One night in a Nar-Anon meeting, a woman described her addicted son’s latest crisis. I forget if he was facing eviction or jail or some other calamitous but predictable consequence of addiction. What I do remember is that the woman wrapped up her comments with this statement: “It’s not my problem!” Her voice held a note of triumph, as if she were celebrating some kind of liberation. And in a way, she was: liberation from responsibility for fixing the mess her son had gotten himself into.
Her words made a powerful impact on me because I have struggled mightily with the concept of detachment. At the slightest hint that something was wrong in my addicted daughter’s life (and there was almost ALWAYS something wrong), my mind would race to find solutions to her problems. Was she depressed? I could buy her a car to cheer her up (and make it easier to get drugs). Was her phone being shut off? I could pay the bill (making it easier to contact her dealers). Had she lost her job? I could call places that were hiring and set up interview appointments for her (that she never kept). But despite all my efforts, her problems kept getting worse. And because I insisted on inserting myself into her life, it was easy for her to blame me when things went wrong.
The notion that her problems were not my problems was a startling concept to me. It allowed me to look at detachment in a whole new light. Somehow, I had gotten the idea that detachment meant I had to turn my back on my daughter. That was something I would never do. But thanks to that woman’s words, I saw that detachment simply meant that I didn’t have to accept responsibility for my daughter’s problems. That I could love her and still own what was mine and allow her to own what was hers.

The line still gets blurry at times, and I don’t always get it right. But I am grateful to that woman for her simple words, “It’s not my problem!” For I have increasingly come to value detachment as one of the cornerstones of recovery – my daughter’s and my own.