When an addict hits rock bottom, the world focuses on the addict.
Which makes sense. They are the one in the hospital, or the police station, or the crisis shelter. They are the one whose life is visibly in danger. They are the one who needs immediate intervention. Every resource, every conversation, every moment of attention is rightfully pointed at them.
But there is someone else in the room that nobody is looking at.
The mother in the corner.
She drove to the hospital at 2am. She made the calls. She sat in the waiting room for hours with a cold cup of tea, trying to hold herself together enough to be useful when they finally let her in. She went home and sat alone in the kitchen and did not know what to do with her hands.
Susan Laing knows that room.
This week — week three of our series on The Devil: Diary of an Addict — we are sitting with her in it.
What Rock Bottom Looks Like From the Mother's Side
We talk about rock bottom as though it is a single dramatic moment. A crash. A before and after. And sometimes it is — sometimes there is a single event that changes everything, that is so undeniable and so terrifying that it breaks through all the defences and forces a reckoning.
But sometimes rock bottom is a slow accumulation of smaller catastrophes, each one almost-but-not-quite severe enough to force the change, until one day you look up and realise that you have been living in crisis mode for so long that you have forgotten what normal feels like. That you have stopped making plans. That you cannot remember the last time you laughed without guilt. That the fear has become so ambient it is simply the weather.
Susan's account in the book does not sanitise this. She describes the exhaustion, the grief, the moments of anger that she did not know what to do with, the guilt that came from the anger, the terror that came from the grief. She describes what it is like to love someone fiercely and be unable to protect them from themselves.
She also describes something that fewer people talk about: the shame. Not shame about her son — she is very clear about that. Shame about herself. About the choices she made that, in retrospect, did not help. About the times she said yes when she should have said no, and no when she should have said yes, and could not always tell the difference in the moment. About the way addiction took her parenting and made it look like failure, when what it actually was, was impossible.
Secondary Trauma Is Real — And It's Yours Too
There is a clinical term for what parents in this situation experience: secondary traumatic stress. It is what happens when you are so close, for so long, to someone else's suffering that your nervous system begins to carry the weight of it as though it were your own.
The symptoms look like PTSD: hypervigilance, disrupted sleep, difficulty concentrating, emotional numbness, intrusive thoughts, an inability to feel safe even in the absence of immediate danger. Research in Canada consistently shows that family members of people with addiction have significantly elevated rates of anxiety, depression, and physical health problems compared to the general population.
This is not weakness. It is biology. And it requires treatment.
Susan's story makes clear that she needed support too — not as a secondary consideration, not after Gavin was better, but now, in the middle of it. Because the middle of it is when she needed the most help and was the least likely to ask for it.
💜 You cannot pour from an empty cup. And you cannot stay in this for the long haul if you run yourself down to nothing in the acute phase. Your survival is not selfish. It is the prerequisite for everything else.
The Impossible Position of the Mother at Rock Bottom
Here is the thing about this stage that I want to name directly, because it does not get named enough:
The mother at rock bottom is being asked to do several impossible things simultaneously.
- Hold firm on limits — because enabling has to stop — while her child is in acute crisis.
- Maintain her own stability — because her child needs a stable parent — while experiencing secondary trauma.
- Trust the process — because recovery takes time — while watching her child suffer in ways that feel incompatible with trust.
- Take care of herself — because she cannot sustain this otherwise — while the entire culture of motherhood tells her that good mothers put themselves last.
- Not catastrophise — because catastrophising helps no one — while living in genuinely catastrophic circumstances.
That is not a reasonable ask. But it is the ask. And most mothers in this situation are doing it largely alone, in the middle of the night, without a manual.
What Susan's Presence in the Book Means for All of Us
I want to say something about the act of Susan writing this book alongside her son.
It is an act of extraordinary courage. She could have stayed silent. She could have allowed Gavin's story to be told only from his perspective, which is the conventional version of addiction memoir — the addict's journey, the family as supporting cast. Instead, she insisted on her own voice. Her own chapter. Her own truth.
And in doing so, she did something that I think is genuinely important: she said that the mother's experience is worthy of documentation. That it counts. That the person in the waiting room at 2am, the person in the kitchen with cold tea, the person holding everything together with no credit and no roadmap — that person's story deserves to be told.
If you are that person: your story deserves to be told too.
💜 You did not sign up for this. You are not failing because it is hard. You are surviving something that has no guidebook, no support network, and no end date in sight — and you are still here. That is not nothing. That is everything.
This Week's Invitation
For the mothers who are in the thick of it right now:
You need two things before anything else. Something to get you through today. And one human being who knows what is happening and is not going to run from it. If you do not have the second one yet: that is this week's task. Find that person. Your doctor, a counsellor, an Al-Anon group, a crisis line. Someone who will not flinch.
For the mothers who have come through it and are looking back:
Your story has value. There are women in that waiting room right now who need to know that someone else survived this. Consider sharing it — here, in a comment, in whatever form feels safe.
For everyone:
The Devil: Diary of an Addict by Gavin Dixon and Susan Laing is available now on Amazon. This is Part One — the descent. Part Two is coming.
Next week: the final blog in this series. Between Part One and Part Two — what the space between descent and recovery looks like, and what it asks of both the addict and his mother.
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📥 Free Download: The Mother Nobody Talks About — A Rock Bottom Survival Guide
A crisis-period toolkit for parents whose children have hit rock bottom. Includes a secondary trauma check-in, a weekly minimum care plan, and Canadian crisis resources for families. Enter your email and I will send it straight to your inbox. [Download the free toolkit →] [FORM LINK]
Let's Talk
What got you through the worst of it — the night it all fell apart, or the long weeks after? And what do you wish someone had said to you during that time? Share here. This community is for exactly this.
Disclaimer: Thrive Momma Coaching provides general education and coaching, not therapy, medical, or legal advice. If you or your child is in crisis, please contact a crisis line or emergency services. In Canada: Crisis Services Canada 1-833-456-4566 | ConnexOntario 1-866-531-2600.
