grief and addiction

• 01:15 - Introducing Lotus, a clinical social worker specializing in complex trauma.
• 06:20 - The first grief: Losing her father in a car accident at age seven.
• 10:15 - The grief of abandonment: Moving in with grandparents and losing her primary connection to her mom.
• 15:10 - How early trauma and a lack of belonging fueled a turn toward substance use.
• 20:45 - The profound loss of grieving a living partner who developed schizophrenia after an overdose.
• 23:20 - Understanding trauma bonding and how it served as a coping mechanism.
• 25:30 - The cyclical nature of grief: Seeing her own childhood experiences mirrored in her daughter's life.
• 36:40 - The suicide of her best friend, Opal, and how it became a turning point.
• 40:00 - How feeling the immense grief of her friend's death broke through years of dissociation.
• 42:20 - A crucial discussion: How should we talk to our children about death, loss, and suicide?
• 54:10 - The most important takeaway for healing: You have to allow yourself to feel your grief.

Transcript

Hi, Lotus. Hi. Yeah, thank you, Claire. Should I just introduce myself? Okay, my name's Lotus. I am a licensed clinical social worker, have a private practice, and I work primarily with people who are queer, identify as non-binary, and people with complex trauma and dual diagnosis, substance use and addiction stuff, harm reduction specifically.

Hi, thanks for being here.

Yeah, introduce yourself.

Awesome. so why don't we just jump in? Why don't you let us know your experience with grief and loss has been?

So thank When thinking about doing this podcast, guess starting in order, feel like there are lot of different types of grief that come up when I'm conceptually trying to understand what grief means to me. So first, what I think of is my dad who died when I was about seven. And we could start there.

Speaker 1 (06:28)

Yeah, absolutely. did your dad die?

Speaker 2 (06:31)

was in a car accident. was super young. So I think he was 26 when he died.

Speaker 1 (06:38)

know about details of the car accident?

Speaker 2 (06:41)

We have stories. I think most families have stories. I don't actually know how much of this is true. I have the newspaper article from when he died about the car accident. So he was struggling with addiction on and off for most of his life. And when he died, apparently, the story is that he was sober. And he had heard from a psychic or a palm reader that if he did not get sober, he would die. And so he got sober, but then ended up dying. I don't know how.

true all that is. Well, it's a story. he was the driver and the passenger was a woman who was maybe he was saying and she again, this is a story, grabbed the steering wheel and like the car flew under a semi truck and he died and she was fine.

Speaker 1 (07:24)

Wow. ⁓ my gosh. Do you remember how you were told that he died?

Speaker 2 (07:31)

Mm-hmm. Again, I have like another family story. So it's interesting because I don't know how much of this, I had a dream that he died the night before he died. And it's hard for me. There's a lot of my childhood that I don't have strong memories around or very clear memories. So this is something that has always been a memory that I have. And I don't know how much of it was something I created later on or solidified, you know, as I went forward by my dream.

I remember waking up and the dream was like a scary dream. And my dream, my dad was being eaten by a bear and it was kind of ethereal. There's like floating houses and there was some bear and he was being eaten. It was really scary. And I remember waking up and my mom telling me, and I don't think I had like a big emotional reaction to it. He wasn't, I wasn't living with him. They weren't together. There was, I saw him rarely. So was like intermittently.

a couple times a year or not super often. it didn't mean a whole lot to my life at the time. So I don't remember the moment she told me, but I remember that dream and that she told me that the morning after the dream. And then I remember his funeral And like running around and laughing with kids, because I was a kid. I didn't really understand what it meant.

Speaker 1 (08:47)

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you just said that. was going to ask, do you remember at that age what your understanding of death was or how it was explained to you by people in your life?

