Ninth Step

Addiction is a bitch.

Photo by Manthan Gajjar on Unsplash

“I want the truth,” says a young Tom Cruise, clad in pristine Service Dress Blues, using his fist for emphasis. He’s trying to be tough in the face of a steely and steady Jack Nicholson, whose brows are knitted together just enough to look menacing, but not full-blown deranged as Jack Torrance in The Shining. It’s impressive.

“You can’t handle the truth!” Jack Nicholson exclaims, holding back just enough emotion so that when he explodes later, this seems mild. He adds a pause for emphasis before launching into his justification for his actions and existence.

We all know this scene. It became a punch line and a meme and has been circulating widely around social media this week in the wake of the murder of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner. It has been compiled with other memorable lines from Rob Reiner’s impressive oeuvre, the ones that are baked into our collective consciousness like “I’ll have what she’s having” and “But ours goes to 11.” A teary and earnest Kevin Bacon took to social media to express his gratitude and admiration for the director and the man who created what he experienced as a collaborative and wonderful work environment on the set of A Few Good Men.

Rob and Michele Reiner’s son, Nick, has been arrested and charged with their murders. His struggle with addiction has been well documented.

Addiction is a bitch. It takes out huge swaths of resources and destroys families. Addiction robs people of their fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, spouses, partners, and friends. Its wake is big and ugly and can look like scorched earth in its aftermath. Addiction is an equalizer. It is blind to gender, age, appearance, location, or vocation. It doesn’t care if you have a JD, a PhD, or a GED. It doesn’t take into account credit scores or bank accounts. Addicts come from what our society dubs as Good Families as frequently as Bad Families.

It is everywhere.

Addiction doesn’t discriminate, yet we do. We want to blame, point fingers, and “other” the addict and their families. Surely, someone did something WRONG. We file addicts into different categories. We excuse a hardworking, fun-loving, productive, white, male when he gets blackout drunk because he “is under stress” and needs to “let off some steam.” We lose compassion for an unhoused person with a heroin addiction who clearly made “bad choices” and is “lazy.” Hell, we celebrate men like the former, making him Secretary of Defense, while reviling the other, convinced that their station in life is the result of a lack of character or fortitude or whatever other lie we tell ourselves just so that we can separate ourselves from THAT.

When it comes to addiction, it is hard to handle the truth. It can happen to anyone. The Reiners’ murder slaps us in the face with this truth. Fame, fortune, loving parents, and opportunities didn’t stave off addiction in this case and in so many others. Addiction doesn’t care.

Putting addicts in categories to make ourselves feel better is not helpful. The fallout is painful and confusing and devastating for everyone in the addict’s wake, whether their drug of choice is scotch or meth. It doesn’t matter. It is like debating whether it is better to be hit by a bus or pushed off a cliff. They both suck.

In the aftermath of the Reiners’ murder, my mind and heart go out to everyone who has a loved one struggling with addiction and is dealing with the consequences. This is for you.

I think about a former patient of mine in East Tennessee. He was a curmudgeonly man who wore overalls to every appointment and refused to take off his trucker hat during treatment. He was gruff and rude, and I had a hard time connecting with him. One day, a young boy accompanied him to therapy. He introduced him as his grandson. He was ten. When his grandson went back to the waiting room, I asked, “Are you watching him today?”

“Nope. He lives with us,” he said. “I didn’t think this would be our lives now, but it is. His mom died of an overdose. His dad is addicted. We are his only hope.”

My attitude toward him softened. There were countless other patients like him. Taking on kids that weren’t theirs in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, as their health and savings declined, providing hope where there was very little. Their lives are taking a turn because of someone else’s actions.

I think about all the kids who simultaneously want and don’t want their alcoholic mom to show up for the Christmas play or to graduation or to the sporting event, because if she does show up, then the child doesn’t have to explain her absence. If she does show up, then the kid may have to excuse her behavior. The addict is sucking the joy out of the event either way. The child is being robbed of their own experience.

My heart goes out to the parents who are dealing with a child in active addiction right now. I have no answers. Only love.

It is excruciating to watch a person you love self-destruct. It is even harder to realize that there is nothing you can do to save them. It is harder still sometimes to choose your own well-being over that of the addict. Healing can be a lonely business. It is ninja-level love and acceptance to no longer participate in a dynamic of addiction with a loved one. It is almost too much for the human brain and heart to handle, because what we want more than anything is for our loved one to be well. We, or maybe it’s just me, want our loved ones to make it to that Ninth Step and beyond, where they can be active participants in life and relationships again, and we can exhale and stop worrying about their well-being, and we can see the parent or spouse or child that addiction stole from us, and we can feel normal.

Or not.

For many families, that will never happen. They are left picking up what is left on the scorched earth. They are doing their best to navigate untenable and unsustainable situations. They are making hard decisions and groping in the dark. They are taking on burdens that aren’t theirs. They are breaking open every day.

I see you.

I feel you.

I am sending you love.

That is the truth.