Life with adult step son living in my home as a recovering alcoholic is difficult. I feel like I have always felt with both step sons, like I am navigating a mine field. It does not help that I am a mental health professional. We do not have all the answers, and even if we did, our intellect has little to do with our feelings. I understand the complexities of blended families. I have a masters in family dynamics for goodness sakes, but this has not spared me from the pain being a step mother has brought into my life. My understanding and empathy for my step sons, my spouse and their mother does not seem to help much in the face of my exposure to their screwed up and broken family dynamic that I am often a scapegoat for.

My youngest step son showed up almost a year ago after nearly 7 years of little to no contact. We had long ago accepted that he was off doing his own thing, and didnt want much to do with us despite our efforts to connect with him. My husband was not his custodial parent, and his toxic ex-wife raised both boys with emotional abuse and neglect. I am just now realizing just how bad it was for them, and just how much they were conditioned to view their father and I in a negatiive way.

Shortly after my step son's arrival to our home from where he lived in Colorado, I discovered his alcoholism. At that time, I was a week or two away from major surgery on my spinal cord for a rare, prgressive disease. It was a scary, stressful time and I had become mainly housebound due to an inability to stand or walk for more than a few minutes. When my step son initially called his dad and I asking to come stay with us after a break up with his long time girlfriend, he gave us this touching story about how I had always been there for him and this was his chance to give back. I was facing an experimental, last ditch effort type of surgery that even if nothing went wrong, I was facing a two year recovery that was to be slow and painful.

My husband flew one way to Denver to help my step son drive back to Texas and immediately discovered all was not well and not what he had led us to believe. My husband drove 15 hours on his own because his son was so drunk he could barely speak. My husband, whose denial mechanism is impressive, thought that his son had simply partied with his friends the night before moving back to Texas. I was greeted by a reeking, jaundiced, bloated 27 year old I barely recognized. He shook, never ate, chained smoked Camels and stayed up all night and slept all day. His meager belongings were so tatterted, they looked and smelled like a homeless person's.

Once they got home and my step son settled in, my husband's denial mechanism grew exponentially and he made excuses for every glaringly wrong thing with his son. Little by little it was revealed that he had dropped out of college after freshman year, moved in with a few other drop outs and started working nights at a dive bar as a bar tender. He had led us to believe for years that he was graduating soon. When we traveled to visit him over those years, he arranged to be at a friend's house and not the hovel he was actually living in. We knew something was wrong, but he was not talking and very dismissive of us.

The truth was he had become an addict. We also did not know that he went to his mother for help once and was taken for counseling where he was diagnosed with alcoholism and a possible mood disorder or depression, but he was not compliant with any sort of treatment. When he refused to take meds and stop drinking, his mother pulled all support and his college fund. She basically dropped him liike a hot rock lest he reflect poorly on her 'new family'. Now he had arrived at our door jobless, penniless and with no health insurance. So, about five days in while he was passed out in a lounge chair in the back yard, I looked in the bulging, filthy back pack he carried with him everywhere, even to the bathroom, and I found five full sized bottles of vodka some almost empty and some just opened. The trunk of his car had even more. I do not drink, so I had no idea what the curious round plastic disks were that litered the bottom of his back pack and filled the floor boards of his car. I now know they were the plastic pouring regulators put in liquor bottles to control how fast it comes out. He pulled them out so he could guzzle it.

I would later find out he had been drinking a fifth or more a day for the last seven years. I picked up all the plastic disks and put them in two gallon size zip lock bags while tears blurred my vision. What had happened to this sweet little boy I had known and loved since he was three? His mother happened. I was going to present what I found to my husband the same day I discovered what was going on, but I first found my step son convulsing on the bathroom floor in severe alcohol withdrawal and choking on his own vomit. I cleared his airway and he came around and was able to tell me he had planned on detoxing himself at home, that he had done it twice before, and had asked his dad to just make sure he had Immodium and Sprite. I couldnt believe my husband was actually out getting what he asked for and did not think it was a big deal. Alcohol withdrawal being a medical emergency and all, I rushed him to the ER. I gave him no choice. He refused an ambulance so I basically hauled his butt to my car and off we went.

I would later learn that the strain from carrying him caused my already leaking spinal cord to nearly tear to the point beyond repair. I was so scared for him, I just did not think about it. I had always been an athlete and was not adjusted to my diagnosis. I just reacted and wanted to get him to the ER. My husband met us there and I proceeded to lay it out for him that the decision was no longer his and his son was critically ill. It took two emergency docs to tell him just how close my step son came to dying. His liver and kidneys were shutting down and his heart was enlarged. It was the urine sample that did it for my husband. It was black. Not dark, not sick looking, but black.

I signed him up for indigent care and another couple of programs that would help pay for his hospital stay. My husband just sat there with 'refugee face' . I called the family, notified his mother and step father and called his estranged brother. Once they had a bed for him on the ward, I set myself to calling in every favor I had with my colleagues to get him a bed at a rehab facility. I knew if we did not have one set up once he was detoxed and stable, we would lose him again. I found one that was not fancy, but had an emperically based 14 week program.

Half way through his detox I got a call from the hospital social worker telling me my step son told them that I had been tying to treat him at home under my licensure and had diagnosed him but denied him care. He had told them that I was a psychotherapist and referred him for care he did not want or need. These are all illegal for my licensure and grounds for license revokation by my state board, but he knew that. He later admitted he was simply pissed off that I made him get proper care and wanted to hurt me.

Well, he did a bang up job because the hospital took his claim seriously and I had to answer the charges he made against me even though he recanted and apologized later. The hospital was preparing to call my board and file a formal complaint as well as one with adult protective services. Once they figured out they had been duped by the deceit typical of an addict, they apologized to me for the hassle, but I no longer receive referrals from them which has hurt my private practice of which I am the sole practitioner. He has no idea that the mere suggestion of impropriety can ruin someone's professional reputation that took years to build. He did so in a matter of minutes.

Surprisingly, he did finish rehab, not that we gave him any other choice once he discovered his mother washed her hands of him and he had no where else to go. I had surgery over Thanksgiving and entered a very long, painful recovery process that included learning to walk again. I was relieved he was not in my home when I was so vulnerable. But I was also so hurt by the lies he told that he wanted to help me. I am still hurt that my husband was not very supportive of getting his son help or grateful that I saved his son's life. He has since admitted that he felt like he was too late when he saw him for the first time in Denver and wanted to simply fly back home and leave him to his devices. That has rocked my world. I was not able to have my own children, but I could never have abandoned them like that.

So here we are almost to June. I am feeling better in slow increments. My step son has been cooperative at home with the expectations I outlined for him to live with us. I gave him no choice but to make 90 meetings in 90 days with AA, and I am so glad to see how he has found a home there where he feels accepted. I have been the only one to take any interest in him at all, yet I know I mean nothing to him. It is the pain of my life to be so invested in loving this child and knowing the loyalty binds of divorced children will not allow him to invest in me with any depth. At least he is alive and getting better. I am still hurt by what he did to me and that he says his dad saved him. I should simply care that he was saved and not concern myself with who did the saving. My issue is with the crushing feeling of emptyness, that I do not matter and sometimes I dont even exist. I have become a ghost in my home. It is hard to have come through the last 8 months learning to walk again when I used to run every day. I lost my health. It has been harder to battle back to whatever health I can recover when I feel utterly expendable to my family. His dad is invited to his milestones and I am not. He visits with his dad and older brother with whom he was once estranged and I am not included. My illness and this step nightmare has isolated me. I have never felt more alone.