Speaker 2 (09:00)

I have like no memory of that. what does come up is

being like, I don't know, okay. Like, I felt like he was already gone. I didn't have a deep connection with him. And I have another memory of him that was him being angry at me because I was feeling sad, missing my mom. And it was like, I was gonna stay the night over there. And so it's just kind of, I don't think he knew how to be a parent. And so I don't think I saw him as a parent. So I don't, didn't know what it meant. And then going into my whole life story, but

I'm not gonna go too far, but the next step of that is I went to live with my grandparents a year and a half after that. And so my mom, then I felt grief. I noticed I lost my mom, whereas with my dad, I didn't feel like I lost him. It was later that I recognized I lost the concept of dad. ⁓

Speaker 1 (09:53)

What was the reason that you went and lived with your grandparents and away from your mom?

Speaker 2 (09:58)

so that she could finish school. She was a single parent and she was having a hard time. And I think my grandparents were not supportive of her being a single parent, of having me at all. And they were judgmental of how she was raising me. I was raised living in school buses and in teepees in Santa Fe and the like houseless traveling kind of stuff. And they thought that she was doing not a great job. So they were like, let her come live with us. You can finish school. And I was probably,

the worst issue, just for me and my mental health, that was not a great decision. So that grief stuck with me. Like now I don't have any parents.

Speaker 1 (10:35)

not even having one parent you connect with. Yeah, wow. And so within that, what was that transition like from living with mom kind of sounds unstable, but loved. Like, love. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:38)

Yeah, incredibly hard.

bowl.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:55)

loved, I guess environmentally maybe unstable. And then living with grandparents, what was that transition like?

Speaker 2 (11:04)

It was not great. It was not great. was, I lived with my grandfather and his wife, my step-grandmother on the weekends, and then my grandmother. my, different houses throughout the week. would have a room at each house and go to each person because they were splitting up because none of them felt like they could manage me independently, or on their own. So I, and that was terrible. I remember crying every night, missing my mom. think that was when.

Missing my dad's, I started listening to Chicken Soup for the Soul every night

I would repeat the same sad stories and cry and I feel like they put words to however I was feeling at the time.

Speaker 1 (11:39)

did you, your mom stay connected during that time?

Speaker 2 (11:40)

And

she, I mean, I would go see her in the summers and she missed me a lot. And then she moved up when I was in almost in seventh grade. and then my grandpa moved me up to Ashland from California. And then my mom moved up when I was in seventh grade. And so I lived with him and his wife for the sixth grade. So.

just a lot of moving and weirdness, but her and I, we talked on the phone and I know she missed me and now we've done a lot of healing around that process, but it was pretty

Speaker 1 (12:09)

gosh. And that environment also doesn't sound stable. You were moving around a lot, even just amongst all the different grandparent pieces. Throughout the week. Yeah, it was almost like one constant transition to another constant transition.

Speaker 2 (12:24)

Yeah, and that's also when I started realizing that I wasn't like other kids or like I didn't have the same family structure, home life or consistency. And so I got really good at making friends, but not great at keeping friends. So I made a lot of different friends and would just notice their families were different. because they had this healthy safe home environment. And I always felt out of place or weird.

Speaker 1 (12:45)

often, if that's what you know at some point, there's narrative of realizing that you're different, may not like the other kids mean, that's grief too.

Speaker 2 (12:56)

Yeah, think before I moved, I noticed that my mom's friends were also single moms. And the kids I hung out with didn't have dads. And so that was maybe part of me not picking up on what it meant to lose a dad, because none of us had dads. that's interesting. And then when I moved to live with my grandparents, I was going to school in an area that was a little bit more like Affluent or it was Montclair and Oakland. So it was like, you know, a mix, but.

But all of my friends had full families, two parents and or And I just remember it feeling often pretty uncomfortable and like not fitting in just in general. so I don't think I could articulate it as like, I'm different because of this. just noticed that I felt different and wouldn't

Like that's been also a narrative I've had my entire life since then of being like, I'm different than other people, which I think is much less true now than I realize. But it felt very palpable in my body, an identified cause of my family is different or I don't have what you have.

one of the things in reflection that I realized is I didn't have any adults in my life that I trusted. I didn't have any coaches or teachers because I changed schools so often. And I didn't have sports that I did. I didn't have any consistent.

up through when I dropped out of middle school and then went to college when I was 16. I didn't have any, I think that's one of the resiliency factors, is one adult that a kid can trust, even despite all the other stuff. And I didn't have that at all throughout that time. I knew I could trust my mom, but she wasn't there. And then when she came back in the picture, the attachment had already.

ruptured so much and I was like angry and we did not get along until I moved out.

