Each week, a group of parents warmly greet each other as we meet in a townhouse office building on the east side of Manhattan in New York City. Many different groups gather here, including those attending AA and Al-Anon meetings, sibling groups, and others seeking comfort, support and education.
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My Child is an Addict: A Parent-to-Parent Podcast
thesoberworld.com/2018/10/01/child-addict-parent-parent-podcast
Each week, a group of parents warmly greet each other as we meet in a townhouse office
building on the east side of Manhattan in New York City. Many different groups gather
here, including those attending AA and Al-Anon meetings, sibling groups, and others
seeking comfort, support and education. Ours is a group of parents whose children are
addicts, and this is our weekly Parent Support Group.
We share heartbreakingly honest stories about the challenges we have endured: the good,
the bad and the ugliest. What’s gone right and not; what has been learned along the way
from professionals that have guided us in a new way of parenting. We update each other
on the status of our children — those in recovery or relapsed, in treatment, on the streets
or not heard from, and so much more.
The central reason we are together, however, is to help ourselves and each other, not to
figure out how to “fix” our children. We’re kept on track by a clinician who leads our
group and creates teachable moments along the way. At each session, I find something to
bring home from this room.
We share strategies and support as we seek to keep our own lives together, to maintain
our marriages, and to still be parents to our other non-addicted children. I’ve become
better educated as I try to deal with all that it means to experience the impact of having an
addicted child in the family. This insidious, progressive, deadly disease really has infected
me and my family in ways that I could never have imagined.
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Fear and hope brought us together, so we hold on tightly and quickly go from strangers to
the dearest of friends– new friends that have become the safest place to reveal our darkest
thoughts to, even when withholding from family members and colleagues. I have found
that regularly attending this, and other Parent Support Groups in New Jersey and
Connecticut, has made all the difference, even when my son was not doing well.