I am the mother of 4 amazing kids. Three are now adults, and one just 9 and in the third grade. As each of them was born I can vividly remember looking at their sweet faces wondering just what they would be when they grew up.
Don’t we all do that?
We wonder things like; will they become a Doctor, Teacher, Congressmen, will they cure cancer, build tall buildings or stop traffic. Will they play baseball ,football or dance in the Nutcracker one day. Attend College or enter the military? Will they marry and give me a bunch of grandchildren one day. But NEVER do we wonder…
Will you become a drug addict?
I know for a fact I never thought that. And as a parent I did everything I could to prevent that. I was a stay at home mom for 14 years and started back at work part time when my youngest of the now adult children was in 2nd grade. At which time I put them in a private faith based school. Thinking I was protecting them from a few of the evils that may lurk in the halls of public school. I raised them in the Faith, each going to church for the first time at just a week old. They grew up in Sunday school, learning about Loving God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. Doing our best to give them a moral compass with which to walk one day on their own.
Two did… two are successful women; one has completed graduate school the other making her way through it. Both have homes of their own, one married and did indeed bless me with a parcel of grandchildren.
So how can one of the three end up an addict? How is it when we do all we can to raise a family with love, values, morals, dinner around the table as a family every evening, attending the baseball games, the concerts etc ect ect… can one of the children of your womb end up addicted to one of the worst street drugs out there… heroin.
Too often we think the face of addiction is that of someone else’s child, from some street in the inner city. And they come only from broken, impoverished homes. A home where no one cared, no one ate dinner together, children that wondered the streets till all hours of the night and no one called out their names that it was time for dinner or bed…
The truth be told; addiction hits indiscriminately. It cross all economic boundaries, it is NO respecter of persons. It cares not if you ate dinner with your children every night, tucked them into bed with night time prayers, and sent them to the best of schools…
Addiction cares not about the hopes you had as you looked into that sweet face, that small infant you bore. Addiction can and does ravage the best of families. It ravaged mine. And we are battling back; fighting against it as best we know how. Doing all we can to help remove the stigma that comes with addiction so that families will come out of the dark shadows and fight alongside us.
My hope is that if your family has been affected you will not be afraid to all you can to fight… will you join me.
GUEST POSTED AT http://www.sobernation.com/the-faces-of-addiction%E2%80%A6/
A Mothers Heart 
You have a wonderful way of putting things in perspective i too have 3 children 2 are successful one is an addict for the last 15 years. i think he is sectioning himself as i write this. lets hope so
That magic number… 40$… praying he sections himself and gets back on the right path.
he must have somehow known i was typing this he just called asking for 40 dollars