Speaker 1 (14:37)

yeah, I know you were saying that the relationship with mom was safe and, close and you miss her deeply when you were separated. But I was also curious, even thinking about grief of that of did it ever change to feel resentful or angry and feeling abandoned.

Speaker 2 (14:54)

I think I didn't, again, recognize it at the time. It came out as like, I hate you. I don't care what you say. I'm going to do whatever I want to do. And that involved me starting doing drugs That was like the point, right? When I moved back in with her was when I started doing all that stuff and she tried, I think she tried to create structure, but she didn't really know me anymore at that point. And I didn't know her and we, I didn't.

I was like, if you tell me what to do, I'm just gonna go do whatever I wanna do. And she wouldn't stop me or she would try, but it just didn't work. we were super, it was really challenging for that whole time. And then we became closer when I moved out and was no longer really dependent on her from a day to day basis. It's like then we could become peers in some way. And then we have healed a lot since then and now she's my mom again. But it took this like.

I don't need you anymore. it was me rejecting her totally me like I don't need you. didn't need you, which is ultimately me being like I needed you

Speaker 1 (15:58)

And so your mom came back, and then you moved

Speaker 2 (16:02)

grew up in New Mexico. She moved to Ashland. I moved to Ashland, the year before that And then, so it was seventh grade

and I was really not doing well. And then had an episodeish stay in the psych hospital and So kind of changed some behavior at that point, but wasn't necessarily doing better.

So when I was 15, dropped out of eighth grade because I was like not doing well. I ended up doing some homeschooling and then I went to ⁓ alternative school for high school and then I got my GED. I went to a night school kind of thing. And then I moved out when I was 16 and I got my own place, started college and got a job.

a large part of it I think was don't want to be dependent on other people I mean ultimately still was they helped me a lot financially my mom did and my Grandpa's ex-wife who died let me money for college so anyway, so I started with help, but I with her anymore

But I was like, I'm already working. I want to be able to drink when I want to drink. it was a lot of like, fueled by wanting to like, do college things when I was not in college.

Speaker 1 (17:10)

was your community like at that point outside of mom?

Speaker 2 (17:13)

It wasn't great. had a couple good, well, one really good friend. And then I was dating a boy in a band who had a bunch of older friends. And so they all had a party house. And so I ended up renting a house next door to the party house that was across the street from the college. And I could walk to my work also from there. So was like a centralized hub. people were at my house kind of all day every day. And I just would go with people to be there. I'd leave and people would be there. So

there was kind of a core group of people, but I didn't feel super connected. It was a lot about drinking and getting high and not actually really doing a whole lot.

Speaker 1 (17:49)

Were you still going to school during that

Speaker 2 (17:51)

I really like school. I always really felt that was a place where I could do good. no matter what, I mean, I was late all the time with everything, but I had the skills to make it work, you know? I liked it and kind of martyry complex. I'm like, I'm 16 and so cool in doing this and...

mean, a lot of it I recognize as trying to get acknowledgement for what I'm able to do at that age also that I didn't have any real And so it felt kind of like I needed to prove get affirmation and acknowledgement for how cool I am. Because all these older people who are doing less than I was were hanging out with me. was like, don't you think I'm cool?

Speaker 1 (18:32)

and not just cool. mean, you said a few moments ago, also like how good I am, right? Maybe these behaviors I'm doing outside of here counterintuitive to being quote good, but here's this area where I can prove that I'm good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:50)

Yeah.

So I started making some closer friends with someone my age who we were like wanted to move up to Portland. So we decided to find a place and go to PCC it was going well for a while. I transferred to PCC. I was biking to PCC from my cool Southeast Portland apartment. felt very,

you know, I'm doing it, we're This starting to make friends and At some point I ended up meeting my soon to be husband who introduced me to heroin and that kind of fucked up that whole.

living situation and friends and I ended up dropping out of school for a little while after that because I couldn't sustain school using heroin. I did go back and went to school more while using but then dropped out again so that that wasn't less successful. But none of those people stayed connected after that. Like and there were people I spent every day with for at least a year or two.

it just so that there was this big loss there too of nobody actually stayed connected. And I know there's some like a responsibility around me going into using drugs and that I could have gotten reconnected, but it was hard to lose yet another group of people at that point.

