Hooked by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes

Author:Chloe Shantz-Hilkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Annick Press Ltd
Published: 2013-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Who’s My Real Dad?

Karl didn’t know about his dad’s cocaine addiction until, as part of his recovery, his dad apologized for it. For Karl, it was only after “sorry” that the pieces began to fall into place.

Finding out

Growing up, I never knew my dad was a cocaine addict. He hid it so well that my mom didn’t even know for a while. And truth be told, we had a pretty normal life, for the most part.

Many addicts are amazingly good at hiding their dependencies from friends and family. They will do or say anything to keep their addiction from being discovered, and in some cases are not even aware of how deceptive they’re being.

When I was a kid, my dad would sometimes lecture me about not doing drugs. He’d say, “I experimented with plenty of different substances and it’s a bad idea. Never do what I did.” But it never occurred to me that he was still doing drugs. It wasn’t until he started going to meetings of a group called Cocaine Addicts Anonymous that he decided to tell my brother and me about his addiction. By that point I was seventeen, but when I look back I think I’ve always known something was up with my dad. I could never really put my finger on it, though.

As it turns out, he was doing cocaine pretty heavily beginning when I was eleven and going until I was at least thirteen. When he first told me that, I was more curious than scared or angry, because by then he had stopped and I didn’t have much to be angry about. But it did make me wonder if cocaine was the reason he used to get so mad. Sometimes when I was younger, I would be crying or upset about something, and he would grab my arm to get me to stop or make me listen. And when he told me about his addiction, he apologized for this too. He says he did it because of the cocaine.

Dad’s anger

I wasn’t the only one who dealt with my dad’s anger. A lot of my early childhood memories involve listening to my parents fight. Mainly it was my dad shouting. I hardly ever heard what it was about, but I sure heard the yelling. I would usually try to drown it out, or I’d just go to my room. Dad never hurt anyone in our family, and I’m pretty confident that he never hurt anyone in his life, but he sure did know how to argue. And if I ever pushed or hit him when I was little and upset, he would hit me back—never as hard as he could, but hard enough that I could feel it.

Other signs

He worked as a software engineer, and I used to hang out in his office all the time because it was close to our house. Usually I would sit outside his door, and sometimes, when I’d walk into his actual office, he would say, “No, no, no! You can’t be in here right now.

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