understand why my son felt ‘lost’ to me. He lived at home until August 2025 and I saw him everyday but he wasn’t really here. He would be right in front of me, and I couldn’t reach him. I could see him, but I didn’t recognise him. I took it personally. I wondered why he was disconnected from us all. Sometimes, I would tell myself it was normal, all teenagers distance themselves from family. But I knew it was deeper than that. He didn’t really have friends. I told myself it was a phase he’d grow out of. Sometimes, it would feel less severe. He would perhaps get a rare invite to a social event and I’d tell myself things were improving and I just needed to be patient. I would tell myself that if he just met a nice girl, his life would move forward and change. I thought if he went off to live in college, he’d meet his people and things would get better. Even when I started blogging about our family struggle with addiction, I don’t think I believed it was really happening. And when he stopped using in Jan 2025, and things stayed that way for 6 months, I thought we’d cracked it and I had overblown the whole thing. But even sober, he felt gone.

I knew he was using drugs, I talked to him about it often. But I didn’t piece it all together, that distance and disconnection go hand in hand with addiction. Why couldn’t I see that? Maybe it was a level of denial about the extent of the problem? I didn’t think I was in denial about the drug use. I do think now, that I have been in denial about addiction. Maybe I wasn’t ready to accept it. I was barely coping as it was.

I’m a wee bit stunned at myself. I’ve worked with vulnerable young people and families for a long time. I have a masters degree in a related subject. Substance use and associated problems have been front and centre in my line of work for the best part of two decades. And I wasn’t able to join the dots in my own family. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me.