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This Month’s Guest Blogger LORELIE ROZZANO - Author of Jagged Little Edges

6/25/2013

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Concerned …or Consumed?

Addiction, the only disease you can Love to Death!

Families are tough; after all they live together and experience everything life has to throw at them. And every family seems to have their own special brand of ‘cross’ to carry. They can struggle with divorce, cancer, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, anxiety, depression, abuse, mental illness and addiction, just to name a few.

As the old saying goes “Life is just one damned thing after another.”

Except with addiction, “It’s the same damned thing over and over again.

Now any of the above issues would be alarming and cause concern. But in families suffering from addiction, healthy concern progresses, just as surely as addiction does.

You don’t notice at first. It starts off as a niggling worry.

Is he drinking too much?

Is he stoned?

Why is he always sniffling?

And just like any predatory bird out hunting prey, you start to watch for it.

You develop the ability to hone in on this one individual, excluding all else.

Maybe you start hiding the bottles, or car keys, or your wallet. You begin feeling fidgety, worried, and anxious.

You’re at work and you can’t focus. Your child is tugging on your leg, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Your spouse asks you a question and has to repeat it. And all the while you can’t stop thinking…

Where is he?

Who’s he with?

Is he using?

You might find yourself continually ‘checking up’ on this person. Maybe you drive by his/her work, or check the cell phone, or the hood of the car. You watch his/her face for twitches or signs… they are on something!

And then one day, your suspicions are confirmed.

You try reasoning, bargaining, pleading, and threatening, all to no avail.

Can’t you see it’s killing you?

Just this one more time, I won’t give you money again.

Please stop, I love you.

If you don’t stop I’ll leave.

It falls on deaf ears and you are left alone, hurting, confused and in agony.

Others don’t seem quite as impacted as you.

Maybe it’s their fault? If they were better mothers/fathers/lovers/wives/children and family members, this wouldn’t be happening.

Your concern grows…

You feel angry and resentful. You can’t eat or sleep. Your well-being is now firmly entrenched in how the alcoholic/addict is doing.

You smile when they do.

Their bad days become yours. Your mission? To minimize those bad days.

Your job is demanding. The position is full time; the hours are never ending, and the pay, from your own pocket.

And still, you keep waiting.

Your world grows smaller. You avoid your friends. Family members attempt to support you, but you pull away. After all they don’t really understand.

Nobody knows him/her like I do.

You wake up, go to sleep, and spend all day, thinking about this one person.

Concerned has now crossed the threshold into consumed just as surely as problem drinking becomes addiction.

And now?

We have two very sick family members.

Both will keep waiting for the other to become well. One has an excuse; they’re using substance, which impairs their reasoning.

But don’t kid yourself. The non-addicted family members reasoning, becomes every bit as impaired. 

Addiction, the only disease you can love to death

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    About Me

    Donna was born and raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Canada; a relatively small steel making community, and spent her first 25 years there. She married, divorced and raised two of her three children there until leaving during the recession of the early 1980's. Toronto more than provided her with the means to support her family; it held all of the resources that she would need to attain her goals and dreams of a better future than The Sault could ever possibly allow her.

    Sadly, those goals and dreams were hers alone, and she soon found the unhappiness of her children would cost her their upbringing.

    At the age of nine, Jacquilynne and her older brother, then twelve, would return to the care of their father and the same small town influences that had driven their mother away.

    Although raised by the same moral standards, only two of Donna's children grew to be fine young men with deep rooted standards and convictions while her daughter Jacquilynne choose a life completely contradictory to every moral she was raised by.

    And so, it would be Jacquilynne, her only daughter, who would provide Donna with the basis, as well as the encouragement, with which to write.

    Jacquilynne's life style would find her beaten, threatened with death, in the midst of murders and crime, running for her life and suffering terminal illness caused from her addiction. Donna would learn how wrong the common belief that "addiciton is a choice" really is and how 'tough love' almost denied her the final months of her daughter's life. 

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