Elle, I'm so glad I found your post!
I hope you read mine. I'm dealing with my boyfriend's addiction to heroin right now and my story is very similar to yours.
My boyfriend just finished a 5 day detox program, and is now living in a sober house. I know the anger you feel. When this all first came to the surface, I was miserable. I was so depressed, I'd have these breakdowns at random times of the day.
Then I would get so angry at him for doing this. And I'd get angry at myself for allowing someone to uproot my life with THEIR problems.
I'm still very new to learning how to cope with this so I have a lot more learning to do still. However, I too feel helpless and powerless over him and his addiction.
My source of strength has truly come from this site. The people on here understand, because they've all gone through it. I've also taken a look at some of the posts in the forums from the addicts themselves. It helps because you begin to understand what the addict is going through.
It's widely accepted that addiction is a disease, and should be treated as such. Unfortunately, it can't be cured; only controlled.
He needs to WANT to get help, he needs to WANT to fix himself. No amount of love or support will cure him. Unfortunately, you can't love the addiction out of someone. It's their disease, and it needs to be their recovery.
When all of this first happened to me, I read everything I could get my hands on about addiction. I read letters that addicts have written (they're all over the internet), I read just about every post on here that was related to my situation, and I started attending Nar-Anon.
I know it's hard to focus on yourself because you're so worried about what your husband may be doing, or whether he's lying, or worrying if your relationship can make it through this. But you really need to understand that if you don't take care of yourself, you become part of the problem, not the solution.
I'm staying with my boyfriend through this, we're still very much together. It's the hardest thing I've ever gone through. If you're going to stay with someone who's an addict, just prepare. You need to take care of yourself. You need to come first. You have to set boundaries.
One of you has to have their head on straight!
I recently wrote my boyfriend a letter. I haven't given it to him, but it was a great healing tool for me! Sometimes I felt like it was hard to really talk to him about how I felt so writing it in a letter to him really allowed myself to deal with how I was feeling.
Also, there's a GREAT letter called "A Letter From Your Addiction" that you should absolutely read! I believe you can just Google it. I saw it somewhere on this site as well.
Keep posting, keep updating. This site is truly a life line for me, as I'm sure it will be for you too.
