My life as an enabler

I have spent the last year and a half being an enabler to my eldest son, who, with an addictive personality, has become completely addicted to electronics and gaming. Be it phone, face book, online games, video games, whatever. I am exhausted and have gone to depths of fear and anger I never thought possible.

I wish I could say this was all foreign territory to me, but I can't. I am a child of an alcoholic, was involved with an alcoholic/drug addict and am now faced with my boy and his issues of addiciton. With several years of counseling and Al-anon, prior to my son, I believed that I had beat the world of enabling. Then my precious, sweet little fair haired boy ventured down the road himself. Ok, he is almost 18 and bigger than me, but when I look at him I still see the sweet smiling face of the little one who would run into my arms calling me "Mama". Sadly, watching him sink into the world of gaming and electronics brought up so many issues for me and turned me into a person I do not know. I did things I never thought I would do and am certainly not proud of them. All my craziness was completely out of fear. Fear that he would fail, that he would flounder, that this addiction would turn into chemical addictions and end up losing him forever.

So for 19 years my enabling had lain dormant. Today I am working through those issues again. I pray for my son, for my family and for me, that I can once again be the great boundary setting mom that I once was. Guess I will have to take it just one day at a time.