Love Isn’t Always Enough: Addiction, Suicide, and Learning to Live Anyway

Apr 17, 2025

5 min read

Grief doesn’t always look like silence or sadness — sometimes it looks like growth, survival, and showing up for the messy parts of life.

Lois and Ian's stepfather, David, is an older white man of average height with grey hair, standing in front of a rose arch.

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains discussions of addiction, suicide, grief, and mental health struggles. It includes personal experiences that may be distressing or activating for some readers.

Please take care of yourself while reading. If you’re not in the right headspace, feel free to return to this when and if you’re ready. Support resources are listed at the end of the post.

April 11, 2008 — The Day I Learned Love Isn’t Always Enough

On April 11, 2008, I learned that no matter how strong my love is, how much of myself I give to someone, or how hard I try, love does not always conquer all; sometimes despair does.

My stepdad was an alcoholic. He lost his business, his connections, and his dignity… along with his driver's license. He went from being the village florist, a quiet, affable man, to a reclusive, paranoid, drunk convinced everyone was out to get him.

Sometimes, when I still lived at home, during one of his drunken stupors, he’d imagine I was lunging at him during an argument, even if I was on the other side of the room. He would physically attack me to “defend himself”. I snap into fight mode under attack, I protect myself and a time or two, I hit him back... in defence of myself or my mum, often with her in the middle. It's not a period we are proud of or talk about. They were dark and unpredictable times.

The Distance Didn’t Protect Us

After I moved to New York, things got worse for Mum. She was home alone with him, abandoned by a family who preferred blame and condescension over support. Eventually, she began separation proceedings.

He couldn’t handle being alone. So we agreed... him and I. He’d try to clean up his act and come to New York in the summer of 2008 to help me fix up my new apartment. It was something we’d done together for years, hands-on projects, building custom furniture, garden features. I loved it. Despite being left-handed, he was creative and good at figuring things out (except for the right-handed greenhouse).

After a lonely and difficult Christmas, he stemmed his drinking for a couple of months. We spoke every day. It felt like we were making progress.

Until the end of March 2008, when he went radio silent.

Getting The Call I Knew Was Coming

When I woke up on April 11th, I knew something wasn’t right. The atmosphere felt different.

When my phone rang, I was in the middle of a workday crisis, searching for a client who’d gone MIA. I knew when I heard Ian’s voice calling from Mum’s phone.

What I didn’t know was whether he had killed Mum, himself, or both.

I was relieved to find out it was him. Relieved that he was free of his suffering. That he chose his own ending. He was too ashamed of the person he had become. Too trapped to find a way out. The guilt, the failures, the incapacity and incapability were all too much.

When she returned from work, Mum found him, meeting her as she walked through the door.

Addiction is a Hellscape — But Turning Away Never Felt Like Love

Addiction is a terrible illness to watch loved ones succumb to. I understand the urge to turn away, it’s exhausting. But I believe if we leaned in more and created a kinder, more informed world, maybe we wouldn’t lose so many people like him.

Maybe if we judged less and listened more?

Maybe if families and communities asked, “What part might I have played?” instead of assigning blame.

Maybe if addiction treatment worked for the real world... across barriers of class, race, culture, gender, accessibility, we could save more people before they reach that lonely place with no way out.

Grief Without Guilt

Regardless of how he behaved, I still loved him. He was the only dad I knew. My biological dad left long before most memories were possible.

I don’t miss him like other people miss their loved ones who died by suicide. I carry no guilt. No unanswered questions. He knew I loved him. And I knew he loved me. That’s all I needed.

Do I wish the bad times didn’t happen? Of course. But what would that change?

Everything that happened gave me valuable lived experience. It informs my work, perspective, and understanding of other people’s struggles. My ADHD brain doesn’t stay in the past for long. It’s wired to keep moving, keep building, keep helping. Anniversaries come and go. The melancholy lingers, but I keep bouncing forward.

Connecting the Dots I Didn’t See Before

My psychiatrist asked me recently why I think I’ve been spiralling. Today, I get it.

It’s barely a month since the anniversary of Huxley’s passing. And now it’s my Dad’s.

This year, I stopped to acknowledge both.

I don’t talk much about the things that hurt me — I tend to deflect with humour, or say too much and regret it. But those who know me… know. They were there when I told them he was gone. And they didn’t run away.

The Aftermath: Breaking Before I Could Heal

I pretended I was fine. I wasn’t. After four weeks in the UK, I returned to New York and shit fell apart fast... The money pit apartment, the 2008 crash, failed classes, awful vacations, terrible decisions, drinking until blackouts—total chaos.

But in the middle of all of that, people showed up.

Mum. My friends. My found family in NYC. We survived together. And slowly, I began to rebuild.

The World is Dark Enough — Be the Light

If I’ve learned anything, it’s this:

Talk less. Listen more.

Assume less. Ask more.

We internalise far more than we need to, imagining what others think, say, or feel when maybe we should just ask.

I don’t want to survive in the world my dad died in. I want to build the world he could have survived in. One where belonging doesn’t have conditions. One where support isn’t transactional. One where people like him aren’t left behind.