Mothering through a child's addiction journey: Linking lived experience to the lenses that shape intervention

Abstract

Summary

Someone dies from an opioid overdose every two hours in North America. These statistics became personal when my eldest son died from a drug overdose—he had been in recovery for a year, excited about the prospect of welcoming his unborn daughter into the world, and desperately committed to staying drug-free. He had been struggling with substance abuse for over twelve years. As a mother and Social Worker, I spent those years feeling helpless and deficient as things spiraled further and further out of control, committed to supporting my beloved son in a system that was not working.

Findings

This article is about this journey. My goal is to critically examine how our treatment lenses for understanding addiction create unacknowledged ethical issues and tensions that stigmatize not only those with substance use issues, but their family as well.

Application

The purpose is two-fold: to examine how the experience of mothering a child with addictions who dies is constructed as a problematic, and to invite Social Workers to think critically about their practices and the lenses they are drawing on when working with this population.