• Home
  • About Us
    • Clinicians
      • Britany Miley Anderson
      • Jason Boes
      • Marisol Cruz
      • Sandra Davis
      • John Dennis
      • Bill Devorick
      • Amy Justh
      • Laura Feeser
      • Lauren Feist
      • Jeuri German
      • Tracie Hassell
      • Mindy Knaub
      • April Mandeville-Palm
      • Carmen Marti
      • Carrie Nicklas
      • Sharon Presta Geiner
      • Kelsey Kline
    • Office Staff
    • Mission
  • Employment
    • Join Our Team!
  • Services
    • Parenting Consultation
    • Child & Adolescent Counseling
    • Parent & Child Counseling
    • Preparing Your Child For Counseling
    • Family Therapy
    • Couples Counseling
    • Marathon Couples Therapy
    • Sports & Performance Psychology
    • Online Therapy
    • EMDR Therapy
    • Cancer Support
    • Trainings and Workshops
    • LPC Supervision
    • Video Gaming
    • What We Don’t Do
  • Next Steps
    • Is Counseling Right for You?
    • FAQs about Counseling
    • Rates and Insurance
    • Lancaster Counseling Office
    • Harrisburg Counseling Office
    • Counseling Appointment Request
  • Resources
    • Client Portal
    • Mental Health Links
    • Physical Health Links
    • Recommended Reading
  • Podcast
    • Nominate A Guest
    • Support the Podcast
  • Blog
  • Contact

(717) 602-5560 | Info@parentfamilysolutions.com
Harrisburg Office: 160 S. Progress Ave Ste 3A Harrisburg, PA 17109
Lancaster Office: 1681 Crown Ave, Ste 101, Lancaster, PA 17601
Teletherapy Office: HIPAA-Secure Online Counseling
   

Counseling with Care for the Whole Family Start Here

Parenting & Family Solutions, LLC

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Addiction, Suicide, and a Prayer for Healing on a Long Run by Robbe Reddinger

October 22, 2017 by John Dennis 20 Comments

Addiction-Suicide-www.parentfamilysolutions.com

This is a reblog of an article a friend of mine wrote this past week for Runner’s World in their Other Voices section.  His younger brother has struggled with addiction and suicide attempts.  This is his account and how he deals with it.  I highly recommend you check out his blog . A big thank you to Robbe for having the courage to share this raw and honest look at addiction from a loved one’s perspective, as well as giving me the ok to reblog it.

“My little brother is dying. Has died. Should have died. Tried to die.”

the lake`

My little brother is dying. Has died. Should have died. Tried to die.

I’m at my parent’s house, and I’m going on a run. It’s December, and I’m training for my first marathon, a task I’ve been thinking about for months.

Earlier this week, he tried to kill himself at the end of a meth binge, taking every pill he could get his hands on, but he made it through. Somehow morning still came. Somehow his heart and its 24 years of mileage limped onward.

Yesterday, his friends showed up frantic and crying and asking if I’d seen him. His phone was off and he mentioned he may “try something” again. A suicide aftershock, or something.

He’d stolen my grandfather’s handgun recently and I was worried he’d taken it again, that it was, right now, sliding around his passenger seat as he swerved around the back roads outside Hershey, Pennsylvania.

I ran out the door looking for him. I had no idea how I’d find him, and all I could imagine was having to figure out in a matter of seconds how to call 911 while trying to revive someone with a hole in his head.

My first instinct was to look for him in the parking lot of the nearby community park, which is across the road from the small ranch house where me, my younger sisters, and (ten years after me) my brother grew up.

Four years ago I sat with my brother in that lot, the first time my family confronted him about his painkiller addiction. A snowball’s throw away was the bedroom window we shared as kids, the same one I opened while he laid in his crib, when the humidity of the August nights wedged itself through the screen.

We had driven here after his drug addiction became impossible to ignore, after my family had an amateur intervention, hoping that a commitment to treatment would solve everything. We talked about how he’d only been using for a short time, hoping a month of rehab would return everything to normal.

I didn’t realize a thick, black magic marker line was drawn through that calendar year: the time before opiates, and the time after. In four years his life would devolve into a maelstrom of lies and deceit, of pain and sorrow.

I didn’t find him in that parking lot. I searched other lots and other roads for the next hour and couldn’t find him anywhere. He eventually called home, alive and annoyed that everyone was freaking out about him. Where he had been, I don’t know.

That same parking lot is where I start many of my long runs whenever I’m visiting my parents, and it’s where I’m starting my run today. I suppose I like starting out where so many things in my life have begun.

The cold is legit, in the twenties. A light snow is falling at the start. It takes a half mile to lose the feeling in my fingertips, and another half mile to get it back. The roads out here roll gently into wide curves, then straighten for miles. The Sunday morning traffic is sparse.

