High On Christmas

I’ll never forget my Christmas Eve lesson in enabling. That dreamy 1980 evening began full of hope and joy and ended in a nightmare for my family. We celebrated with our best family friends each year when they welcomed Mom, Dad, my older brother Brad, and me into their wonderful family party, a night we all anticipated. Each year it overflowed with laughter, love, cocktails, dinner, and presents.

That night after dinner, my friend Susan and I washed dishes until I heard murmurs about Brad—whom I adored but who also struggled with drug addiction. At eighteen, I'd become accustomed to hearing rumblings about Brad; he was like a volcano with molten lava boiling inside.

You never know what to expect from an addict. Maybe you’ve been there.

"Brad's high on something" caught my ears. No way, I thought. He wouldn’t do that here. I dropped my dishtowel and discovered him down the hall, his glazed eyes and slurred words broadcasting the unbelievable. Not just high, wasted. He was likely on downers; those were his favorite. He often stole them from our grandmother’s medicine cabinet.

I'll never know why my parents and grandma didn't hide her pills. Nor will I understand why Mom frequently slipped Brad money behind Dad’s back. Or why they withheld consequences for his actions. What I know—and this took years to figure out—is that she cherished him, and her codependency motivated him to stay close to her and she to him.

“Ine fine,” he mumbled and leaned against a wall, nearly knocking down a picture. It felt like a punch in the chest, seeing him there. At our friends’ house. On Christmas. Brad toppled off his pedestal that night when he brought his masked addiction to life for all to see; he landed outside the circle of trust, theirs and ours.

Maybe he did it on purpose.

With no time for shame, I jumped into fix-it mode, something I’d become very good at in our family.

"Come on, Brad, let's go lay down," I said gently while a few people watched—I don’t recall who anymore. I’m sure my parents were nearby.

I tried to cover for him the way I'd seen Dad do with our neighbors—avoid embarrassment, his and ours—by steering him into Stu’s bedroom to sleep it off. At first, he resisted but then welcomed the bed after we ushered him into the room.

Mom and Dad tried to cover for him by continuing to have a good time. They minimized that he was on drugs to the guests, saying things like, "I saw the kids drinking a lot." And “He’s been working a lot.” And "He needs to sleep," while in the background, the song "Oh Holy Night" serenaded their denial.

We tried to continue the evening as though nothing had happened. But when Stu’s college friends started to arrive for the after-party, we soon said goodbyes and lugged Brad home. The evening was ruined. We apologized to the family, taking responsibility for his behavior (more codependency). Gracious, of course, they smiled and assured us everything was okay, but a heaviness trailed behind us. The next day we learned Brad had stolen Valium from their mom.

Upon reflection, maybe Brad couldn't handle feeling like a less-than outsider among the high-achieving college athletes and fraternity brothers at the party. I suspect we didn’t recognize then that trailing behind his peers and not meeting Dad's expectations created complicated feelings in him. Unworthiness was a common trigger for his addiction. No excuses. Just facts.

All I know is that I wanted it fixed. Brad fixed. Our family fixed.

But you can’t fix something you’re not willing to acknowledge.

Instead, we repeatedly triumphed over his ugly scenes by glossing over what happened and patching things up. Mom and Dad didn’t know how to handle drug addiction, but codependency let them function in daily life, keep the peace, and keep up the appearances that helped them get through the day.

The enabling behaviors I learned have taken me forty years to unlearn. Maybe you’ve been there.