How would you respond if one of your children became seriously addicted to drugs and started stealing off you and their siblings to maintain their habit?
I have often written on G+T about the importance of boundaries when supporting people affected by addictions. I have referred to this in the context of my work with people affected by homelessness, church communities I have been a part of and within my wider family.
But the closer we are to people, the harder it is to maintain boundaries. The heart-breaking challenges of showing love to those in our immediate family affected by destructive addictions cannot be over-estimated.
Progression
My friend Izzy Harriss grew up in a stable, middle class home and was part of a church-going family. But when she was a teenager she developed a serious drug addiction.
“My drug-taking was a progression, cannabis, ecstasy, until I started taking heroin…Taking heroin at weekends became every weekend, every Friday and Saturday and then every Friday became every Thursday and before I knew it…by the time I was 21 I was fully-fledged heroin addict.”
And from here, things went from bad to worse:
“My smoking heroin habit became an injecting heroin habit. I also got into crack cocaine and I would inject both these substances together about 10 times a day.”
Enabling
As her addiction intensified, the chaos in her life deepened and Izzy started stealing from her family. She was not allowed to stay at home during the day but she was allowed to sleep overnight. Her family were concerned but as she puts it:
‘I would feed them lie and after lie, and I was a very good manipulator.’
Her parents borrowed money to send her to numerous private detox programmes but with little success. Her Mum tried to help her by giving her money to avoid her being at further risk.
‘My Mum thought she was helping me…I was in a desperate mess…what she thought she was doing was helping me and saving me…but actually she was enabling me.’
‘A massive dose of truth’
Chaos enveloped Izzy’s life. She was unemployable, her health sharply declined, she lost her friends and she was in constant trouble with the police.
One day, Izzy did something so bad that her Dad decided enough was enough. He took away her key and wrote her a letter saying that she could no longer stay, that he was going to the police and that he hoped she went to prison. It was, as she describes ‘a brutal letter’ and ‘a massive dose of truth’.
But Izzy’s reaction to her Dad’s words might not be what you expect.
As ever, the principles shared on G+T are best evidenced in real life stories. And it was a privilege to jointly lead a seminar with Izzy at the recent Hope into Action conference where she tells her story. Izzy now works for the charity Housing Justice.
In the seminar, she shares the realities of her addiction, her journey in rehab and the tough love and truthfulness which has helped transformed her life. There is great wisdom and hope in what she shares.
Listen to Izzy’s story here: Empowering Grace and Truth.
My closing slide from the seminar was this equation:
More than ever, I believe that grace and truth are the components of authentic love. Overly sentimentalised forms of love which only want to show grace and kindness cannot survive the realities of such challenges.
In the final analysis, the love that lasts, the love that transforms and redeems, the love that helps people out of the slimy pit, is always a love made up of grace and truth.
Listen to Izzy’s story here: Empowering Grace and Truth.
Grace + Truth 