I’m used to city running, where too often my mind is focused on curbs and cars. Here, I’m able to go deeper, to work on the task of figuring this shit out.

I run past the Holiday Inn Grantville, where I worked, on and off, for nearly ten years through college and my mid-twenties. It lies at the foot of the Blue Mountain, a sister to the Appalachians snuggled up on the north side of its bed. Although the surrounding area can be undeniably pastoral, it’s also a place that is nestled into the womb of all manner of addiction.

This is also the place where I got my brother a job in the hotel’s restaurant, right after high school. He waited tables on tourists and travelers while his very best friends took off towards soccer scholarships and undergraduate degrees.

Like any restaurant job, it’s full of long hours on your feet, and coked-up kitchen crews that are every bit as pirate-like as Anthony Bourdain ever described. It’s a fucking disaster waiting to happen for a person with no self-control: One week you work a handful of doubles, bookended by Sunday brunches with bottomless coffee refills and ten percent tips. At the tail end, you’re sitting on a milk crate out back by the dumpsters on your cigarette break, complaining that your feet and back are killing you. And a cook hands you an Oxycontin.

And suddenly those shifts are a lot easier to work.

I keep running, turning onto a long stretch of mountain road. The snow continues to parachute in, treading water to keep afloat on the warmer pavement.

Long stretch of road

I run past patches of litter, mostly light beer cans, random roadkill, and even a couple unbroken cigarettes. There are lots of Trump signs out here too.

I spot a Mountain Dew can in the grass, the same kind my mom found once, in the air duct in my brother’s bedroom. That one was flattened in the middle, stippled with holes and charred black. It was the kind of thing where you knew it was being used for drugs without even knowing exactly how.

At the moment, it was so far away from our normal life that my mom didn’t even know how to respond. She just threw it out, hoping to never see something like it again. Instead, it was the shot that cracked through the house, right before the avalanche.

Soon we were finding all kinds of makeshift drug paraphernalia: hollow pens, melted and browned like toxic marshmallow sticks, tin foil scraps with odd crop-circle designs branded into them, or thimble-sized Ziploc bags. All manner of household items ended up disfigured, burned, or twisted with one purpose: for my brother to get chemicals into his bloodstream—as much as possible, as quick as possible—to get as close as he could to the line where his heart flopped back and forth like a dying quail.

For us, his family, this was a new language of addiction—symbols, glyphs, hints, and tip-offs telling us the straight and narrow had become crooked and jagged. They say the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself. Our family all spoke in tongues.

As I often do when I get into the melting miles of my run—around mile seven, when everything blends together with no thought of pain or time or distance—I begin to pray for my brother.

I pray for the heroin highways in his brain to be healed, as much as that seems like asking to walk on water at this point. I pray for him to realize his worth, to know himself as I remember him: Before the jackhammer cravings hounded him day and night, when the light in his eyes was still there and his blond hair blew golden, the same way that Van Gogh’s wheat fields move, even when they don’t.

I pray for him to navigate the waters even within his drug use, that his tiny rowboat will somehow miss the shoals lined with Fentanyl and Carfentanil and whatever other horrors that have yet to be invented. I pray for him to hit rock bottom without dying, and for my parents to have the courage to let him land there.

I pray for my parents not to think this is their legacy. I hope that they can see how it’s not their fault, how they didn’t love him too much or too little. I pray that nothing else happens in our branch of the family tree, because I feel we are half a tragedy away from withering back into the trunk.

The prayers last for miles.

I reach a lake, Memorial Lake. Only now, at this moment, do I realize the significance of running to there, around there, on this day.

Memorial park sign

It’s the same lake in which my brother was baptized as a teenager. On that summer evening, the unassuming water cleansed his soul and made him new. Today it’s mostly covered in a layer of ice. I circle the water and make my way back as the snow stops falling, the sky holding its gray for the remainder of the run.

I wait for this run to clear my thoughts and give me one new angle, just one sliver of peace to apply to this endlessly swirling cacophony that has become my family’s life. But it doesn’t. My brain just hums neutrally as the miles accumulate and the warmth of my body turns back into cold, back into numbness.

Tonight I’ll talk to my brother. I won’t know if it’s the right time to love him unconditionally or time to cut him off. He’ll tell me how he wants to get off methadone (and crystal meth, and Xanax, and Klonopin, and Adderall, etc.), how he wants to get rid of the people he knows and find good friends.

I know he’s not going to do any of this.

He’s going to keep stealing things, doing drugs, injuring himself, and putting my parents—my whole family, especially himself—through hell before he’ll want help. I hope he does these things as much as I hope he doesn’t. I don’t know what else will make him stop.

Right now, running is just a few miles of clean road, a way to pretend everything looks like it did before.

