journeygal

Hi all,

I haven't posted here in years! I'm pretty good at staying on my own side of the fence but I have a question.

I go to al-anon and therapy, I've been in recovery for 2 1/2 years and I have a good understanding of my own issues regarding codependency and the affect addiction has on the whole family.

My question is this: How many of you found recovery without losing your family? Did it take your spouse leaving or kicking you out for you to get clean? Is there an incentive to get and stay clean if your family is still at home? Did they have to make a drastic change before you were able to?

Just wondering how fruitless it is for me to hope my husband will get clean and stay clean while I'm still in this marriage.

Thanks.

Peter

I do not know if hoping is ever a fruitless thing .....for me hoping has the ability to get me through the very next moment.

I can only hope that the people I love will find recovery but in the meantime I will not put my liife on hold, even if it means moving out of the relationship.

Blessed

For me, I accept and understand that i am powerless over the disease of addiction, but my higher power can...my mother had to go to prison before she got sober,my husband had to go to jail before he decided to get clean and sober, my daughter also had to go to jail before she got clean.I allowed them to pay the consequences of their actions and choices. My ex-husband has 12 years clean and has never re-lapsed...We could not work out our problems even after he got clean,but I am grateful for his recovery and i give God the glory...We both know it takes honesty,a desire to stop using and getting help from others and a higher power to experience the miracle of recovery. In the meantime I know the most loving thing I can do is not enable the addict, but seek my own recovery from co-dependency. I send you serenity from above...

liveat5

It took me losing my wife of 8 years to get clean. And that still wasn't quite enough. I also had to lose a job, and go on one final neder that really left me on the verge of dying. Unfortunately, I cannot get my wife back, which is the saddest thing I deal with every day now. My addiction utterly destroyed her faith and trust in me, and did considerable harm to her state of mind. I hope things work out better for you.

cj.

journeygal:

I can't relate to the husband losing, because I was too destroyed in active addiction to ever have one!! However, my children were taken from me for a time by their father, and it was a serious jolt in recognizing my drug problem and a great incentive to seek help.

I realize today that through all my poor me's back then, that I hadn't really 'lost' my children. I had lost myself. When I got tired of hearing my own excuses and crying the blues, I reached out and began to live program of recovery through NA. My children came back and we were all able to put the pieces of our lives back together and thrive as a well-functioning family.

Peace For You
cj

Doug

When I was active, as long as I knew I could keep doing it, I kept doing it.

There were many threats and so on, but I always managed to dodge them, and keep on truckin'. The threat of being thrown out didn't work, and niether did the throw, at least not for me.

But a little while later when I was considering what I was and where I was and why, the events that got me there, (one of which was the loss of my family), thats when the moment of clarity hit me, and I did something about it.

I would not have done it (got into recovery) without the pain.


Big hugs for you JG.