Lesson #1: Be watchful. Don’t forget. It is so easy to forget. As humans we are so adaptable, so flexible, that after Jimmy’s twelve years of sobriety we had a new normal and had forgotten to look. And even when we started looking, we still couldn’t see it. I mean, it quacked like a duck, it walked like a duck, but for a few months there was no duck visible. There was selfishness visible. And undependability. And deeply flawed logic. But no drug use. Even after we started looking, we saw no weight gain or weight loss, no prolonged sleeping, no pupil dilation or distortion, no weird breath or bad smells. Even when we searched the room, we found no drugs, no paraphernalia. There were no wild mood swings, no tantrums. Just a lot of quacking. So be watchful.
Lesson #2: React quicker. Raise the bottom quicker. It’s like a snakebite: don’t allow the poison to spread. It’s like a virus: quarantine immediately and take the medicine right away, before it grows. We saw the sneaking out, the rabbits dying from lack of care, we knew his friends and girlfriends were sketchy, and we even knew our values were being violated. But we didn’t react to that because we didn’t see any drugs. React to the boundary violations, regardless of the cause. Yes, we tried to evict him, and he refused to go, and we got a lawyer’s help, but all that took three months, four months, and our boundaries kept getting trodden on. Lesson: evict right away, by whatever means necessary. Tell the police he threatened you and get the restraining order immediately. React quicker. We kept saying, “We can do this the peaceful way or the hard way.” When the addict is in charge, there is no peaceful way. Gird your loins and take care of business. The addict will trample anything in his way., so get yourself and your stuff out of the way.
Lesson #3: Your values are the driver. Safety. Children’s needs come before adults. Honesty, kindness, dependability. Integrity. Those must be upheld and fought for immediately. Those determine who can come in your house, who gets to be around the grandkids, who gets to live here. If someone violates those values, they need to be gone. Whose values rule? The homeowner. The ones who worked for fifty years to accumulate this house. That savings, that retirement, that family reputation. Your values got you where you are; fight fiercely for them. This one gets really tough when he is neglecting his girls. “You are neglecting your girls, therefore we are no longer helping and you are alone in taking care of them.” This is totally counterintuitive. Yet this is what has to happen, or you end up an old mossy fence post, holding up the whole system of addict running wild plus two grandkids. All that weight leaning on you, crushing you down.
Lesson #4: Don’t let strangers compound the problems. When under siege, tighten the perimeter and don’t let strangers into the inner courtyard. Hunker down with a trusted group and don’t let others in.
Lesson #5: We did one thing exactly right. Even before we knew it really was a duck, we changed our will. We were flying to DC together and had a thought about the plane going down, and Jimmy and Anthony being co-executors. Oh, no. We went right away to our attorney and protected our estate. So that is taken care of for our lifetimes, and Jimmy’s kids are protected. Protect your assets.
Lesson #6: Treat the addict with professional courtesy. No lectures, no crying, no arguing over “was it 2:30 or was it 3:00”. No deep compassion that makes you override your core values. I even heard a voice from God telling me not to kick out my kid during a pandemic. Override that. Just operate with a detached fairness and sincere best wishes for recovery. “No alcoholic ever got sober because his mom wanted him to.” The best way to help him get sober is to detach and let him have consequences.
Lesson #7: Use the legal system, knowing its great limitations. Get the protection order as soon as possible, even though it’s a giant hassle and a big stressor and totally ineffectual in preventing any problem. The protection order is a shot across the bow. It is a sign you put up.
Lesson #8: Tradition 7 matters vitally in the big picture and long term. When Jimmy sold his house and we let him move in our house, it seemed mutually beneficial. He did lots of skilled projects and heavy work around the farm. He fertilized the pasture and built the grape arbor. He refenced the basketball court and made the basement patio rain-proof. He hauled hay and worked with the county on the agricultural small farm designation. He fixed gutters and bird block on a high ladder. He built a fire pit. He started remodeling the basement into an apartment. And he lived here rent free, with us providing meals and babysitting. It worked well until it didn’t. And when it didn’t we were entangled. He had the power bill coming to him for autopay. He had the basement ripped apart with little progress.
We had zero control over his finances and his choices, yet his mail arrived here until August, bank statements and credit card statements and Traffic tickets and really heavy boxes delivered. We were third party, unwilling witness to chaos. The lesson— don’t get entangled.