Maybe it’s a distraction, but I’m okay with that. I don’t know anymore if I’m running to him, or from him, or just in place.

* * * 

Robbe Reddinger is a father, writer, and runner living in Baltimore. He runs with the Faster Bastards RC of Balt City. You can follow him onInstagram and read his blog at Normcorerunner.com. 

Robbe’s post raises some good questions.  What have been your experiences with addiction and suicide? What can an individual loved one do to help?

eHome behavioral care LOGO-png

1-833-40-EHOME
We provide comprehensive online counseling through video-conferencing. Call or click the banner to schedule your first session with our fully licensed therapists!

Disclaimer: The author of this post is not engaged in a therapeutic relationship with the reader and cannot give counseling advice without a confidential appointment. Readers should be sure to consult with a licensed therapist in their area or seek emergency medical attention if they are experiencing difficulty.
Stay connected
Parenting & Family Solutions – https://www.parentfamilysolutions.com
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/ParentingFamilySolutionsHarrisburg/
JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
I agree to have my personal information transferred to MailChimp ( more information )
Join thousands of visitors who have access to free resources. Learn tips and techniques on parenting, relationships and how to overcome your anxiety to help you and your family be the healthiest and happiest you can be!
We hate spam. Plus we are bound by HIPAA laws! Your email address will not be sold or shared with anyone else. We guarantee it!!

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Filed Under: Addiction, Blog, Mental Health, Suicide, Uncategorized Tagged With: Children, counseling, family, Harrisburg, parenting, Solutions, therapy

Comments

  1. Andi Garcia says

    October 23, 2017 at 12:13 am

    I empathize and completely understand your friend’s feelings. My son also struggles with an addiction, meth and alcohol. He’s currently getting help but that fear never leaves you. Thank you for sharing.

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 23, 2017 at 4:22 am

      Thank YOU for sharing! Obviously, saddened to hear what your son is struggling with. Glad he’s getting help. I think it’s a fear that so many parents share. Do you have any advice for other parents? Or those struggling with addiction? Thanks, btw, for following and taking time to comment

      Reply
  2. craftysurf says

    October 23, 2017 at 10:35 am

    This a tough situation, but forming a codependent bond with someone who is addicted can be an addiction unto itself. It’s one thing to try to “lift others up”, and be supportive, but we can’t always be someone’s hero. Sometimes, we need to be humble and admit we’re just not equipped for that, and it doesn’t mean we doesn’t mean we love the person any less.
    As a surfer, if I see a panicked swimmer in the ocean, I will give them my surfboard first to use for them to climb on instead of me. If a panicked swimmer climbs on me, he’ll drag BOTH of us under…. 🤔😫🏄🏼‍♀️

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 23, 2017 at 11:13 am

      Great point Crafty! I’ve definitely used the drowning swimmer analogy before. They said addicts need enablers. And that’s such a tough call to make. I know BeautyBeyondBones just posted about this on her blog in her struggle with eating disorder. I think knowing when professional help is needed is vital. Thanks so much for your perspective!

      Reply
  3. BeckiesMentalMess.wordpress.com says

    October 23, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    Wow! Another outstanding post. I MUST reblog this to my sight. There are so many that can benefit from reading this.

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 23, 2017 at 1:29 pm

      Thanks Beckie! I’ll pass on your kind words to my friend. I’m both sad and relieved that I am not that the one that wrote it. Robbe has always been an extremely gifted writer and musician. I hope his brother’s struggle helps some of your readers

      Reply
  4. BeckiesMentalMess.wordpress.com says

    October 23, 2017 at 1:26 pm

    Reblogged this on Beckie's Mental Mess and commented:
    The “Inked Shrink” did it again. An outstanding piece on addiction & suicide. A look into the mind of a siblings thoughts and families struggle to save their brother/son.

    Reply
  5. Ms. Wanda says

    October 23, 2017 at 3:30 pm

    I know the fear, anger, frustration, powerlessness, hope & unending prayers that accompany one who has an addicted loved one. My 1st was my ex-husband & I was far too young to balance tough love, support and prayer without falling too far into a depressive state. Our kids were babies & I had to make the hard choice of choosing a better life for them. But, I didn’t get free — one of my children ended up on the same road after being introduced to drugs by her abuser! Tough love included not allowing them to live in my home. Support included feeding them, clothing them, talking & praying with them – always letting them know that when tgey really & truly grew tired & really wanted to change that I’d be there at their side. There was also years upon years of praying sometimes being so overwhelmed by the need for their deliverance that I’d be forced to pull off into a parking lot crying & in full prayer warrior mode pray from the very depth of my soul calling on Gid fir EVERY PROMISE in scripture I had memorized. After 10 years the changes that implied they were reaching a point that THEY REALLY wanted to change started. It has been another 11 years for them to reach the point where they are now a spouse, a parent, recently accepted Christ and are building a life. Still some baggage but they are now willing to face each issue head on, one at a time. This was an AWESOME read & I can truly say keep praying and try to keep a balance that doesn’t enable. As a last note: it took leaving an unhealthy marriage to see my child get to where they are now & having praying support partnerships was bery helpful. SORRY FOR THE LONG POST & saying a pray for all who are dealing with this issue of life.

