Eleven Years A Storm

 This is a deeply personal post. It is the story of tragedy and redemption. It is the story of my beautiful Matthew. It is a story of a parents love in spite of circumstance. It is a story of promise and hope. But most of all, it is our story.

Eleven Years A Storm 

 

There are many ways in which to describe it, models that offer a sense of possibility, and excuses that explain it away. The common denominator is rooted in destruction. Families, marriages, relationships and jobs all fall peril to its relentless grip.  

My son Matthew is an alcoholic. While I won’t pretend to be an expert in this disease, I can tell you lessons that were learned by loving him during the eleven-year storm that was created in our lives while he was abusing alcohol.  

He was a beautiful baby. His bright blue eyes and long dark lashes endeared him to many. We had prayed for him. He was born after the loss of the child before him. The only boy and the youngest, his two sisters doted on him making him the constant object of attention. When he got to school, he charmed all of his teachers with his boyish ways. By the time he was in high school, his fellow students voted him Teachers Pet in his senior superlatives. He had many friends, and seemed to always be included in whatever was going on. He also had a sense of feeling he was invincible. He actually used the word invincible to describe himself. As a pre-teen he would climb our garage roof, launching himself into our swimming pool. It never crossed his mind that he could injure himself, it was all about the fun. This translated to him being a rather reckless driver in his teens. I'm sure he sped down the streets far more than I ever knew. Maybe this was a precursor of things to come, or by chance I turned a blind eye chalking it up raising a head strong boy. 

Matt and I were, and still are very close. I was his confidant, or as he told his college admissions counselor, his best friend. This was a distinction I took great pride in. I felt I had a leg up on so many parents whose teens barely spoke to them, or grimaced when they would walk in a room. I thought as long as Matt felt that way, I would always know what was going on his life, and be able to guide him into good and moral choices. I found out just how far that could be from the truth. There is no feeling that can compare to loosing grip on your child’s reality, watching them drift further and further away, lost, over a horizon you cannot reach        

 

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When it was time for college Matt applied to several schools and was accepted to many. He had worked hard in High school and graduated in the upper 10% of his class, along with the well-rounded extra-curricular activities he had to offer he made an outstanding candidate for any University. He wanted to go to school in Chicago and live downtown. While I pushed for a smaller school, he chose The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). In the end, I felt it should be his choice, after all, he worked hard to go where he could see himself succeed. So UIC it was. I remember the feeling of pride I had at his convocation ceremony as they paraded all of the freshmen into the auditorium. The professors were all there in their robes, and my son, was a part of it all. Tears streamed down my face as I dared to dream of his perfect future. 

Those dreams were short lived as it all appeared to be too much too soon. Within the first couple of months, we were called from the University Hospital. Matt had been brought in highly inebriated, throwing his head against the walls – unable to be contained. His roommate called an ambulance and he was brought there. The call came in around 11:00PM and I had to work the next day. I asked the clerk if he could just stay there and sleep it off then return to his dorm. I was convinced that was all he needed. Another call came in an hour later. He is insisting on you coming down here the clerk implored. She continued; He has ripped out his IV with his mouth and is extremely belligerent. Reluctantly I woke my husband, and we drove the hour to the hospital. When we arrived, they brought us to a secluded room where Matt was. He was lying in a dark room on a gurney. His arms and legs were in restraints, he had urinated all over himself. They put him in there to isolate him and calm him down. But no one checked on him to give him a urinal, or make sure he didn’t vomit and aspirate it. They treated him like a bum they had picked up off the street, and perhaps to them he was no different than that. I didn’t know whether to cry or be angry. In the end, I was a bit of both. But most of all I was heartbroken to see Matt in such a state. We brought him home and my husband put him in the shower, fed him and put him to bed. In a manner of total denial, I told myself, it's his first time away from home in the big city, I'm sure it will never happen again. How very wrong I was. 

It, in fact, it happened so many more times, not to that extent, that he rarely went to class, and flunked out of school. This was the first of so many things leading to his downward spiral. 

