Lost my mom to a crack overdose, she was 59

It has been almost 2 months and the pain gets worse by the day. After days of her car not leaving the house the neighbors used their emergency key and found her lifeless and decomposing. Days before her passing she had agreed to go to rehab and in exchange I’d pay her bills and mortgage. She seemed onboard. Then she went on a several day binge. She called me the day before her passing under the influence, I was upset. During the call I asked if she wanted to be here for her grandsons and if she wanted to live or die.

My mother battled addiction my entire life, she was a self proclaimed functioning addict. 4 years ago her brother died and 2 years ago her husband. I should have known she needed me emotionally, but she had gotten a boyfriend who isolated her from her loved ones.Our relationship was filled with ups and downs, but I loved her. The addiction forced me to create firm boundaries that she never enjoyed, but the addiction caused me so much pain that I had to. I didn’t want me two young kids suffering the way I did. Coming from a family of enablers, I held my mom accountable thinking maybe one day she’d stop living the double life. I was wrong, I now know that it was truly her choice and there’s no amount of love or forced accountability that could change that.

I am an only child and I feel so alone. It’s only after her passing that I realize how bad I treated her and how strong and brave she actually was. First 3 weeks, I did what I do best: make things happen. Now that that’s done all I have is unavoidable emotion of missing her. I know she’s in a better place, but I’m so hurt. Moving forward feels to much like moving on.

 

I am sorry for your loss. Your heart will tell you when you are capable of moving forward. It is only normal to grieve the loss of someone you love. Of course you are hurt. You have lost someone with whom you had deep connections. It sounds as though you did your best to help her, but there is only so much we can do because it is a choice the addicted person has made.
What's left to do now is take good care of yourself. Be kind and good to yourself. Eat healthy, get outside for fresh air and a walk, even if it is a short one.
We are people who care about those that have experienced a loss and we want to support you and help you in any way we can.
Hoping to hear from you soon and find out how things are going for you.
Chris

 

I am so sorry for your loss. I really resonate with how you described your experience. It sounds like we have a lot in common regarding our relationship with our mothers, although the only difference is the addition timeline. My moms addiction developed more recently (seems like 2019/2020). However, the hardest thing to grapple with is what you mentioned: the boundaries we created to protect ourselves. You might be asking yourself "what if I didn't have those boundaries? where might she be? would she still be here?" It's critical you truly accept the answer to that question is no.

While I am still working through this myself (4 months into my journey. She passed in October 2025), what I can share with you is that likely up until the point you were forced to create boundaries, you may have had no boundaries at all when it came to her needs and addiction habits. What I mean by that is, perhaps you allowed her to continually drain or disappoint you, because you had so much love for her, even if/when it wasn't good for you. Maybe you spent your savings or money that could have gone towards your future or your children on things she asked you for. Those are small examples, but they are things we commonly overlook when we are feeling remorseful we weren't somehow more understanding. Take a moment to acknowledge the countless times you were understanding, and what you likely sacrificed in those moments.

Sometimes I ask myself: "Where would I be today if I didn't implement boundaries with my mom towards the end?". I try to think of what I may have lost, or what would have been impacted had I not started saying "no" more or demanding a relationship where I felt respected and seen by her.

I was risking my job, my relationship, and my mental health. I felt driven to the brink of ending my own life in those moments, knowing that I had to choose between putting my mom at risk (saying no to paying for rent all the times she simply forgot or "her money was stolen") and giving up my security/future to postpone the consequences of her actions.

I say that with so much love for my mom, and if I could trade my life for hers, I would. She deserved better. She had so much potential and I wish she saw what my sisters and I saw in her. With that said, something I have found myself reflecting on these last few weeks is that my boundaries came up because I was tired of fighting for her life, and I began to see how little she fought for her own life. I once asked her, "how can I care about your survival, more than you care about your survival?". It led us to fight often, whether it was about money or relationship dynamics. My fight for her survival started to drain any energy I needed to fight for my own survival.

I share all of this with you to say, you did the best you could with what you knew and what you had at the time. That doesn't make you a bad person, and not having boundaries would not have saved your mom. Our moms sound similar, both brave and having survived tons of adversity and devastating life moments. But it also sounds like they were similar in their choices for survival. I held my mom accountable, just like you did, and 100 times more than that, I enabled her. Yet my results are the same as yours.