My dad, he's 52 and he recently tried to kill himself.

 

He had an addiction problem to pain killers, and we recently found out crack, and when he was younger he was an alcoholic.

 

Before I was born, he was in a train accident, and lost his foot. In the hospital they gave him a morphine drip, which kicked in the addiction problem.

 

I'm not saying that that is an excuse, but he was an addict for such a VERY long time, and I just don't see how he will ever do it ever again. I mean be sober, but I never knew ANY of this, I never knew he had ever touched anything in his life, but evidently he did, and I was just blindsided by it totally!

 

But he was an addict for all those years, and when I was seven, he was going to kill himself, but chickened out, and got really freaked out by it and called me at school to come get him, ME? At the time all I knew was that he had a stomach ache. He went to rehab for that, and a month and six days ago, he tried to kill himself. He overdosed, on purpose, and I came home and found him, everything turned over, and a note. A very short note, that tore my heart apart that he didn't even mention me specifically, he took complete and total care of me from sun up till my mom got home, but he had the name of his palbearers down, and that was it!

 

My dad threatened my mom with suicide every day of their married life--20 years of nonstop torture! Mom has left him now though. She says that I'm not allowed to see him as long as he's not clean, and he has to live on his own for a long time and prove to us that he can be a man and stand on his own. First he has to be clean for himself (just got back from rehab today acctually) then he has to be a man for me. I'll never have a dad growing up it seems, do you think that my mom has done the right thing? I really need to know! I have nightmares like crazy, and I just needed to get it out!