Matt began working in the restaurant industry after he returned home, and by all accounts doing very well. He eventually worked his way into management, but the road was paved with drinking, late nights, and dabbling in drugs. He was living away from home for a great deal of the time, and I had no idea how deep his addiction had become. I heard stories of him doing inappropriate things when he drank, and at this point everyone thought he was the life of the party. People's response to his behavior would be – Oh, that’s just Matty! I knew he was making extremely good money, but never seemed to have enough. I would ask where his money went, and he would tell me he didn’t know. His friends became the central core of his life often taking precedence over family. His friends really weren't friends but people who took advantage of his open wallet policy when he was drinking. Thousands and thousands of dollars were spent in local bars, courtesy of Matt. It was at this time he got his first DUI. Convincing me that the police watched him and other patrons leave the bar and followed them. At the slightest  

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infraction they would pull people over and cite them for DUI. Rather than face the fact that my son had a serious drinking problem, I helped him get out of it. I asked a friend of ours who was an attorney to defend him. Matt got out of it relatively unscathed with essentially a slap on the wrist. Just like that, it went away and we went on in our cloud of oblivion.   

When you love an addict, you make all kinds of excuses for their behavior. And even though at this point I was growing weary of it, I continued to keep our family secret. A couple of years following the first DUI he received his second. This time it was more serious as it had a driving recklessly charge attached to it and it was his second. I couldn’t stand the thought of him going to jail, I didn’t feel he had the wherewithal to survive there. He had already flirted with suicide threats, and I knew he was depressed. His attorney tried to prepare us for the possibility of him going away, but I paid him a hefty sum to defend Matt and keep him from that. His case never went to trial, instead it was settled out of court. He managed to evade jail, but had his license taken away and was court ordered to outpatient treatment. You would have thought that would be enough for him to hit bottom, unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly enough. Matthew went on to lose two jobs due to his drinking and hanging out with a very questionable crowd. He was now living at home with the loss of his license, giving me a front row seat to witness just how bad things had become. It was not an enviable position. Each night I could never fall asleep fully until I knew he was home. My mind would race with horrible thoughts of police cars and ambulances. Or, the ultimate thought of being called to the morgue to identify him. At this point his sisters urged us to kick him out to give us peace. I could never do that though. If I heard him stumble in at 4:00 AM and I knew he was safe, I could rest at that point. If I never knew if he was home or not because he was living away, anxiety would become my main emotion. 

And all these years I never spoke about it, not even to my closest friends. I was ashamed, I felt like a failure, as though I brought him up to become an addict. I cried alone, wondering what would become of my beautiful boy, at times not even wanting to be around him. For eleven years I prayed to God – please guide him to help, please help me help him. The funny thing is, you can do everything imaginable to deter people from drinking too much, but until they are ready, until they decide, your hard-fought intentions are in vain. That, is an agonizing deal. Because we are so close, I believed I could love him into sobriety. I knew if he just saw how much his addiction was hurting me, he would give it up. Yet again, I was wrong. He was living in a circle of drinking, blackouts, hangover, and drinking. He rarely waivered from that. Once he took that first drink, he could not stop. 

And then last March he went out for a co-worker's birthday party. In stellar fashion he became very drunk. Drunk to the point his friends were calling me worried about him. This was not the first time I had been summoned by his friends, so I had very little concern about it. Oh, the guilt you have when apathy creeps in. Horrible, gut-wrenching guilt. And so, I rolled over in bed and attempted to rest until he got home. It was 2:00 in the morning and he came storming through my bedroom door. The odor of smoke and alcohol proceeded him in, as I rolled my eyes praying, he would just pass out. Instead, he began to weep deep wallows of pain, Mom, he said – I am an alcoholic and I need your help, please help me. I sat up at once, crying myself and told him of  

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course I will, of course. It will be OK. I immediately got my phone and called a rehab facility. After interviewing Matt and checking insurance, he was accepted in. By 5:00 AM we were in the car driving there for his admission. A nurse came to the car to meet him, as I was instructed to  

say my goodbyes in the cold early morning March air. Could it finally be happening? I had to pinch myself for fear I would wake up and this was all a dream. 

Matthew finished his treatment program and emerged a new man. He looked so much healthier and happier. Could I finally have my son back? The answer is a resounding yes! All because he was ready. Ready to leave behind a life that had given him nothing. A life that had stymied his growth as a human being. A cold partner, leaving his own heart frigid and unable to accept love in return. 

Matt found many friends in his new sobriety, and support from the ones who truly cared during his addiction. He found in himself new purpose, driven by his desire for continuous sobriety. He attends a church every Sunday with his core of sober friends, feeding in him a desire to be of service to others. To that end, he has re-enrolled in college and is studying to become a certified Drug and Addiction counselor. We just got his first semester grades and he is getting straight A’s. I feel like when God answered my prayer, he pulled out all the stops. Matthew is becoming the man I always knew he was born to be. The eleven-year storm has finally calmed, creating a beautiful peace.