warholian

Sorry if this is posted twice, I checked and it doesn't seem so, but I had trouble the first time I clicked the post button.

I come to this board because of a problem that someone very close to me has - my boyfriend, who I have been with for about a year and a half, is a cocaine and marijuana user, and i am having an extremely difficult time living with it.

Where do I start? I feel as if I should post the situation as it stands in its entirety, but the issue is so ingrained into my everyday life, that I cannot sort out the pieces very easily.

When i met my bf he used drugs, and I did as well. I had just come out of a 4 year relationship that wasn't very emotionally stable. I used "k", a tranquilizer more generally used for large animals. My bf got me into using cocaine. I stopped using all forms of drugs, including cocaine, and I only drink lightly, on occasion. My experience with cocaine really affected me... I once had a binge that lasted over 24 hrs, and ended with me having to fess up to my bf that I had stolen 100 dollars from him to keep feeding my binge, extreme sinus pain for months, and an extreme depression that has lasted to this very moment. I always felt depressed after using coke, and the best explanation i can come up with is my deep-set feeling of self and self-worth, that i desperately want to preserve. Simply, I feel worthless when I do drugs, and when the high wears off, the worthlessness only intensifies. This is what caused me to quit drugs.

I asked my bf to quit drugs too. Infact, we had a roaring argument about it. I just can't stand to see him in situations that i find disgusting, degrading, and immoral. I see him differently than I used to, to me he is now a disgusting "druggie", someone who is worthless and unattractive, and it hurts me so badly. I think about his habits - cocaine, cigarettes, pot - and how they are only keeping us in an impoverished hole. We'll never retire, we'll never take a vacation, we're just rats living in a drug-ridden maze, looking for the next hit, and the next bundle of cash to keep us afloat.

My bf refuses to quit doing drugs. At first, he agreed, only to make me leave him alone. Then, he started to take any hit of cocaine that his friends would offer, with the reasoning that he just wouldn't buy it anymore. Then, he started buying it again. I brought it up the next morning, and he seems to have forgotten all his promises to me, that he wouldn't do it anymore, or at least (though it offers little comfort) not buy it anymore. He honestly has forgotten about saying these things!!!! I actually was so upset that i presented the ultimatum that i thought could turn it around - I told him that it had come down to me feeling like I just had to leave. Leave him, leave our apartment, just pack my things and never speak to him again.

Of course, I didn't do it, as I wouldn't be here talking about it.

I think about leaving him often, as I have come to realize, after the endless fights, that he will never change. He is too defensive, he is too set in his ways. He doesn't care enough about us, or even just me. Or himself. His excuses are endless: he did drugs when i met him. I did drugs when he met me. This is what he always did with his friends. he feels I am basically asking him to never see his friends again (all cocaine users). he only does it on occasion (I'd call it often and regularily, though not frequent or everyday, though the pot is EVERYDAY). Basically, he has no respect for my position, no respect for changing circumstance, and no respect for my mental, physical or emotional well-being. It took months of arguing just to get him to smoke cigarettes outside, and he still smokes inside if I'm not in the room. He smokes pot around me, often blowing it in my face accidentally. And the most damaging - when he uses cocaine around me, it makes me physically crave it. It causes such torment between caring about him, and caring about myself. It makes me feel bad about my life and myself.

I don't know what to do anymore.

I want to leave, but I feel like i can't. you know? We have mutual possessions. Mutual pets. Mutual LIVES. We sleep snuggled up. When we're in bed, I pretend he's not the person he is, and that everything is ok. There is no sex life to speak of. The saddest part of all? He actually makes me believe that I am over reacting. That the feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness are irrational over-reactions on my part, and that what he does is perfectly acceptable. And... I still don't know if he's right or not. I feel like I'm living in a surreal dream-world. I don't feel real. I feel as if I float through life, hopeless and desperate for change - and yet, i am powerless. I love my boyfriend - I think. The truth is, I don't know anymore, it is too hard to feel such an emotion, when it feels like my soul is being ripped out on a daily basis.

Please, someone out there - tell me I'm not alone. Tell me it's not acceptable to act the way that he has. Tell me I'm not a crazy person.