As along time recovering alcoholic myself, Michelle and I noticed addictive tendencies in our son Sage at an early age. I noticed ways in which he was just like me and Michelle recognized certain behaviors she saw in me when I was an active alcoholic. Things like manic lack of patience, being very hard on himself, and lying for no reason. When he entered high school many of our fears were realized and the battle with substances began. We used tough love and restricted his freedom. He graduated on time as an all-region athlete. But college gave him the freedom his addiction craved and substance abuse quickly became a problem. We prayed, we loved (sometimes tender, sometimes tough), we talked, went to counseling, argued with him, loved on him and and worried ourselves sick. In Feb. 2019 we had an intervention and Sage went to treatment at Cumberland Heights. He came out as the wonderful young man we always knew he was. He was sober for the better part of a year and it was the best year of all our lives. We lived in the moment, with gratitude for this miracle. In 2020 Sage veered off track. With Covid came no in person AA meetings, limited work options, and lots of free time. He was living in a half way house and we invited him to move back in with us during Covid but he declined. We had just become aware that he was again smoking pot when on May 18, 2020 we got the call that he wasn’t breathing. The night before he had bought a small amount of what he thought was cocaine that was in fact Meth laced with fentanyl. He died in a friend’s basement during the night. These days, Michelle and I are in recovery of our own. Although the pain is indescribable at times, we feel that God is taking especially good care of us. We are working on forgiving ourselves for what we could have done better with the realization that there was likely nothing we could have done. I am still sober. We are still breathing. We have a faith stronger than we ever knew existed. We have formed several groups for parents who have lost children and are finding our healing in sharing our story with others. Helping others on this road and finding peace in our hearts will be our mission until we see Sage again one day.
-The Warrens
