Kim Humphrey’s proudest moment as a father didn’t come from school or celebrations—it came when his son, after years of opioid addiction, took responsibility and turned himself in to police. With treatment, sober living and family boundaries, Sean Humphrey has
When Kim Humphrey looks back on the long road that brought him back to his family, he doesn’t start with a graduation or a wedding or even the day his grandchildren were born.
His proudest moment as a fatherhood story, he says, was the day his son turned himself in to the police.
“It was the day he got his son back after a 10-year struggle with addiction,” Humphrey said. He remembers sitting in the courtroom. watching his son face a judge and take responsibility for how his life had unraveled after he started taking opioids. In that moment. Humphrey said. he saw his son “being the kind of man that I knew he could be. which was someone that would do the right thing. And that’s what he did.”.
Humphrey’s gratitude is tangled up with what came before it: the fear, the uncertainty, the waiting—often in silence—while addiction consumed a household.
In the United States. more than 48 million people ages 12 and older have substance use disorder. according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Family members of those with the disorder often face grief. stress and guilt as they watch their loved one suffer. sometimes refusing help. For parents, especially, the emotional pain can feel insurmountable—pain that often sharpens on holidays when families typically come together.
Holidays can be hard because they’re “a reminder that things aren’t turning out the way you had hoped they would,” said Pat Aussem, vice president of consumer clinical content development at the Partnership to End Addiction.
Aussem said recovery is frequently nonlinear.
“It’ll look like you’re making progress, and then all of a sudden there will be some setbacks,” Aussem said. She added that parents often need to care for themselves, too. “So many parents end up putting their own mental health and their physical health on the back burner. And it’s really hard to show up and be the really terrific parent that you can be if there’s nothing left in the well. so to speak.”.
Humphrey knows that “nothing left in the well” feeling well. He and his wife discovered Parents of Addicted Loved Ones, a nonprofit in Arizona that provides resources for struggling parents, at the height of their desperation. Humphrey is now CEO and executive director of the organization.
And yet, for all the work he does now, the turning point still lives in a courtroom moment and a decision that felt impossible at the time.
Humphrey said his older son, Sean Humphrey, struggled with opioid addiction beginning in his early teenage years. He and his wife tried for years to get Sean help. only to watch their son get sicker and sicker from the effects of meth and heroin use. Humphrey said the drugs brought on psychotic episodes that were destructive.
When Sean was about 20, the family made the difficult decision to ask him to leave the house.
Humphrey said his son overdosed several times. and the only reason he knew about those incidents was because Sean was still on their shared health insurance. There were many years when Humphrey said he jumped every time the phone rang. terrified to get the call that one or both of his sons were dead.
At one point, Humphrey said shock and grief became too much.
“I got so wrapped up in it that I went to bed one day, and I wouldn’t get up,” he said. He stayed in bed for about a week, without eating or speaking, and was eventually rushed to the hospital.
“I don’t understand what’s going on with me. All I know is, I want to go to sleep because if I go to sleep, I don’t have to think about this. And if I don’t have to think about this, maybe it’ll go away,” Humphrey said, reflecting on his mental state at the time. He said he felt “broken.”
“I’m their dad,” he said. “I have done everything I can to fix this. And it’s not working.”
That helplessness—trying everything, watching it fail—hung over the family until a December call in 2013 changed their approach.
Getting his son back
One Christmas Eve in 2013, the Humphreys got a call from the hospital that Sean Humphrey, 26 at the time, had been admitted—again. Humphrey said it felt familiar because they’d received nearly the same call the previous Christmas and rushed to their son’s side.
“Literally, the minute he got out of there, he went right back,” Kim Humphrey said. “And we were devastated.”
This time, the family steered clear of the hospital and went away for a few days. Humphrey said Christmas—and the usual rituals of celebrating together—had become something they didn’t want in the home.
“We cried half the way there while we were driving,” he said.
Humphrey said they made sure Sean knew they still cared for him, but that they had new boundaries.
Sean Humphrey, now 39, said his parents’ decision not to join him at the hospital sparked his journey to recovery. He described the shift as something that forced him to confront a reality he couldn’t outrun.
“It doesn’t get much lower than this,” he thought at the time. Their “hands off” approach, he said, was “the linchpin for when things started to become different.”
“It sounds very harsh, but that was really the pivotal moment for me where I was like, hey, I’m sitting in this hospital, I have nothing,” he said. “I’ve burned [my family] so bad at this point that they have to protect themselves from me.”
The family’s boundary wasn’t just emotional—it had consequences. Humphrey said she went no-contact with her adult son. He said now that she had done that, others in his life had to change, too: staying away became part of how he faced what he’d done.
“She went no-contact with her adult son. Now she’s uplifting other estranged parents.”
Aussem cautioned that no-contact isn’t always the best approach.
Staying connected and making sure a loved one knows they matter is incredibly important, Aussem said. “Especially in today’s world, where so many of the substances that are out there are toxic and lethal,” she said. “I would argue that the connection is really important. That is not to say that boundaries aren’t equally important. So, I think parents need to make decisions around money, around housing, transportation, and other things.”.
With the more distant support his parents provided, Sean Humphrey eventually started to accept the help that Humphrey said saved his life: treatment centers, sober living communities and therapy.
When he began improving, Sean and his parents reconnected.
“Tentatively, at first. I think there was a lot of cautious optimism on their part,” he said, adding that relapses are common.
Humphrey said he had felt “lost for so long” in his addiction, carrying guilt and shame for how he treated his family while he was sick. He started to make amends.
“For once,” he said, “my word actually started to mean something.”
The sequence of events that Humphrey describes—fear and hospitalization, exhaustion and boundary-setting, then treatment and cautious reconnection—has one clear through-line: every step came with a cost, but the family’s ability to move forward hinged on deciding what they could no longer endure.
Becoming a grandfather and cherishing family time
Sean Humphrey checked himself into a treatment program following that hospital stay and has not used opioids since.
During treatment, he said he convinced his younger brother to get help, too. Sean Humphrey now works at one of the treatment programs that helped him.
While he was being treated, Sean Humphrey met the love of his life. They’ve since married and have two children together.
Being a dad changed his worldview, he said.
“You’re just not responsible for just yourself anymore,” he said. “You have this little person that you’ve got and who needs you for everything.”
He cherishes the time he spends with his parents and seeing them bask in the joy of being grandparents.
This Father’s Day, Humphrey said, like most holidays since both sons recovered, the family will be together. “It doesn’t get much better than that,” he said.
“I really thought I lost them both for a long time,” he said. “And I am so happy they’re back.”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
opioid addiction Father’s Day addiction recovery family boundaries treatment centers sober living substance use disorder Partnership to End Addiction Parents of Addicted Loved Ones
Good for him I guess
Opioids are crazy… like how do you even come back from that. I’m glad the son turned himself in but also why was it 10 years like nobody could stop it?
So he just showed up and turned himself in? Doesn’t that mean police basically waited around for him? Idk I feel like there’s more to it than “treatment and boundaries” like was it the judge that fixed him or what. Still happy for the family though.
This is why Father’s Day hits different… my cousin was on pills too and his dad was always acting like boundaries would magically work. It didn’t, but in this story it did I guess. Turning yourself in is huge though, like the article makes it sound so simple but I’m sure it wasn’t. Praying they can keep him steady.