Family therapists and addictions therapists tend to part ways when it comes to whether or not to cut off, in the name of not enabling, the “sick” member of the family, the one who steals the silverware to pay for the cocaine, the alcohol, the heroin.  Pick your substance, none of them are free.

Not that we’re naive.  We understand that an addict will do anything to get substances, and will exploit the family, in all kinds of ways, as a coping strategy under stress.  Object?  Get drugs.  Drug seeking. 

But family therapists like to keep the door cracked, the lines of communication open.

Call us when you get better, we tell family members to tell their addicted progeny.  We’ll be waiting.

So I happened to get DVD-R, because for me, setting up a VCR to tape shows on cable works only about 30% of the time, and I don’t like missing my shows.  We need our distractions, our recreation, and television isn’t the worst thing a person can do with time.  Not the best, sure, but not the worst.  A couple of hours a week.  Who notices?  It’s okay. 

And if you make yourself exercize while you watch, well, it’s downright healthy.

Anyway, last night I got lucky.  An old Boston Legal, probably the first one I ever saw, happened to be on the ION channel.  (Boston Legal WCPX 13, the one where senior partner, Shirley Schmidt deals with her ex, Ivan Tiegs, who wants her to be best man at his wedding.  Ivan marries a woman who bursts into song (I Must Have Done Something Right) at any opportune moment, like at her wedding.

One of the plots is about a law partner, Paul something, a very distinguished, stately gentleman, and his meth-amphet addicted daughter, Rachel.  The story got to me the first time around, and it worked on a second showing, too.

Paul hasn’t seen his daughter for seven years.  He’s starting to lose it.  Shirley tells him, Break down, call her.  She’s your daughter.

So he does.  He visits Rachel.  She opens the door, surprised.

“Who’s dead?”

“No one’s dead, Rachel.  I just came to say hello.  Repair the damage.”

“Look, Dad.  I think we agree there need to be apologies.  But we differ about who should get them.”

He’s conciliatory to a degree, not much of a degree.  “I’m sorry that we lost track for seven years.  But I don’t owe you an apology.”

She starts to close the door.  “Wait,” Paul cries.

A little girl appears.  “Who’s this?” he asks his daughter.

“This is your granddaughter.”

We see them sitting together in Rachel’s apartment, toys are on the floor, on the table.  Father and daughter are talking, amicably.  Paul learns that Rachel hardly knew his granddaughter’s father before they parted ways.  “It was just one of those things,” Rachel explains. 

“You’re almost 40!” he exclaims with disgust .

“Meaning what?”

“That perhaps when you choose men. . .”

“What?  I should find one who won’t walk out on me?  Women want to marry their fathers, I understand.”

“I NEVER walked out on your mother.”

“But you walked out on me.”

Indignant.  “I did not walk out on you! “   He thinks for a moment.  “How angry you must be,” he cries.  “How angry you must be with me, not to tell me I had a granddaughter!”  And he leaves, he walks out on her.

In the next scene we see Rachel visit him at the firm.  She’s holding an olive branch.  Her daughter, Fiona, is asking will she see Grampa again. 

Paul tells her that he couldn’t enable her.  The counselors, the professionals told him, Don’t enable her.

“So you stop giving me money!” she cries. “You don’t walk out, refuse to take my calls, tell security to block me at the door!”

“You think you can lay all this on me?  I gave you everything.”

“It was your job to give me everything.  Just like it’s my job to give Fiona everything.   No matter what.  I needed you,” she shouts.  “For G-ds sake, Dad.  I was a drug addict, an alocoholic.  I had nothing.  I needed my father and you abandoned me.”

“You think that was easy?  They all told me you had to hit bottom.”  He says the word bottom bitterly.

“Mission accomplished, Dad.”  Smug.  Sarcastic.  Angry.

It goes on.  He tells her that in his darkest days, as her mother lay dying, he let his mind wander to her, thinking, when she had a baby, he would be there at the birth, would hold  and love a baby again, like he loved her.  Then he shouts, “And you took that from me!  How dare you!”

( the writing, so good here)

“You know what dad?” she responds calmly, because she knows she has the upper hand.  “In my darkest days, through it all, I had one little thing, a tiny semblance of a foundation and it was knowing that no matter what, my father would be there for me.  And he wasn’t.  How dare you take that from me!?” 

 Touche.  End of scene. Great drama, great television.

But a stand off, no?  Who was right?

If he refused her, if he said to her that as long as she abused substances he would not be there for her, then he might pressure her, force her to sobriety.  That is the thinking.  If a dependent person can’t depend upon others, if a dependent person has to depend upon himself (and maybe a higher power) then there’s potential for sobriety.  It’s possible.  If you know it’s all up to you to take charge of your life, to be a good mom, then maybe you’ll get it together.  To do that, to take charge, to be a good mom, you have to be sober.   

And yet, Rachel is telling us that his rejection hurt too much.  She’s saying her sobriety could have been accomplished without the rejection.  What she doesn’t tell us, what I will tell you, is that his abandonment robbed her of something, a certainty, a trust in the way the world could be. 

We’re supposed to give them our all and that all has absolutely nothing to do with money.  It is our psychological support that our children need, if only for a few years, to stand on their own two feet.    It’s still up to them, ultimately, to take responsibility for their lives.

We can be there for our children.  There are people who are there for their children to the very end.  And their children don’t turn out to be drug addicts.  Emotional support doesn’t create or maintain dependency.

It can, don’t get me wrong.  It can.  If you support an addicted adult financially, you’re putting drugs into their system.  But I think Rachel is right when she says, in so many words, “So don’t give me money.”  What would be so terrible about giving me you? 

Such a tough call, so many things to think about before you make it.  All I’m saying here is that there’s no protocol, no prescription that works automatically just because it’s worked for some.  Every addict, every person, is different and needs something different from family.  To simplify it in a formula is risky.  Had any one of Paul’s counselors, in that show, been a really family therapist, my guess is that the cut-off wouldn’t have happened.  And Rachel’s decision to use or not to use would still have been in her court, where it belonged.

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