Here's a nightmare story..
I just came from a meeting where I saw a young woman from my home group that I hadn't seen in the rooms in a couple weeks, "Juanita."
Juanita had almost a year clean last month when I last saw her, was announcing her upcoming year clean anniversary. We'd ordered the medallion and the cake already. She had a nice little recovery job, her son back, a cute little state-funded rehab apartment, even a clean, well-running used car. Her life looked like it was coming together nicely, with her sponsor's guidance and step work.
But she was crying today, and picked up a new one-day surrender white chip.
Guess what happened to Juanita? She couldn't leave still-using "Juan" alone. He kept relapsing, and she thought she was doing well enough to be around him. After all, he never did it around her, right? So she and her son let him stay with them in their apt as long as he didn't drink or use other drugs there.
Of course, they gradually started to argue. After all, there is a lot of difference between the lifestyle of a recovering addict and a using addict.
Finally, three weeks ago, she refused to lend him any more money or "have relations" with him as he was obviously high one night. So he raped her, got her coked up, then took her, unwillingly she says, in her car to do a robbery in the next town. He got chased down by the responding police, crashed her nice little car, and they both got arrested. The police didn't believe she was an unwilling partner in crime. So she is now facing a felony court date. She got bailed out by her loving and codie parents, but she had already gotten fired, since her story hit the small-town paper. They left Juan in the can, which is where he needs to be, IMO.
Her parents checked her back into rehab, and she came back in tonight. A lot that she built up in the past year of work, her job, car, her clean time, the trust of her family, her son's fragile new peace of mind, even her apartment, are now gone.
I guess my point is that our disease, codependency, can hurt us and our children as much as drug addiction, if taken to the extreme. She would never have gone on a robbery, not with her background and her options without this man. She just couldn't let him alone. Thankfully, she still has her life, and maybe she'll even avoid jail, since it is her first criminal charge. It's a hard way to learn to leave a using addict alone, isn't it?
Love,
KJ