Drugs in the family

Update -- My cousin called his mom finally. Acted like he had no clue as to why the cops would raid Grandma's house, and no idea why all his stuff had been taken out of the house.

Unbelievable.

 

My uncle was a lawyer, a player agent, the Big Ten supervisor of officials for football and the only man at the time to have been the head referee in all four major bowl games: Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton. He's in the Wisconsin Hall of Fame. He was the referee who called clipping in "The Big Chill" when they're watching the game. And he was a teetotaler.

At age 59 or so, perhaps transitioned because of pain killers he needed for his knees from all that refereeing -- football AND Big Ten basketball -- he got hooked on crack cocaine.

He lost his house, his family, his cars. When the legal system caught up with him, he was in total denial, claiming it was a conspiracy of his enemies. He was disbarred. His wife left him and his family pretty much cut all ties. He was arrested with other drug users and prostitutes.

Eventually, all of this caught up with him and he died, pretty much alone. This man was a pillar of his community, and of the sports and referee world, and this is what crack did to him.

There will always be debate about whether drug or alcohol use is a disease. Rational Recovery, for example, says no. But whatever it is, it can be insidious, relentless and completely destructive.

My choice was lots of alcohol, and I haven't had a drink in 14 months. I used a method other than AA to get here, but before this, it cost me a lot of money and certainly relationships and lost time.

RR (I didn't use them, either) calls the addictive voice "the Beast." And it is every bit of that.

 

Good for you SF. Here's hoping that you continue to keep "the Beast" away.

 

As someone who has been to the bottom of the barrel and back again (multiple things), I will echo that someone has to want to quit before they finally do. I quit because I wanted to and got everything in order in a few months. My friends all went through multiple rounds of rehab and still aren't clean. The difference? I wanted to quit, they still don't. As a family member, all I can say is do what you can to make your life better. It sucks to watch a loved one spiral, but the more you push the more they will push back. Does that mean you have to go along with it? No way! You should never be an enabler, but dragging an addict kicking and screaming to rehab rarely gets you where you want to be. Take care of the people around you that need that love too, they need it a lot right now.