Speaker 1 (20:04)

Yeah, for the first time, it sounds like that you invested in and was trying to connect with in a different way than you ever really had the opportunity to when you were going to school and moving around a lot. And yeah, feeling like another loss rejection within that.

Speaker 2 (20:19)

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:21)

So significant substance use came in. what was the theme of grief and loss around use?

Speaker 2 (20:29)

so again, in thinking about doing this podcast themes of recovery around mental health and substance use come up so much with grief I don't know who said this, but there is a quote somewhere that said recovery is grief work. That doing any sorts of healing requires, it really is grieving and going through the processes of all the things that you lost or the futures that were lost or the hopes or

some of the permanency of damage that occurs at some points that just feels

there's no coming back from certain things and that's what death is. That's what all the things are that have been the most painful is just recognizing, I've altered my life in a particular way and I can't go back.

Speaker 1 (21:08)

not just physically, mentally, emotionally.

Speaker 2 (21:12)

Yeah, yeah. There was a point at which person that I was with who we ended up getting married when I was 18 was a point at which he overdosed in my car and it was just us and I had to call the police and he was turning blue and I was giving him CPR. was like terrifying. And I ended up getting arrested for calling the police and having heroin in my car and

took him to the hospital and something that happened for him was that the Narcan them and saved his life. But ultimately it felt like he never was the same. he was out for a long enough period of time. I don't know if whatever permanent damage it did, but from that point on, he kind of changed his personality changed and then that kind of steamrolled. At some point he started to have hallucinations and then we became schizophrenic. he was the first relationship I had had that was my best friend.

Despite introducing me to drugs, so much in common and sense of humor. So we had so much fun together and he was my best friend. And then when he, after he overdosed, I felt like I lost him, but we stayed together for another two years or so.

as that progressed and got worse and worse and worse and ended up moving back to New Mexico to get off of Maryland and to try to like rebuild. And he did not do well. And so we were like, again, alone, didn't have any community there, didn't have any people. I was working and going to school. He was going to school and I was doing most of his homework for him because he was just like not doing well. ⁓

Speaker 1 (22:40)

school

so I can do both of our homework.

Speaker 2 (22:43)

Not great, but yeah, yeah. So that just got worse. I didn't know how to deal with that loss. And I ended up connecting with a neighbor that had just had his girlfriend die in the apartment and him and I connected and ended up getting together. And I was 19. Yeah. And that was my way of coping with like, I'm.

can't deal with this Like I don't know how to leave him because of where he was at and I felt so guilty, but I also couldn't take care of him. And that was the role I felt like I was pushed into at that point. Like I couldn't grow or change or do anything with the way that he was.

Speaker 1 (23:19)

And so you eventually that relationship officially.

Speaker 2 (23:24)

Yeah, and this ended up having a baby with the neighbor who was just coming out of this intensely traumatic situation where his girlfriend had overdosed in their apartment And he was going through all this trauma stuff and we were together for a short period of time before I got pregnant.

Speaker 1 (23:41)

screaming, trauma bonding

Speaker 2 (23:43)

was not a good relationship and it was very trauma-bounded. He was an alcoholic and really mean, a lot older than me at the time. So didn't go super well.

Speaker 1 (23:53)

feel like trauma bonding temporarily served you during that?

Speaker 2 (23:59)

Yeah, it was the only way that I could, I feel like get out of that relationship, which is, which I feel awful about. And I feel like I have so much guilt and also I've done some amends and worked through a lot of the guilt around what I did and how young I was and how much I was struggling with, I don't know how to take care of myself, let alone this person who is psychotic and doing kind of scary things on a regular basis.

And so that connecting with this person, was like, oh my, like you're sufferi