Sorry I dig in your history.
You just said to someone else that addiction is now considered a chronic brain disease, not bad behavior, not a sign of poor willpower or personal weakness.
But your father was such a burden not deserving any sympathy?
I see you have something against addiction, and I believe you are trying to motivate SD with a hate story.
People get well because of love, not because of hate. And in SD, we share love.
Sorry about your loss.
I've heard and read people say that we cannot help an addict, they can only help themselves. That unless they have come to the realization that enough is enough, they will only go deeper into their addiction, and any effort to help them will be futile, or probably even make things worse. This reminded me of something that happened a few months ago.
Like most mothers, a woman who seated next to me in a seminar refused to accept this. She reacted rather inappropriately since the guy who made that same statement wasn't really talking to her. "So I'm just supposed to wait? Until he(her son) reaches that turning point? What about those who died because of their addiction, they never arrived at that turning point did they? And frankly, can we really expect a family not to act?" She looked as if her pain was shattering her bones. She was immediately in tears and her body was shaking. I found myself comforting her right away, the first thing I said..."there's hope."
Her only son has been addicted for 4 years, on multiple drugs, refusing help. He's 23 and unemployed, he blackmails her to pay for his drugs with her meager income. This poor mother has grown afraid of her own son because of his violence, he yells at her and slaps her! and she's 64!
Honestly, after hearing all these, I wasn't sure how to comfort and reassure her. I'm a mother myself, but I can't imagine how she must be feeling. The only thing that popped in my head was a video I watched days before, saying that addiction is now considered a chronic brain disease, not bad behavior, not a sign of poor willpower or personal weakness. Some people are able to stop their addiction by choice because part of their brain is strong enough to fight the craving. This is the video: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/insight/2014/10/26/01-mind-control.html.
Addiction being a disease means it can be treated, or at least experts know where it's coming from and where to look in attempt to fix it. Science has uncovered so much about addiction now that treatment today is much more sophisticated than few years ago. Treatment is no longer exclusively determined by the patient's self-motivation. We just have to make sure that the treatment we are getting are based on the latest research and studies.
As far as I can tell, I was able to restore a bit of hope in her and I felt accomplished.