Lorraine

Lorraine, family member

When we discovered that our son had a problem with drugs and was an addict, it came really unexpected, we didn’t see it coming and it totally rocked our world. The months that followed were chaos, it was like a tsunami.

We were in a terrible place as a family we were struggling as parents. It was heartbreaking watching our son struggle. We hadn’t seen this problem coming because we weren’t looking for the signs we didn’t know of them. We hadn’t anticipated that it was world our son had entered into. He was successful, happy in our eyes when he was in our home. Looked well, and was covering up his problems really well. Over a period of months we were getting nowhere. We were trying to put restrictions into our son’s life. We were trying to monitor his every move.

What we realised now is that confinement, only makes matters worse. Our son was aware that we were constantly watching him, we will constantly analysing and his moods and that creates another pressure. And we realised that we were on a hamster wheel going round and getting nowhere. And we really needed professional advice. We needed people who knew about addiction to help our son, and us as a family. When we found steps together, it was just a huge sense of relief, we knew we’d found somewhere, that was safe. That would give us hope, and would give us some peace.

The day we dropped our son off at rehabilitation. We sat in the car and just felt a huge sigh of relief. It was emotional, but we knew that he was in the right place, and that he was going to get the help he needed. Our son thrived while he was at steps together. They offered him, not a permanent solution because it’s a problem that’s going to need a lot of work for a long time. But what they did give our son was a toolbox, a toolkit that he can take with him now, through the rest of what hopefully is going to be a fantastic life as a recovering addict.