This summer, more than two hundred estranged parents filled a conference room in Chicago, some of them having flown in from as far away as Australia, with another two hundred and fifty watching online. They came for one thing. A mother quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the event put it plainly: they wanted to understand what makes their children do this, because the children all seem to say the same things. Narcissist. Self-absorbed. It is your fault.
The cycle has been running for more than 20 years. A regulatory gap opens. Someone finds a way through it. A product shows up behind the glass. Emergency rooms begin seeing overdoses or withdrawal cases they cannot easily identify. The label holds up for a while, then the industry moves on.
Cutoff does not automatically heal anyone. Distance usually brings relief and grief together. That is consistent with everything I see clinically, and it was the honest note in my first post as well: adult children who go no contact describe a nervous system that relaxes and a loss that does not.
You've spent thousands of dollars. You've lost sleep. You've researched treatment programs, sat in therapists' offices, read every book, worried constantly, and rearranged your life around someone you love. Of course you want them well. But wanting them well and being ready for what "well" actually requires are two different things. Most families never get asked to tell them apart.
A recovery built around someone else's goals doesn't hold. It can't. That's the only way someone actually gets well: their purpose has to be greater in their life than whatever they've been reaching for.
