My husband Chip and I were sociology professors at Rutgers University, enjoying life in our small town in busy central Jersey. Our son, Alex, was born in 1989, and he quickly captivated us.
We were a typical suburban family, but we were not immune to the hurricane forces of misery that addiction brings.
The cracks formed early. The troubles slipped in quietly during the summer of 2002. When he was 12, Alex developed anorexia. I look at photos and see his smile fading with the pounds he lost. My beautiful boy stopped laughing. His spirit evaporated. We found a hospital-based eating-disorder unit that would admit males, hoping his anxiety would be treated there. Alex spent months in psychological and nutritional therapy.
It seemed to work. We thought we dodged a bullet. We were thrilled when he asked for a cheeseburger and when he wanted Dunkin’. Along with the therapy, his friends and school administrators enveloped him in a supportive, caring community. Those were essential to Alex’s recovery and reentry to middle-school life.
But eventually, he became addicted to drugs, and they took his life. My husband and I were determined not to let Alex’s death destroy us.
Alex’s anxieties led to addiction, and our family was in chaos
Through high school, Alex self-medicated with alcohol and marijuana. Once he got to college, the drugs and drinking became riskier and more dangerous. He blacked out from drinking on more than one occasion and had run-ins with the local emergency services and police. Over his college years, he ended up in the hospital multiple times with a blood-alcohol content sufficient to kill most people.
Once Alex graduated from college — with a high GPA and a degree in biology — things went from bad to worse. He started experimenting with heroin. Over the next few years, he went to 12 different rehabs, attended hundreds of 12-step sessions, tried Suboxone, went to multiple psychiatrists, and threatened suicide.
His anorexia returned, with bulimia for good measure. He stole money from us and then from unlocked cars — which landed him in county jail. With each incident, his options narrowed. Friends faded from his life. The Alex we nurtured and knew faded away, too. The new Alex was angry and sullen, locking himself in the bathroom to shoot up. We found syringes all over the house.
Our good family was now in chaos. We were all living inside the insanity of addiction. Chip and I — but especially Alex —wanted off that terrifying carousel, but round and round we went.
On May 11, 2015, we reached the end of the road. Alex died of a heroin overdose. The police officers who showed up at our door told us there was a note for us in Alex’s back pocket. He was sorry for taking the easy way out, he said. He was tired of hurting us, but he couldn’t deal with his life anymore. He closed with, “I will love you forever, Alex.”
My husband and I grieved differently
Chip and I went through all that together. As we traversed the addiction road, we learned that some marriages failed when faced with such trauma, and we understand why.
But for us, addiction became the common enemy, and we agreed on how to address the adversary. The biggest challenge was trying not to confuse the addiction with our son.
From the beginning, our grieving strategies differed. Early on, Chip’s was raw and so deep that it interfered with work and sleep. He was never comfortable grieving in public and couldn’t understand how I could keep returning to the trauma.
From my perspective, I was reliving the trauma to make sense of it. I dug into my vulnerabilities, trying hard to compartmentalize them. I decided to write about the trauma in the hopes of gaining a public audience and turning my grief into activism.
We’ll always live with grief. But that didn’t mean Chip and I had to lose each other, too.
We had to reframe our future — without our son
The death of a child threatens the outlook that couples share. We lost the very thing that had structured our lives for over two decades. Every parent imagines a future in which their children will be alive. Instead, our future shattered.
After Alex’s death, Chip and I had to reconfigure our images of what “family” means. We were determined to survive.
Seven years after Alex died, we retired from academia. We left New Jersey and set up roots in Washington, DC. We’re looking for new communities, and I, for one, am looking for opportunities for activism.
Through it all, Chip and I have more in common than what divides us. We lean on that to keep our marriage alive. Sometimes, it’s just one foot in front of the other.
Patricia A. Roos wrote “Surviving Alex: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction,” by Rutgers University Press.
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