Friends and Family of Persons with Addiction

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Description

This is a safe space for friends and family of addicts to share stories, give support, and post resources for addiction.
This is not a group for people currently experiencing addiction. There are other Fediverse communities with that purpose, and I plan to facilitate my own in the future as well.

Notes

This is not exclusive to drug addiction, as there are many types of addiction.
I intend to add resources as I am able.

Chat

There is a Matrix channel for a more live-style chat. It can be found at: https://matrix.to/#/%23fafopwa%3Amatrix.org
Element is a popular client for Matrix channels and is available on iOS, Android, and other platforms

Resources

Dr Gabor Maté has one of the most comprehensive understandings of addiction that I have found. His book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts helps people understand the reason for addiction as we understand it currently.
Addict in the House by Robin Barnett has a more direct approach for “okay, now what can I actually do in my situation?”

Related Communities

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Disclaimer

This will not replace counseling, therapy, or medical advice. If you find yourself in an emergent situation, call 911 (in the US) for medical assistance or 988 for mental health crisis.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

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the importance of postcards (my brother is back in rehab) (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My brother's been in and out of jail and rehab for years. Meth and opioids. We're not close, but he was a ~~great kid~~ annoying younger brother before I went to college. Then he started drugs and kept doing them into his 30s.

He made it to 6 months sober for the first time in 20 years, as of last month. He was in a transitional care facility and it was going well. I was so very proud of him.

He took a trip to visit his mom and he backslid majorly. She found him totally out of it on the side of the road. She took him home. He tried to stab her bathrobe and nightgown with a knife because he thought they were intruders.

Then he

spoiler

attempted suicide

and she took him to the hospital.

He's.. ok.. now. He's back at stage 1 of the transitional care facility. No phone or Internet. Working his way back to 1 month. The facility is lovely and patient, from what I hear.

It's all really hard for everyone. From my point of view, I get news filtered through my mom and we don't have a great relationship, so I don't 100% trust what she tells me and it's always stressful to hear from her. He's several states away.

I've started writing him postcards again, like I did when he was in jail. Postcards are nice because I run out of things to say with a weekly letter, but can always fill up a postcard. The most important thing is to let him know I'm thinking of him.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks :)

I definitely want to have a more direct relationship with him if I can. Before he lost his phone (and phone privileges) we texted, and that was good. Hopefully we'll be back to texting once he's up a stage in treatment :)

I wish he had an email address or something, but his online presence has always been spotty. He's has a string of email addresses that aged like milk (think killadope69@yahoo and you'll be close) that he's abandoned. I'm tempted to sign him up for a generic firstname.lastname@gmail account, but that might be overbearing on my part.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope he gets to that point soon. He is fortunate to have you in his life. That normalcy of talking to someone close can be a huge difference.

Personally I would not set up an email for him unless you ask him first or he asks you. It would be with good intentions, but I think supporting people with addiction includes helping them do their responsibilities, not do it for them, otherwise it can be enabling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Re: email. True. And it's a bit selfish of me to want to ~~push~~ pull him into using email, without his buy-in. I can suggest it ("hey, I checked and blah addresses are available. Might be nice to have a polite email address to give to your aunts. They're great and send care packages with candy.") But I shouldn't do it for him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t think it’s selfish at all. But yeah maybe make the suggestion and let him decide, or ask him if it’s okay for you to update them about his situation.