My son, the junkie

I am home alone when the doctor calls.

"You should prepare to lose this child," he says.

I am leaning against the wall, and when he says this I slide down the wall until I am sitting on the floor. I turn the words over in my mind

"Prepare." How do I do this, I wonder. Empty his closets? Plan his funeral?

"Lose." Is this like letting go of his hand in a crowd? I imagine craning my neck to see over other people, searching for my son, who is still small, still needs me.

"This child." As if we have spares, as if our other children can replace him.

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I lived in a smaller and smaller space, waking up in the morning, breathing, getting food on the table for my family. If things seemed better for a while, if Seth had a job and was staying clean, I allowed myself to be lulled into a feeling of normalcy, although always tentative, always waiting for the phone call with bad news. When the phone call came, when Seth slipped again and was out of money or in the hospital, my life constricted. It was an actual physical sensation, a tightening in my chest that made it feel as if there were less room to breathe.

Seth didn't want me to tell people about his drug use, and it was easy not to: I talked less and less with my friends. I felt I knew what they must be thinking: "He's still using drugs? Why don't you do something?" It was hard to show interest in my friends' concerns -- a child cut from the lacrosse team, an overdue term paper. I avoided celebrations. I had no patience for the cheerful superficiality of cocktail banter, and I was jealous that other families had something to celebrate. Graduations and weddings left me gripping my wine glass, feeling selfish and maudlin, blinking back tears.

My writing, which had centered me, providing space for my own life, was no longer a solace and anchor. When I sat at my desk, trying to write, scenarios of disaster and rescue spilled into each other until my mind felt fuzzy, swollen. I couldn't concentrate on language. The exploration of image and phrase and sound, the discovery of meaning, seemed lost to me.

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One night I attended a meeting on drugs at my younger son's school. It was a school my son switched to in part to get away from his older brother's reputation, a new school where I didn't yet know the parents or teachers. My intention was to go to the meeting, listen to what they had to say, and go home. I certainly didn't plan to share my experience.

The moderator of the panel reminded us that we were not, of course, worried that our children would become drug addicts. We were there, she said, because a youthful experiment might damage a child's chances to get into a good college. I understood that point of view; I had believed that, too. But now I found myself standing, trying to get control of my voice. Did everyone hear my voice shake as I said my oldest child was a drug addict? He was a bright, achieving child, I told them, trying to steady myself as I went along. I stared over the heads of the other parents when I said he had started experimenting with drugs in high school. That he had been able to hide his problem and was admitted to -- and graduated from -- Harvard. And he was a heroin addict. So who was it exactly who didn't have to worry about addiction?

The next day there was a message on my telephone answering tape: "You don't know me, but I was at the meeting last night. Thank you." It felt good to say who I was. Now it wasn't just me, or me and my husband, or the two of us and an army of experts. It was easier, too, to talk with friends, as if speaking at the meeting had opened a crack in my silence, which slowly widened. I participated in community again, the community of adults trying to raise children. I had been locked out of that community by my silence, but now, as I talked about our situation, I eased myself back in.

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There's a story we like to tell at Nar-Anon meetings, about a member of our group who was called in the middle of the night. The nurse on the other end of the phone told her to take the next plane to Florida, where her daughter was in the hospital from an overdose. Calculating the plane schedules, she said she couldn't arrive until the next afternoon.

"You have to hurry!" the nurse implored. "She won't be alive in the morning."

"If she won't be alive in the morning," my friend answered, "why should I hurry?"

My friend's daughter did live, which makes it easier to for us to smile, but I think we would smile anyway, drawn together by the black humor of families perched together on the edge.

Next Page: A long-term treatment program in Florida

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