This edition of UN looks at some of our family relationships. We hear from people who use who are parents, from parents of people who use and the children of people who use. We fi nd out that there are many ways to have “functional” fabulous families, even if we use drugs. We make great parents, great children, great partners – just like the rest of the population. We face challenges, but we overcome them. We love and are loved. People who use drugs have particular issues to face when dealing with family relationships. Many people do not understand that you can take drugs and still be a great parent. Prohibition teaches us that we are bad or mad to be taking drugs and there is a lot of misunderstanding about what it means to be in an altered state. We are told we must choose between drugs and children. Even putting the words “drugs” and “children” together raises all sorts of concerns and triggers. Some of us are not allowed to live with our children because our drug use attracted scrutiny. Others have decided not to have children at all because they internalised the shame. And even a history of drug use is enough to knock out those seeking adoption or surrogacy. We struggle against a widely held belief that the children of people who use will also take drugs, whether by virtue of inherited genes or learned behaviour. We know that while some children may do so, just like anyone else’s kid, this is by no means inevitable.
There is also a myth that if a person takes drugs, we need look no further than their parents to pin on the blame badge, even if those parents are not drug users. The reality is much more complex. It is true that some people who use had diffi cult family relationships growing up, including physical, sexual and mental abuse, and poor examples of how to parent. Many of us have decided simply to do the opposite of everything our parents did! But there are a lot of us who had great upbringings with at least one caring parent.
So many misconceptions and fabrications combine to make people who take drugs walk on eggshells in our family relationships. We often feel a constant grinding fear that if we put a foot wrong, that if people fi nd out we use drugs, that our children will be taken from us and that our parents will reject us. There are family members who may believe that withdrawing – “tough love” – will jolt us out of drug use, forcing us towards the sort of person they wish we were or backwards to how we were as kids. Others just feel ashamed, confused, guilty, scared. For those who have had their family split in the civil war against drugs and those who take them, the pain is enormous. Losing a family member is always tragic. Having society tell us that this loss is our own fault because we are weak and uncaring is debilitating. Throughout history, being cast out of the tribe has been the harshest penalty of all. The depression that results from being rejected by family or losing the care of our children is all-encompassing.
