IT'S A HEARTACHE

DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE

IT’S A HEARTACHE

by Adam Carroll Draper

Addiction comes with a ton of unintended consequences.  It is itself an unintended consequence of using, although it is entirely foreseeable.  Being a relative or a friend of quite a few addicts at this point, I get to detest the heartache inflicted upon those left in the devastation of an addict as one of those consequences.  It is not just the heartache of watching a life squandered, a light put out, but the congealed groaning from incessant gut punches and betrayals suffered at the hands of someone you love, who never intended to be a feckless piece of excrement, but is nevertheless.

There, I have said it.  If you have finally allowed yourself to accept that someone you love is addicted to drugs or alcohol (there are certainly other addictions), then you must acquaint yourself with the reality that the person you loved is not the same.  Addicts are the subjects (slaves) of their addictions.  They will honestly believe they will never use again and be certain of that as they are drawing the heroin into the needle or stealing money from their grandparents (or their grandkids - let’s not lose perspective) so they can use.  

Feckless pieces of excrement, yet beloved and worth saving!

I keep hearing Bonnie Tyler singing, “It’s a heartache, nothing but a heartache; hits you when it’s too late, hits you when you’re down.”  She was singing about a romance gone bad, but the sentiment applies.  “It’s a fool’s game, nothing but a fool’s game; standing in the cold rain, feeling like a clown.”

Here is where the rubber meets the road.  What do you do when someone you love is addicted?  The second thing you do is realize that you love someone who is not there now, but who may be back again, then gone again… then seem back, but always was gone… but who may (one fine season in the sun) get to a place where actually living is better than living death.  If that’s the second thing you do, what’s the first thing?  Oh, the first thing is to let it sink into your deep, mortified skull that you have absolute proof an addict is lying because his mouth is moving or her eyes are crying.

This tirade may come as a surprise.  I can hear it now, “Draper, why all this busting on addicts after all this time?”  If you have to ask, you don’t love an addict, or you haven’t lost someone you loved to addiction.  I am just saying what people who have lived through it know down in the depths of the pain a pill won’t reach.  If you have to ask, you also don’t know why the people who love addicts endure their… excrement.  That person you love is still in there.  That is the other side. (Of course, the codependency of the aggrieved is an issue as well, but that is for another day).

Addicts don’t wake up one morning and decide to become feckless pieces of excrement.  It happens to them with each lie and with each abandonment of decency.  With each betrayal, there is a voice justifying it because others don’t understand how bad it is.  Imagine the call of the impossible to resist demanding obedience just to feel normal for a minute, but for that minute you abandon your humanity.  The others don’t know.  You have become a paranoid wretch, like Gollum lusting for the ring, insanely suspecting everyone of loathsome conspiracies.  You act normal for a time, but everywhere you go you may act out in obedience to the madness contrived in your inner turmoil – and you can’t really tell the difference between that mad world and the one from which you fell.   The others don’t know, so your only friends become those who use with you – those you use, and who use you to use.  I imagine it is quite like hell.

Why hold out hope for a slave to another god?  Because God is never giving up.  There is always hope.  The hope is Jesus.

At the House of Prayer, where Stef and I volunteer, we have seen men healed from addiction permanently.  I mean it, permanently.  It is miraculous.  I don’t want to call the House of Prayer a Christian rehabilitation center because it’s more like a place of hope for the hopeless, a rest from the noise.

My heart has been broken over and over again, however, for men who have cried their hearts out before God and left with the certainty that it was over, only to use and die later.  Some use almost immediately after they walk out.  Others make a go at a new life, and then (for one reason or another) they forget, and they’re gone – taking families, who had only reluctantly allowed them back, through yet another round of hell.  Yet those families experienced that resurrected man, saw him again and knew it was him for that wonderful time.  It may have been brief or it may have lasted years, but the song of death was still in the addict and he slowly started singing it again.  If they live, some make it back to the House of Prayer to reacquaint themselves with mercy.

I have never tried heroin, never smoked any dope (other than pot), so I have not walked a mile in the shoes of an addict.  I am, however, one of God’s redeemed from self-absorption and depression.  I am redeemed, but it took a good long while for the reality of God’s love and his patience to spring up a new tree from the roots of my new being.  That new Adam is not the spitting image of Jesus, but I am called to be, and I want my Lord to have that in me - here on this earth, now.

That call, the love of God, the redemption bought by the blood of our Lord Jesus, is the joyful hope.  We all cling to that for dear life because it is life eternal.  We can hope for an addict in the same way we hold on to our own blessed assurance. 

You know, the Lord did not elaborate on the story of the Prodigal Son after he had been home for a while.  Knowing prodigals, how many times do you think he left again?  How many times might he have come home to a Father welcoming him? 

Healing from addiction is a process that is longer for some than others.  Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not advocating taking an addict back in your home upon every return as if you are some sort of resting place.  No, that may be the last thing an addict needs, and it could quite likely turn out to be the most stupid decision you ever made.  An addict needs Jesus, not someone with a messianic complex. 

I am saying that there is hope.  My advice to those living the agony of loving the addicted is that you must keep your eyes open, call the Liar out and don’t facilitate it.  That is easier said than done.  It’s a heartache, nothing but a heartache.

Lord have mercy.  Christ have mercy.  Lord have mercy.

If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment and/or share it.  It helps.  I sincerely appreciate that you have taken the time to read it.