Anne Marilyn Lucas

wrote the play RECOVERY for all of the mothers and families I met, whose children were suffering and dying from the disease of addiction. I asked my friend Patricia Saint James to write a song for the show based on the Serenity Prayer. It is a beautiful song that is very powerful in the play, but has gone on to help many others in the Massachusetts Drug Court. I didn’t have addiction in my family and adopted my daughter Elizabeth at birth, not knowing her parents were addicts. I was lost and terrified as my daughter became sicker and sicker from age 13 to 21. I didn’t know what was wrong. The school said she had a low IQ and learning disabilities. People who found out how much we were struggling said, “It was because of the kind of mother I was”. Shame and secrets filled our house. Therapist after therapist gave up. Liz called them “the-rapists” saying “they’re just sit on the couch waiting for me to say something they can pounce on.” No one said it was addiction, and somehow we didn’t know. After her third arrest we sent her to a boarding school for children with learning disabilities. At this high school she found the dealer on campus and became his girlfriend. Expelled even from that school she was home again culminating in her ODing. I found her birth mother. I thought that might help. Her trip to her birth family revealed a father and mother deep in the disease of drug and alcohol abuse.

She came home and asked me to take her to the doctor. She said she was addicted to OCs. I didn’t even know what they were. She had graduated from pills to needles when she and her boyfriend didn’t have money for pills. Meeting her birth mother she said she “saw her future in her eyes” and wanted to get clean. That began the round of very expensive treatment centers. All of the money for college and more went to trying to save her. Her birth mother died at 41, less than a year after Liz met her. Liz felt new resolve, but depression. Six months after her birth mother’s death and lots of terrible experiences later, I got her to Caron Treatment Center. She was ready and it was the right place. Staffed by recovered addicts she said “ Mommy thank you for helping me find my people.”

It will be 11 years since she embraced recovery. I found Alan-non and ‘my people’. Liz did not have learning disabilities or a low IQ. She is getting her Masters in Social Work with a 3.8 GPA. She has a beautiful baby girl and is an amazing mother. We share our recovery journey. I am a lucky parent, but so many others are not. Writing RECOVERY was a way for me to give hope and some wisdom to audiences who see the play. The play is a drama that gives voice to a parent’s struggles as well as their children’s battle with addiction. It has had 5 productions, one in Greece. All with talk backs for the audience to ask questions. I have invited politicians, rehab professional, therapists and other parents from groups that support families with addiction issues to create a forum for understanding this horrible disease.