Our A is 25 and been battling it for 2 1/2 years, since she finished college. Two stints in rehab in FL, four lost jobs, 14 days in jail, one DWI, and over six different half-way houses and apartments.  Five relapses, they average about every six months or so but tend to only last a couple of days because she ends up in an emergency room with a BAC approaching lethal levels and is detoxed back from the edge.  She then finds herself another job, another half-way house, a new sponsor, and the cycle begins again.

I call it a cycle because to me that's what it seems to me.  She begins to do well again, outwardly, working her program but then sabotages it herself and goes back to the extreme remorse, keeping people at arms length, withdrawing, and starting over.  Is she wiser for it this time? It's impossible to know. Seems that she's not really working her program yet, just doing the easy work, not the harder parts apparently.  No one who does the hard parts of truly working the program relapses, at least that's what I'm told.

I note the 'recovery people' in her life. I know many have recovered yet many seemed reconciled to this same cycle and never break out of it, or at least haven't in over three, five, seven years, etc. She used to tell us about them and look down on them. Now she's one of them, at least for now. 

I don't know whether she'll break this cycle. If she does, I believe it will take many years. She is a Christian and we've seen God intervene at times to protect her but also to allow her to experience the full weight of the consequences of her actions. We're finished intervening.  On our last trip to visit her for a weekend a few weeks ago, she relapsed the day after we left.  Not on booze this time, but painkillers she obtained over the internet. She 'forgot' to tell her dentist that she was an addict.  When the prescription ran out, she wanted more. That's no impulsive fall, that took a lot of calculation and planning and lying to us during our whole visit. I knew something wasn't quite right, just didn't know what.  The Pepsi MAX consumed all day long should have given a clue. Still seeking the buzz that leads to the numb. Ah well, fooled us again.

We sure gain wisdom as we go through this don't we?  As we enter year three, I remember thinking that all she had to do was go to a 28 day program and she'll be all better. I just didn't know what I didn't know.  Some things you just have to learn for yourself.

We didn't cause it, can't cure it, can't even control it. I meditate on these truths daily. But God can.  I mediatate on what Christ told the afflicted man who first spoke up and said, "Lord, if you're willing you can make me clean." Christ replied, "I am willing, be cleansed."  And He did it. We trust in that, take hope in that, that someday she will be cleansed.  I wonder if she is ready and willing to be cleansed. Until then, we wait, pray, hope, and trust and encourage her to keep doing battle with this scourge. 

There is always hope.