hi Madison,
I hear your hurt and frustration and fear. I understand the unstable feeling of having trust issues. My ex and I visited each of our own therapists together and spoke about trust and the therapists both spoke about the necessity for transparency...and the "methods" of promoting that transparency were, to I am sure many here but to the majority of people in general an odd behavior. It was stated by professional therapists that it would take the extreme transparency methods to rebuild the shattered trust that addiction often causes, if we as two human beings who loved each other wanted to salvage our relationship. It was not something I asked for; it was recommended.
The contract idea? That was brought up not only be rehab, but by a few of his recovering buddies and there are contracts on line entitled "relapse prevention". It is a tool, and it can be useful. We did not have one on paper, but the one in my mind and heart went from a thought to a pencil to a pen to being scribed in stone...and I mean that metaphorically. We never had a paper contract, but we had an agreement.
A contract can be useful because both the person suffering from addiction and the person connected to that person who is suffering from that addiction tend to forget...
tend to forget the boundaries they put between themselves and the destructive drug use.
For me? Things would go back to "normal" pretty quickly...and depending on how I was working my program I would either be quite watchful or I would just trust he was doing what he needed to be doing. After awhile, after knowing someone well enough and living together with day to day habits of life...one can just sense that the "contract" is being forgotten. When this begins to happen the mistrust blooms. I would start to look for a clue. When an addict starts to drift toward the downward spiral the lies begin...
For me, the codependent, I had huge fear of those lies, I had despair over those lies, because it signaled the beginning of the end for me. I loved my ex, and I wanted to live with him, but I could not live with that part of him...
The contract, written in my tears and anger, expressed with everyone I knew; sponsor, friends, family, fellowship...written here and in my morning pages and in my letters to him and so many others, my contract would eventually hold me accountable.
Your post...and my post...both long, could probably boil down to this:
We love them.
We can't bear the pain of addiction.
We have a contract with our conscience.
We are powerless over what they write on it.
We love them.
My contract now is null and void for at least a year...I think realistically that by the time a year is up it will be obsolete. But I let myself keep that contract in the drawer for now.