The flame
© Unknown
I detested Adan, the leader of our son's IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program). But in one family session, he conducted an exercise that helped me see my son's drug addiction in a new way, and gave me the small measure of strength I needed to make some painful but necessary choices.

I offer the exercise here for myself: I need a reminder of where we have been. But if you love an addict, maybe this exercise will help you as well.

Adan's IOP followed a Native American theme: lots of drumming, storytelling, spirit names, and burning sage - "Aho!" For this exercise, family members sat on pillows in a circle, candles flickering, Indian flute music softly quavering, incense filling the air with cloying, nauseating musk.

Adan handed each of us five slips of paper, and had us write down the most important people or things in our lives, numbering these from 5 to 1. People generally listed family members and God; some listed abstract nouns such as love or peace.

If you'd like to experience the impact of the exercise, make your list now. Put your slips of paper in order, 5 on the top, 1 on the bottom.

Adan then had us close our eyes, focus on what we had written on paper number 5, and imagine that we would never again in our lives have this thing. It was gone forever. We were to imagine our lives without it, really try to get a visual and sensory picture of what we would feel and experience if we lost it forever. We were then to crumple that piece of paper and toss it away.

If you are participating, stop here, close your eyes, and imagine forever losing number five on your list. Crumple your paper. Toss it.

Adan had us follow the same procedure with slips of paper 4 through 2. If you're trying this as you read, be sure to close your eyes and thoroughly imagine your life bereft of these things you have written. Then crumple them and throw them away, one at a time.

Then you will come to your final slip of paper, the one thing or person more important to you than anything or anyone else. It was probably a hard decision for you to choose what to write. And it might be hard imagining this loss, crumpling and tossing aside this thing you treasure most.

Have you done it? Have you now thrown away everything and everyone important to you?

Adan gathered our papers, placed them in a copper bowl, and lit them on fire. Then he asked, "What did you feel? What emotions did you experience when you crumpled those papers and threw them away?" Papers burning, smoke rising, tears spilling, members of the group whispered their answers:

Utter Loss

Grief

Denial

Anger

Depression

Refusal

Fear

Hopelessness

Darkness

Here's where the exercise got tricky. I as usual had jumped ahead to guess the point. I thought Adan was showing us an exercise he led the kids through to help them realize what they stood to lose if they continued in their addictions. I thought he was showing us how he got the addict to focus on the things that were truly important to him.

But no, the message of the exercise was intended for us, the family members, the enablers, the heartbroken and desperate.

The message was this:

All those emotions - utter loss, grief, denial, anger, depression, refusal, fear, hopelessness, darkness...

This is what the addict feels when he gives up drugs.

Terribly clear, isn't it? You've made a list of golden, loved, people and things, touchstones that give your life meaning. And number one was hard for you - should you put God? Your child? Your spouse? Yourself? Love?

But for the addict in your life, number one is automatic. Even if they don't admit it, drugs have become their consuming force, their unquenchable urgency, their life goal and number-one, most-loved thing.

Even if that love is malignant, it is love still.

* * *
The exercise, and the lesson learned from it, was excruciating. But it was also liberating.

I had not been able to find the strength to send my son to rehab because I was haunted by the image of him alone in a dark room, away from his family, crying.

It is the special affliction of a mother: you are staring at a young adult in trouble, and you are seeing this:

son
© Annette2009
My son was (is!) my catalyst, the worry that knived into my sleep, the prayer my heart uttered with fevered desire. I kept thinking if I just said the right thing... conjured the perfect words... if he saw how much I was hurting, how much the whole family was hurting... the light would flip on and he would be cured.

This was the night that I tossed away those delusions. No amount of love from me or any of us would save him. My son alone would have to reorder his list, find a new number one thing that gave his life meaning.

I had to let him go. Otherwise, I very well might lose him, along with all the other things I had written on those burning slips of paper.