BEL MOONEY: My drug addict son makes me feel like a failure

By Bel Mooney for the Daily Mail

Published: 21:12 EST, 20 November 2015 | Updated: 21:13 EST, 20 November 2015

Dear Bel,

I have three grown-up children, my youngest is 19 (at university), while my middle son has autism and challenging behaviour, but lives in his own home supported by carers and has a good life.

My biggest worry is my eldest son, who is 26. He was in a relationship and they had a child, now three — a beautiful grandson.

He has addiction problems: alcohol, gambling, drugs. His partner finally had enough after finding out that he was having an affair (long since over) and they broke up but remained friends for the sake of my grandson. But it got to the point where she reported him for domestic violence.

He now cannot see the child and awaits decisions on prosecution for psychological abuse through drink and drugs and whether the family court will give him access.

After their split he got together with an old friend.

Just weeks into their relationship, she’d had enough: another binge and he lets her down.

This is the latest in a line of disasters: gambling away his month’s wages in one night, losing his vehicle because he took out a logbook loan (for drugs) and couldn’t repay the debt.

Janette says she cannot walk away from her drug addict son - even though he makes her feel like a failure

He lived with me and my partner for a couple of months, but we had to ask him to move out following late-night/early-morning calls when he was drunk, and causing trouble — getting us up in the middle of the night to sort things out.

I’m divorced from his dad, who has been amazing in supporting him in every way, including money.

I’m not sure if this is helping or hindering, as my son has never reached rock bottom because of our support. So this week he says he will go to drugs counselling and sort himself out — but we have heard this so many times before.

He can leave his favourite drug, cocaine, for three weeks, but always goes back.

He thinks drugs services are for ‘smackheads’ (i.e. people on heroin), not him.

Trying to help him is so demoralising; I’m tired of being let down, I take him for a meal once a week to make sure he eats, but don’t lend money.

My question is, is this my life? Is there any hope that he will straighten himself out? It is so sad.

His only saving grace is that he works, although his wages are nearly always gone the day he gets them.

I cannot walk away — yet feel like a failure.

Is there anything else I can do —or do I just have to accept that he won’t ever change?

JANETTE

Let me say right away that I believe we should cling to the idea that change is always possible — extreme circumstances aside. I also know it is very hard indeed for a mother entirely to give up on her child, yes, even if that son or daughter has committed a heinous crime.

When someone you cared for and loved and played with and supported from birth inflicts catastrophic damage on his or her own life, primitive instinct still makes it very hard to walk away — even though the disappointment and damage to yourself is almost impossible to bear.

One of the saddest conversations I ever had was a long time ago, in Bath, with a mother (middle-class, married to a successful husband) whose late-20s heroin-addict son had moved back home.

She told me she felt incapable of turning him away, but confessed that when one day she saw an ambulance screaming in the direction of their home, she found herself wishing her son had died.

Looking at me bleakly she asked: ‘Can you imagine a mother wishing her child dead? But I do.’ I wasn’t shocked because I knew that angry, disappointed, exhausted, heart-broken mother wished for release — for her son, as well as for herself.

But despite the sadness and weariness of your email, I don’t feel you are in the same state as that unfortunate lady.

And that’s why I implore you to keep on willing your son to seek help and recover.

A mother’s lot is to feel responsible for all the wrong-headed or bad things our children do. Believe me, I’ve been there. But you have to remember that each individual makes his or her own choices and therefore your son’s destiny is not your fault.

Inevitably, you will look back and wonder what might have been different within family life, but there may be no answers — so it won’t help you to wear yourself out in the searching.

Keeping contact, not giving him money, giving him emotional support while acknowledging his appalling behaviour to his partner(s) — all this seems to me to be on the right track.

I think your ex-husband needs to be stronger on the money front, too; perhaps your son needs to reach ‘rock bottom’ in order to have a base from which to climb.

Because you are clearly confused by this horrible situation, it might interest you to read a book, by former addict Craig Nakken, called The Addictive Personality. I found it very helpful. It emphasises what too many people forget — that addiction is an illness with many forms. The book is wise and positive.

Last, to answer your direct question — I suggest that your ‘life’ is to take care of yourself and your partner (as well as your other sons) and to forge a wonderful relationship with your grandchild.

That is surely where real hope lies.

Is it true that I'm old, fat and unloved?

Dear Bel

In 2007, after 23 years of marriage, I walked out of my house leaving a note for my husband saying I was not coming back. I left with no clothes, no make-up — nothing. I had realised that I only ever laughed outside the house and that I had to end it.

Someone who had made me laugh in the week before my ‘awakening’ eventually became a close friend.

All these years later we have become a ‘couple’ — although we do not live together. He has never been married and lives with his mother who (at 80) is showing early signs of dementia.

Ellen says putting on a little weight has sapped her confidence (file picture)

As per normal, we were very sexual when we first started our relationship.

