Addiction doesn’t just affect individuals, it seeps into the lives of anyone and everyone around them, especially those that love them unconditionally. Sadly as is my family’s experience, the more you love them, the more susceptible you are to the disease yourself. My little sister has suffered lifetime of one addiction, or another. I live while I live in California she has remained in our native Minnesota. I am separated from her addiction only by miles in the legal ramifications that keep her from Legally leaving the state. I wake up everyday to Sunshine and birds singing. Yet every single day my family lives with the worry that this will be the day that my sister doesn’t wake up at all.
My name is Betsy Huelskamp and I am NOT an alcoholic. In fact, I have not had a drink since I was a sophomore in college ~ 37 years ago! Nor do I smoke, do drugs, have tattoos or gamble. I could have been a poster child for Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign. It’s the single most important decision I have ever made in my life. Yet here I am caught in the web of a chronic addiction.