My 87 year-old grandma is an addict

by Kristi
(Windsor, CO)

My loving grandmother was placed in an assisted living home 3 weeks ago. She has had a lifetime cycle of addiction, the earliest being to Valume when my mother was a child. I don't think she ever truly dealt with her addictions.

She has lived in a small town all of her life - and the doctor had her on a cycle of medication for the past 6 months, because she claimed to be in pain from an old surgery. She lost her driver's license and went down hill immediately. She was found on the living room floor by an in-home nurse. She had overdosed.

My family decided she could no longer live alone - there is no rehab facility in the small town and I don't think the assisted living facility is the right place for her. She has a "friend" who she wrote a check to for $5000 in December, and another for $100 in January.

My mother and uncle have had to take away her check book and all of her money. Now she is going through viscous withdrawals - who knows what she has been on....She claims to have diarrhea so that her nurses will give herlimodal (a mild narcotic), she won't shower, she keeps calling random people and asking them to take her home and threatening to call 911. She has jewelry missing that we think she gave to the "friend" to get meds.

I went to see her this weekend and let me tell you - seeing your 87 year old grandmother going through withdrawals from prescription medication is a very ugly sight. She wore the same clothes the 4 days that I saw her, they are filthy and I couldn't get her to change. She actually asked me for money so that she could get more medication. That beautiful woman, that caring loving woman of old wisdom that we all loved is gone.

What a wretched way to end a glorious life. What a pathetic and disgusting way to be in the end and how absurd she appears to her grandchildren and children. Addicts are selfish, pure and simple. They take what isn't theirs - the sanity and love of those who care most. I don't have the strength to deal with an addict.

I have two children, and if they ever put me through this hell - I would pack them up and take them to a cabin in the middle of Alaska and we would stay there for a year. If they weren't cured in the end, I would have to wash my hands of them forever. I just don't have the strength. God bless all of you who love an addict and for all the addicts reading this - suck it up and throw it away.

Human strength is boundless if your spirit is in the right place. Your pain is nothing compared to the pain you are causing those who love you!