Recently, I have put on a little weight (still only 9st 10lb and 5ft 6in — so I’m hardly obese) and it has sapped my confidence.

This year my drop-dead gorgeous man has been joking about dating a 60-year-old grandma.

I’m looking forward to becoming a grandmother soon — especially as my daughter didn’t speak to me for three years after I left her dad because I would never tell her about the emotional abuse that killed my marriage. I am so thrilled that her pregnancy has brought us back together.

My boyfriend phones me all the time, and involves me in all his activities, but because he is five years younger than me and not a hand-holder I doubt he loves me.

Can you offer any help?

ELLEN

There are many unasked points at the heart of your short letter. It’s obvious the sexual relationship with your chap has tailed off and that this bothers you.

You seem to make a connection between that unwelcome development and your slight weight gain (does he mention this?) and the fact that he has been making affectionate jokes about dating a ‘grandma’.

In addition, you sound wistful that he is not more demonstrative — even though he does pay you lots of attention.

Interestingly, I have had a letter from a young woman S — who is still at university (in the U.S.) and tells me quite a complicated story of relationships and her eating disorder.

The latter she partially blames on her boyfriend: ‘I gained weight while at university in the first semester, and unfortunately my boyfriend had no issue pointing this out (albeit in a loving way).

‘For instance, he would advise me against getting food after a night out while my friends went to get some, and made some comments while I was naked. Although I was still only a UK size 10-12, with my weight gain at a height of 5ft 7in, I felt I needed to lose the weight, in part to make him happy.’

So I am raising this issue here in order to make the general point that all of us need to be very careful about how our words affect those we love. Good-humoured teasing is normal and healthy within families and relationships; on the other hand, there is a point at which is can become something a bit darker.

If you know that teasing a man because of his lack of height is actually quite painful for him (although of course he will laugh it off), then why do it?

If you are quite aware that your friend is bothered because she has put on weight, then is it appropriate to tease her?

If you know that your partner is worried about your shared sex life (or lack of it) and about her age, then is it kind to indulge in a run of little jokes about grannies?

Kindness matters more than anything — and, in truth, teasing is rarely kind. It can also serve to lock people into the situation they’re already in.

I vividly remember the time I decided I wanted to learn how to garden — and my family teased me mercilessly because I was trying to change.

I really didn’t like it — especially because it made me not want to bother.

Teasing a friend or a loved one about weight or (say) lack of ambition, might just make them so fed up they become less capable than ever of change. So think about these matters the next time — ho, ho, ho! — you bring out the same old jokes.

Ellen, it’s terrific that you are reunited with your daughter, although (for your sake) you could have been more honest about why the marriage ended. It’s also very good news that you have a good relationship (sex or no sex — and sex isn’t everything) with this chap, even though he doesn’t hold your hand as often as you’d like.

I suggest you ask him gently if he realises that you feel insecure because of putting on a bit of weight and being six years older.

Don’t demand reassurance but talk quietly about how much your relationship means and how much you look forward to doing things with him — and with the new grandchild, too.

He will be finding his mother’s situation sad, tiring and worrying, and may well need reassurance that you will be there to give him support.

Mutual reassurance . . . that’s the best recipe for well-being.

And finally, our family bonds can defeat evil

This weekend I have a vital job — to make an angel outfit for my three-year-old granddaughter to wear in her first pre-school nativity play.

You can buy them cheaply online, of course, but this is a sacred mission for a grandmother. Out will come the heavy old Singer on which I made most of my clothes when I was a teenager, and then curtains and cushions for my first home, and then costumes for school plays for both of my children.

I have a good white sheet ready, and some gold trimmings, and my husband and I will engineer a gold halo, suspended above an Alice band. We don’t have to make wings because my daughter already has them . . . which is (shhh) rather a pity.

When the world is dark and threatening (as it usually is, but perhaps never more so than now) such activities provide refuge as well as joy. They act as an essential reminder that hatred cannot outweigh family love.

While the atrocities in Paris were fresh in the news (adding to horrors elsewhere in the world) my daughter-in-law helped my two grandchildren to bake a cake —and that was a simple, sacred ritual, too.

Daily I resist the temptation to cling to the little ones in terror of what their future holds (although I am indeed full of fear), and tell myself that kneeling on the floor to cut out one small angel gown is itself an act of defiance, as well as devotion.

All over the world, the bond between parent and child (and I am blessed still to be parented) is surely the strongest force against evil.

I know from writing this column, that it can go wrong, but it doesn’t dilute the essential message of service, sacrifice, empathy and love, without which we cease to be human.

In most religions, angels are messengers between heaven and earth. Therefore when moist-eyed parents and grandparents crane their necks to see the little ones in their angel outfits at the nursery nativity play, we will all receive that precious message all over again.

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