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About Me

65-year-old married female, intact marriage of almost 32 years, two kids - a "normie" girl with a great career and a great character born in 1982 and an addict son born in 1985 and using at least marijuana since 1993. Addict son is tall, dark and handsome  but hasn't learned a thing except about drugs since 1997.  

I was brought up to a be co-dependent by an angry pre-alcoholic single parent mother in the 1950s.  Her second marriage to a man 9 years younger than her and the son of alcoholics changed my life for the worse very decidedly.  It loosed me entirely from even the pretense of normal family relationships at age 12.  I reaquainted with my straight up binge-drinking alocholic father the following summer and the one after that.  I sought refuge in his household from the coldness and exclusion of my mother's house: for all his faults, my father was a more open person than my stepfather or by this time, my mother.  Still age 15.   He encouraged me to drink rum and coke the first summer I was with him, but the second summer, I would not join him.  I wanted education, normal social adolescent experiences and to grow up to be a beatnik.  High school grad age 65, college, marriage 68, college grad 69, faculty wife age 21!   Prepared to escape chronic depression without knowing that I was depressed, still in denial about my mother's failings, hated my father for failing to rescue me and realized he'd never paid child support for me except for a portion of the proceeds of a property that his mother had left me in her will.  Property now belongs to father's girlfriend of the time!   My nuclear family of origen had moved from the U.S. to Mexico when I was 18 months old; mother and I returned in 1951, father remained there until his death in 1989.  His death was like a promotion: people stopped asking me how much I loved visiting him in Mexico.  He was 64 years old, younger than I am now.

Involved with someone with diagnosis of alcoholism and was that an eye opener. Ended that relationship at first sign of violence, at least in terms of actual contact.  Had a lot to look at in myself and will thank here a woman I met in Al Anon who looked at me and a young friend with an alcoholic husband who brought me to the meetings.  She said, "Why are you here?  You are  young, you can make changes in your life.  I am too old to move away from my acoholic husband, but you don't have to be here."   How often do we allow another's words to change our lives?  Not often, I am guessing.  But this woman's words changed my life and my friends.  We went and screwed up no more....Or so I thought. 

I eventually married the son of an alcoholic,  Husband had been brought up to save the world from the consequences of selfishness, despair, alcoholism, drug abuse.  Perfect for someone who remained chronically depressed.  When our children came into our lives, we had the happiest moments of our lives.  We made no effort to protect the children from the celebration of drug use that was the lives of his relatives.  My own mother had lived in another country for years prior to the birth of the children.  She had divorced her horrible second husband and had bcome a lesbian (1970 or 1972 until @ 2000). 

The **** hit the fan when my son gave up his life to drug abuse.  We have been reeling from the effects of that sinice, say, 1997 when he was 12.  In spite of all the experience we'd both had, it took us a LONG time to see what was really going on.  Now our eyes are open, and we are scrambling to save the years that remain to us and learn what we never did before: how to set boundaries, how to be authentic, how to help others without selling ourselves out.  It is NOT easy because we probably both have been in depressed most of our lives and that interferes with our recovery and authenticity.

I cut myself off Paxil starting last November after taking it under medical supervision for ten years.  My present state: weepy, bitter, but on my way to authentic, I hope. Going off Paxil was hell, but once I made the decision, I never thought of going back on it.  Getting off it was too hard to turn around and go back.  By nature, I am not much of an addict although I am over-weight and way too fond of a sweet snack.