    Reply
  6. Ms. Wanda says

    October 23, 2017 at 3:39 pm

    I know the fear, anger, frustration, powerlessness, hope & unending prayers that accompany one who has an addicted loved one. My 1st was my ex-husband & I was far too young to balance tough love, support and prayer without falling too far into a depressive state. Our kids were babies & I had to make the hard choice of choosing a better life for them. But, I didn’t get free — one of my children ended up on the same road after being introduced to drugs by their abuser! Tough love included not allowing them to live in my home. Support included feeding them, clothing them, talking & praying with them – always letting them know that when tgey really & truly grew tired & really wanted to change that I’d be there at their side. There was also years upon years of praying sometimes being so overwhelmed by the need for their deliverance that I’d be forced to pull off into a parking lot crying & in full prayer warrior mode pray from the very depth of my soul calling on GOD for EVERY PROMISE in scripture I had memorized. After 10 years the changes that implied they were reaching a point that THEY REALLY wanted to change started. It has been another 7 years for them to reach the point where they are now a spouse, a parent, recently accepted Christ and are building a life. Still some baggage but they are now willing to face each issue head on, one at a time. This was an AWESOME read & I can truly say keep praying and try to keep a balance that doesn’t enable. As a last note: it took leaving an unhealthy marriage to see my child get to where they are now & having praying support partnerships was bery helpful. SORRY FOR THE LONG POST. I will be saying a pray for all who are dealing with this issue of life.

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 23, 2017 at 4:35 pm

      Totally ok! 👌 obviously, you connected with the post which is what this blog is all about! Thank you for sharing of your families struggles. I think we could all do with hearing more success stories so I’m glad yours has a happier back half to it. Much more to come hopefully! Thanks for commenting and following along 😃👏

      Reply
  7. glimmersofsilver says

    October 23, 2017 at 8:15 pm

    Wow, this was beautifully written and entirely heartbreaking.

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 23, 2017 at 8:23 pm

      Thank you 😊 I’ll pass on your kind words

      Reply
  8. windsofchange18 says

    October 23, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    Thank you so much for sharing it couldn’t have been easy to do. I have s friend who’s son is an addict and everything you have explained she as well is dealing with the same pain .. in so sorry for you your brother your parents your all on my prayers . Sometimes tough love me maybe the only answer think about that I know my friend has.

    Reply
  9. Angela S. says

    October 26, 2017 at 3:14 am

    I nearly found myself in tears reading this. It’s so powerful, I can’t even imagine what it’s like seeing a family member so close to you destroying themselves habitually (intentionally?). I read a book once (Purpose For the Pain) that was a collection of journal entries of an addict who sought redemption for many long, painful years. This is such an immeasurably thoughtfully written personal account – thank you for sharing it. I hope things get better for his brother, and family.

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 26, 2017 at 3:28 am

      Thanks for the new book to check out! My fears have turned to my children. I can’t imagine as a parent watching your child go through that struggle. Glad you “enjoyed” the post. I’ll pass on your kind words.

      Reply
      • Angela S. says

        October 26, 2017 at 3:37 am

        Oh please do check the book out! It is a little hard to read (most of the journal pages are direct scans of the original papers written upon) but it is definitely worth a look!

        And thank you for passing on the sentiment. 🙂

        Reply
      • Angela S. says

        October 26, 2017 at 3:40 am

        Oh, and the journal author’s name is Renee Yohe (ISBN- 978-0-615-22318-6)

        Reply
        • InkedShrink says

          October 26, 2017 at 4:10 am

          Thanks! I’ll check it out

          Reply
  10. Miss A says

    October 26, 2017 at 3:26 am

    Heartbreaking ..and very sad. Addiction is such a horrible disease. It must be so difficult trying to reach out and seeing someone you love suffer. Strengths to all out there needing it x

    Reply
    • InkedShrink says

      October 26, 2017 at 3:33 am

      It really is horrible! The “slow suicide” is what I’ve heard it called. It’s such a crippling disease both physically and mentally. Thank for taking the time to read 😃

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

160 S. Progress Ave Ste 3A
Harrisburg, PA 17109

1681 Crown Ave, Ste 101,
Lancaster, PA 17601

(717) 602-5560
Info@parentfamilysolutions.com

Parenting & Family Solutions Newsletter

Privacy Policy

A Bright Site by Brighter Vision

 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d