Becoming Fearless with the Help of Al-Anon

 

By the Mother of a Past Claudia Black - Young Adult Drug Treatment PatientAs my daughter does her recovery work from drug and alcohol addiction and anxiety, I too work my recovery through Al-Anon.

I won’t go into details of how my daughter and I both came to this point because I’m guessing many of you are already familiar with the scenario— failing grades, arrests, court appearances, isolation, detachment, and on and on.

I spent many fear-filled nights of insanity sleeping with my phone next to me waiting for that call parents fear most… Was she in jail again? Was she in an accident? Did she overdose? Was she dead? I received one of those calls. My daughter was in such a bad place that she couldn’t even finish her last semester of college.

Finally, I gave in to my fear, checked my ego, and accepted the help of many friends and family. With mixed emotions of anger, pain, shame, and guilt, I put aside my resentment of being forced to face my daughter’s issues, and on a Sunday morning her intervention team showed up at her college rental house. To say things didn’t go as planned would be an understatement. The well thought out plan of getting her to agree to go to treatment failed; she would not go.

I left the intervention feeling defeated and numb. What now? As hard as it was, I tried tough love and cut her cell phone service off and thus lost total communication with her. However, she still had our family dog, Bailey, at the rental house.

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