Addiction and Grief
Arun died on Jan 20th 2024. Ten days before my parents 44th anniversary. A little more than a month before my mothers 72nd birthday and less than 2 months before his own 43rd birthday. I spent the first few weeks reading, and agonizing about what we could have done, what the doctors did or did not do. I scoured the internet for resources to understand what had just befallen us, are there others too who are in such pain? Can I find myself not alone in this extremely isolating experience, can I find any solace in the stories of others?
It was in one such search, I chanced upon the writings of Lauren Davis. Lauren is a writer by profession and lost two of her step brothers to suicide directly linked to addiction. I would read and re-read her writings on addiction and her brother Ronnie's eulogy. I quote here directly from her writing April is the Cruelest Month.
“And then, last year, it happened again. Even though my step-mother spent nearly every waking hour of every day for the past decade trying to save Ronnie’s life, it wasn’t possible. He was so far into his addiction that his body and mind were broken, I believe, beyond repair. So there was another funeral, and more people spilling out onto the church’s lawn, and enormous amounts of kindness and love along with the indescribable anguish, and the wounds that will never fully heal. You learn to limp, and turn toward the light, and your faith, if you haven’t lost it altogether, grows a little deeper, and you look for meaning in the lives of the one’s you’ve lost, and the pain you feel.”
This was our story too, my mother perhaps spent every minute of the last two years thinking about my brother, and so did I. We tried and tried to conquer a beast we understood little about, but we tried, because we loved him. Some passages in her writing hit me hard, because the story repeats itself. In the last few days, I have spent time on countless Reddit and AA forums trying to understand this illness, and what it befalls on the family, and it all seems to be similar in pattern. I have wondered in fact if my depression saved me from addiction. I was always scared of picking up smoking or marijuana with this small little voice in my head that said “I am depressed already, this thing can only push me over.”
From her eulogy for her brother Ronnie.
Addiction robbed both my brothers of everything, and left those of us who loved them in agony. Nevertheless, even though they died, I believe they planted a seed of salvation in me. So that’s why I write about this. I honor my brothers’ memory, and I know that if someone reads this and asks for help because of it, if someone turns from despair to hope, then their lives had meaning.
The last few years we felt this acutely. The fabric of a family laid bare, thread by thread. I was as worried for my aging parents, as I was for him. We constantly see ourselves going between sadness, despair, guilt and anger. Understanding addiction isn’t easy, it isn’t as though we can wish away these feelings, or that we paid the ultimate price for it.
Addiction, whether it be to drugs or to alcohol, is a disease that infects not only the person who drinks or drugs, but everyone else in his or her world. We cause worry and grief. We betray and let down people who would never do the same to us. I remember the day my beloved husband turned to me and said, “I just don’t believe you’re on my side anymore.” He was right. We are like hurricanes going through the lives of others, leaving in our wake unspeakable wreckage and profound wounds.
