Overcoming Addiction: A Mother’s Journey to Save Her Son

How are we going to get out of this?

The 60-year-old Norwegian from Hilversum has asked himself this countless times. And there was never an answer. “Every time I thought, maybe we’ve reached the bottom of the hole, something worse happened.”

Noor’s son, we call him Jarno, (not his real name), became entangled in a ‘downward spiral’ as a 16-year-old teenager. “School didn’t go well, he dropped out, met the wrong friends. I also saw him walk more coolly, with his arms and shoulders broad, and he took up kickboxing, preferred to listen to his friends than to me or his sister. And for I knew, that easy-going, sociable and beloved boy was a stranger to me. As if we no longer knew him.”

It started with beers, smoking pot, coming home with red-shot eyes, arguments, swearing, doors slamming, no conversation possible. It ended with hard drugs, even more arguments, ‘you only had to say ‘boo’ or it would escalate’, and no more sleeping at home at all.

‘I was ashamed to death’

“At one point, when he was about 19 or 20, nights went by when I didn’t know where he was at all. And when he was there, things immediately escalated at home. When he was angry, he would hit everything in the house. short and small, at a certain point I no longer dared to invite friends, I lived in a house with broken doors and I was terrified.”

There was also self-doubt: how could her son have deteriorated so much? “My children grew up in a good neighborhood in Hilversum, Het Gooi. They could go to school, we went on holiday, I worked but was also at home enough, we could talk about everything, it was always sweet at our house, they came nothing too short but not spoiled either. Did I do something wrong?”

Now Noor thinks about this a little more mildly, a little less strict too. “His father, my ex, broke off contact not long after the birth of our son. Perhaps that played a role in his alcohol addiction. If you feel rejected, and you are susceptible to narcotics, young, unhappy and impressionable and affects the wrong guys, yes, then things go wrong quickly.”

Apathetic on the couch

It was ‘terrible’, says Noor, to see your child deteriorate like that. “He sometimes sat apathetically on the couch for hours. He looked right through us. We couldn’t get in touch with him. And I tried a lot. I called in social workers, tried to talk, but he didn’t want to kick the habit. Was not necessary.”

Things escalated two years ago. Noor made the decision she never wanted to make: she showed her son the door. “It’s not just that one addicted child, it’s everything around it. I became more and more isolated, became quieter, spoke to fewer and fewer people, walked on eggshells. As if I was on an island. I noticed that my daughter, who was already lived in rooms, no longer wanted to come to us. And my partner, with whom I live, also said: ‘This is no longer possible’. I didn’t want to drop my one child, but I also had another child.”

Jarno ended up on the street. Noor felt guilty, ‘I am his mother’, but also knew: something has to happen so that he realizes that it really cannot be like this. That happened a few years ago, ‘I will never forget it’, Noor was working at the GGD, in a testing street, during the pandemic. The neighbors knew she was there and drove to her. ‘You have to go to the hospital now’, serious looks, panicky voices, ‘Jarno was found at the front door. Collapsed, completely cold’.

His girlfriend had broken off the relationship, he had been living in his car for months and, as it turned out, had overdosed. “In the hospital I found a lot of misery. And I knew: he had to fall deeply at some point. That was now. He was very ashamed. I said: ‘You can come live with me again, on one condition. That you kick the habit.’ .”

Jarno reported to the doctor and ended up in a ‘very nice, suitable’ rehab clinic. There he received therapy, one-on-one, but also in a group. “I had to write him a letter about what it had done to me. I have the feeling that something really clicked in him because of that letter.” After the treatments he returned to live at home.

Stranger is gone

Noor remains realistic: once an addict, always an addict. “He will always have to keep working on it.” But: the stranger has disappeared. Her son came back for it. “He is doing so well. He is in contact with debt assistance himself, has worked on everything, has a job, and now hopes to have more peace of mind now that he knows he has ADHD and can get help with it. “

That’s what Noor has noticed: you don’t just become addicted. And kicking the habit: no small feat either. “That’s why I’m so proud of him. Because I know: it was a struggle for him. Talk a lot, persevere, look at yourself in the mirror. He no longer drinks coffee. He needs a lot of coffee. “But anyway, I’ll bring that coffee home for him with love.”

What she also brought home: groceries for Christmas dinner. Because she’s looking forward to it again, for the first time in years. “Hope was important to me. I’ve always had hope that things will work out, but no one gives you a date.” But now 2023 appears to be the year in which things are good. This Christmas, Noor is sitting at the table with her son, his new girlfriend (‘a really nice, good girl’) and her other daughter and supporters. “We got out.”

2023-12-24 11:41:57
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