I agree about not telling the family, as that is not your place, unless you are all very close. that said...
your post is nearly the exact thing i wrote about two years ago, and then four months ago. i was and still am in the same position as you. and your gf is in the same position mine was in. everyone i have known who does H has started by sniffing it, but eventually they are around someone who cajoles them into the needle. and the cycle gets worse because that was an even better high than before.
i do not know if i underestimated addiction, overestimated my gf, or what, but given the opportunity to give someone advice, i would say, as hard and painful and scary as it is, the best thing for you to do is step back.
you might say you want to help her, maybe before things get worse, but htere is little you can do. if she is not serious about getting help, nothing you do will matter. we tend to think the person we know is not as bad as the others, we still see the glimmer of hope in their eyes, we want so badly for things to improve and to be able to step forward together. even your gf wants that, and she can get ready to make that first step then bam...the addiction calls her back for just one more.
i lost count of how many "one more's" i have been through the past couple of months.
i knew my friend had sort of been using, but hen was clean for a long time. but there was also an overlap between then and when she got really bad during which she was hiding her use. then one day something happened and she just gave in. i had not been having too much contact at the time, we were still friends, but were both busy with our lives. i got a text from her roomate toward the end of june asking if i had seen her because no one had seen her for a few days. he told me what he thought was going on- that she was living on the streets, turning tricks, and getting high.
the world spun around me and without a thought i went out looking for her. hours and hours until i found her. i did it because i love her as a person and she has no real family. she has always been a bit alone and has always had some issues. i didn;t even want to save her, i just wanted her to know she was loved.
well, we began hanging out more and more, and her mom was coming from across the country to see her. i wanted to keep her safe until then. i helped her to stay off the streets by paying for her dope. her mom came and everything was so nice. plans were made for detox and rehab. she was very excited about getting her life back together and maybe being with me again. even though she was using, things seemed good. until she bailed out of the detox center after less than two days.
i was understanding and willing to do anything to keep her safe and allow her to find the help she wanted and needed. this was around july 11th. i had already lost a month of summer, but that was ok, she was going to get better. i felt myself slipping. i was not feeling like me, i wasnt doing the things i would be doing, i was getting pulled into her orbit. but that was ok, because she was going to get better.
we talked and talked about stuff, she cried and cried about stuff. she wanted to stop and have a normal life with me and because i have known her for so long and felt a certain way about her, i wanted that too. she would go to rehab and then we could begin a cool life together.
now it is nearing the end of august. i traded the hot humid days of summer for countless trips to get heroin and crack. i traded in summer for scramble after scramble to come up with money. i would do anything to keep her off the streets. she would say she was so grateful and i believe part of her really was, but at the same time, very very rarely would she say- you know what- i'm not going to do more tonight, i've put you through enough. instead i found myself in this constant spinning unbalanced vertigo and on top of that i been getting very sick.
i finally gave an ultimatum, she had to go to get clean or i could not let her stay with me. jsut before dawn about an hour before we would have had to leave, she calmly told me she wasn't ready. i accepted that and took her where she wanted to go. and just like that after about 8 weeks of keeping her of fthe streets and keeping her from having to trick, she was onthe streets tricking again.
i couldn't let go. i would see her every day or so. i would give her what i could afford to make her not have to work as much. my parents came to stay with me for a while because they had medical stuff to tend to. i hid her from them. i was living a double life. keeping her in hotels, letting her sleep in my car, i was never home. i'd put in a few hours with them here and there, but they knew. they figured it all out.
now it is past mid-october and nothing has changed since june except that i lost a lot of money, i lost the summer, i lost doing things i enjoy, i lost a prt-time job and can be on the verge of losing my regular job. i lost nearly everything. and you know what- after all of that, none of her actions have changed. she'll go on doing her thing and i am stuck picking up the pieces. you have a chane to avoid this.