The Water We Cannot Give

The Water We Cannot Give

Makita Schichtel 8/28/2026

Tough love got its name because brutal love isn't nearly as catchy.

But let me tell you, loving an addicted child can be brutal.

As a parent forced to practice tough love with a child in the grip of addiction, it can gut us like nothing else. Think cesarean section with a dull knife and no anesthesia, or as a father, think getting knees so hard to the groin that you can’t have children. That degree of being gutted.  Tough love goes against our very nature: we are hardwired to nurture our kids. To ease their burdens,  build their confidence, and cheer them on.

Then drugs or alcohol enter the picture and hijack not only their trajectory, but ours.

Suddenly, we're looking into the eyes of a child we've loved their entire life, only now those eyes are hooded, red, and filled with anger. Once, I looked into my son's eyes while he was high and realized he wasn't there. Brady had left the building. In his place, there was Heroin staring back at me through blackened pupils, and those eyes hated me.

The contrast was startling.

Brady had beautiful pale eyes the color of raw almonds that always held a hint of humor and liquid warmth. But when drugs took over, my son disappeared. He'd been hijacked. Still, I tried to have a conversation with him.

You've heard the saying, "Don't negotiate with kidnappers"?

I've learned the hard way: don't try to reason with someone who's been seized by a drug.

It's not just ineffective. Sometimes it's dangerous.

I'm not saying drugs turn people into monsters. Necessarily. I'm saying you're no longer dealing with a rational mind. Looking back, I'm amazed by how often I tried to use logic with my son whose thinking was drowning in chemicals. It's like speaking two different languages. Logic vs Feeling.

Drugs speak the language of feelings.

After all, that's what substance abuse is: an attempt to feel different.

My son told me that he felt calm for the first time when he got high, and he was tired of feeling anxious. He had friends who did it just to party and chase euphoria. Some wanted to feel included. Some were bored, curious, or rebellious. Others were trying to numb emptiness, depression, or trauma.

Whatever the reason, the goal is the same: escape how they feel and enter a different headspace.

Then we attempt a conversation as though they're still operating with normalcy. They have essentially switched off the part of the brain we're trying so desperately to reach. No amount of logic, pleading, or carefully chosen words will pull them back.

Wait until they're sober. You may have to step back and put some space between you two.

But don't worry, they'll come to you soon enough. Because they'll need something. They always do.

Often, it’s money. Sometimes, they are in trouble at school or work or in a relationship or maybe they’re been arrested and are begging us to bail them out, sometimes repeatedly. Ironically, they call us, the very captors of all of their fun and freedom, expecting us to solve the problem. 

And that’s where the “brutal” kicks in. As much as you may want to help them, it’s often a bad idea.

It’s gut-wrenching to lock the doors while your strung-out kid is on the porch, begging to be let in. It’s pure hell to leave your kid in jail when they look so young and terrified. It’s almost impossible to say: “I can’t be around you until you decide to change.” 

It sounds cruel, this idea of stepping back. Of refusing to rescue your own child. 

But that's the paradox of addiction: every time we soften a consequence, pay a bill, bail them out or solve a problem they created, we may actually be making it easier for them to keep using.

Again, it’s brutal. We're forced to watch someone we love suffer while resisting the urge to save them from the very consequences that might ultimately save them. 

At one point, my son was arrested and being held in the county jail. I had spoken to the officer so I knew the charges when I went to visit Brady. It was just like the movies, I was treated with great suspicion then finally led down a long sterile hallway that ended in locked doors. That sound of banging doors locking behind me sits with me to this day. Being claustrophobic, I was beginning to feel anxious when the hall ended and we descended down many steps to a basement and once again, locked inside another set of gates. I sat on a formica chair in front of a filthy plexiglass widow, and while I was waiting to see Brady, a huge cockroach crawled across my foot. I hated being there with every fiber of my being, but when I saw my son come in and take a seat opposite me, it was clear: he hated it more. He begged for me to bail him out. I had done so once before. This time, I said no. The sheer panic of his expression gave me pause. He was extremely pale and said he’d been throwing up. I used some of that brutal love and told him how much I loved him and that although I wouldn’t bail him out, I’d come back to see him. He began to cry and shake as he was led away from the window.

Once I got home, I had a decision to make. I already decided I wouldn’t bail him out. No. But his clammy skin along with him throwing up told me he was probably deep into withdrawal. I prayed about it, then called the jail doctor. I told her I didn’t wish to get my son in more trouble, but I thought he might die there if he didn’t get help with detoxing. 

Bless her heart, she called me and hour later and confirmed he was in serious detox, but the worst was behind him.

A year or so after he got released, he told me that my leaving him in jail saved his life at the time. 

To get to that point of steely resolve you might need, it helps to get a glimpse of how our loved ones feel in the throes of the disease.  I once heard a woman describe her addicted brother this way:

Imagine you've been lost in the desert for days. Your tongue is swollen, your vision is blurry, and every cell in your body is screaming for water. You finally make it home and sit at the kitchen table, desperate for a drink.

Instead, your brother walks by, slaps you on the back and proudly offers tickets to a Cowboys game. Your mom notices you look peaked and offers to make you a snack. Your dog comes and licks your hand. Everyone means well, but all you can think about is water.

They have just offered you a sandwich, box seats and love in the best way they know and they are hurt you didn’t seem to even acknowledge them. They think you don’t care about them. In that moment they are right; you can only think of survival.

That's addiction.

They aren't ignoring us because they don't hear us. They're ignoring us because the addiction is louder, a banshee, more deafening than a roomful of screaming babies, impossible for them to ignore. This disease will hold their attention tight, as long as it has control.

The way to counter that noise is sometimes with our silence. By our stepping back and taking our safety net with us.

As parents, we cannot be the ones handing them the "water." We cannot keep feeding the craving that's slowly destroying them. Maybe when we understand the depth of that craving, we can also understand why the hardest kind of love is sometimes the only kind that helps.