ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997 TAG: 9703030072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
THE HARDEST LESSON OF ALL: how to give up trying to control the uncontrollable - the addict.
When Lou Martin's friend was busted for drugs and ordered to receive treatment, she wanted to be there for him.
Martin showed up for a meeting of Family Lifeline, a support group for friends and relatives of drug and alcohol abusers, thinking she was going to learn how to help her friend with his problem.
"I was there for only one night before I found out that I was the one who had a problem," Martin said Saturday during a seminar for "co-dependents" - people who try so hard to break a loved one's addiction that their own lives are nearly destroyed in the process.
Co-dependents mistakenly blame themselves for a family member's substance abuse problem, then neglect their own needs as they "learn to accept the intolerable," said Linda Keelean, a certified addiction counselor.
Through counseling and group discussion, Family Lifeline teaches relatives what they can do to help an addict recover, which is often a lesson in what they cannot do.
As attested by Martin and others who spoke during the half-day session at Maple Street Baptist Church in Northwest Roanoke, the hardest thing about dealing with an addicted family member is coming to terms with three basic facts: You didn't cause it; you can't cure it; and you certainly can't control it.
Once they realize that, Family Lifeline participants begin repairing their own lives. "This group has been as much a treatment and recovery program for me as a drug recovery program is for an addict," Martin said.
"I no longer try to fix people who are addicted; that's their job. I try to fix myself."
Keelean began the seminar, attended by 15 to 20 people, with a scientific explanation of how drug addiction is a disease, not the result of an immoral lifestyle. "Nancy Reagan did us all a world of hurt ... when she started the 'Just say no' campaign," she said. "Addicts can't say no."
Her views were supported by several speakers who said they learned the hard way.
One man recalled driving through the streets of Roanoke in search of his alcoholic daughter, who was out on a drinking binge. When he was stopped by a police officer, who suspected he was drinking because he was driving so slowly, the man realized that he was wasting his time.
"I learned that it was not my fault that she drank," he said. "When they get it in their heads that they're going to drink, nothing is going to stop them. Until they decide to help themselves, you can't help them."
A woman recalled how she broke down in tears when she finally accepted that fact - even though her drug-using son had been taking advantage of her for years. "That boy has tried every trick in the book on me, and he always left the house with my money in his pocket," she said.
In much the same way that a substance abuser denies that he or she has a problem, family members can be blind to the most obvious symptoms.
Once the abuse becomes apparent - usually through a crisis such as an arrest - and the person enters a drug treatment program, family members can be shut out of the healing process.
"In a co-dependent relationship, the world seems to revolve around the person who is chemically dependent, and very often the voice of the person who is trying to take care of them is not heard," said Robyn Dobyns, one of the speakers at the seminar.
While most family members who spoke Saturday seemed resigned to the fact that their loved one was an incurable substance abuser, they refused to throw up their hands in defeat.
"You have to learn to love your addict differently," Keelean said. "However you loved them in the past has not worked. You still love them; you just do it differently."
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