A life without addiction
“Where to start?
I guess with the phone call 5 years ago from my son to say he needed to come home as he had a drink & drug problem and he needed to come home to sort himself out. As a mum my instinct was that I could cure him with love and support within no time at all things would be back to normal. Well normal was not going to return to normal actually for the next few years normal did not exist.
How to explain living with an addict and their lies is hard if not impossible to imagine and describe to anyone who has not experienced first hand what it is like. Within the addict is the child I raised and love dearly but at the same time was the addict who I disliked intensely as I and his sisters lived with the day to day reality.
Life could only be described as turbulent never knowing what we would walk into. At its best he would be on a high but we all knew the comedown would be horrific. Any family occasions ruined with the impact of drugs - Christmas, birthdays etc all experienced under the cloud of his addictions.
I have lost count of the number of times the police have been called as he'd gone missing, the journeys to locate him from various places. The times he stole from us and threatened us. The times he self-harmed as a result of the drugs. The fear we all lived in when he threatened to kill himself he might actually go through with it or accidently do it. To come home and dread opening the door left me sick to the core and his sister would never come home first as she couldn't cope with not knowing what she would walk into.
The feeling of guilt we all felt immense as none of us could reach him but all of us had to deal with him. When he avoided family time it meant we could almost enjoy it but then would feel terrible that he wasn't here.
Addiction took away my son and the girl's brother.
What Kenward has given us is lightness of being, we no longer live with the feeling of tension and fear. We can all enjoy time without Will as we know he is safe. Equally when we are with Will it is as though we have young Will back. He looks healthy and well and is able to interact with his sisters and his niece.
For all of us it feels as though a great weight has been lifted - some of the issues I hadn't even realised were issues. For example I can now go to bed rather than sleep on the sofa ready to stop Will leaving the house in the middle of the night or waiting for phone calls when he was living elsewhere. We can all have friends for dinner etc without fear of what Will might do or what state he might be in. My grandaughter can be here without being frightened of her uncle.
Without the help from Kenward we would all still be in a very dark place indeed. Now we can all see a future that will obviously have it's ups and downs as that's life but a life without addiction. The feeling of release is unbelievable and it is only now looking back I realise how terrified we all were but gradually that terror has receded and at the end of a day I realise that I have not panicked irrationally always waiting for bad news.
As a family we cannot thank you enough for the future you have given us.
Thank you”