I met my gorgeous intelligent fun sexy interesting man after not having seen him for almost 30 years...we had gone to high school together, he was the captain of the football team and state tennis champ, he grew up in one of the biggest houses in town and came from a brilliant family.
When I (re)met him I was just about to graduate from my masters program. And he was close to finishing his masters as well...in counseling. We totally fell in love. I could not believe my great fortune, I felt fate had smiled upon me and I was so happy.
A month after we started dating he relapsed on crack. I did everything I could to try to comfort him and make it all okay...I was already in love and I did not want to lose this beautiful person.
For the next two years of my life I learned what it was like to fear and hate addiction. I slowly spiraled into being a codependent and went through every phase of anger, sadness, despair...etc etc.
In the beginning people counseled me to let him go. That I should tell him to come back after a year. I just couldn't do it. I just could not believe that this beautiful intelligent loving man who I wanted to marry...would not recover. I am in recovery myself (alcohol) and so are three of my siblings, and I know countless people in recovery. BUT I did not know the evils of crack...meth...heroin...oxys. That is what we are dealing with here...the big guns, the brain hijackers.
Already you have experienced the deception/fear/lying. Already you have wondered what is going on behind the scenes. You go without a b-day present. You lie to your family. You worry about him and what will come next. And this is all happening before you even really "know" anything about his addiction.
I spent two years in deep research trying to understand something that is simply NOT understandable...and that is someone ELSE'S addiction. I am seriously, seriously verging on writing a book because of all the writing and research I have done...the book is already at 100's and 100's of pages...and still the man I love is out there...
and he is probably using. He makes it for two or three or four months clean and then gets hijacked once again by a substance that turns him into a lying, deceiving, sick, disappearing person.
Birthdays? Valentines? Hopes for the future? School? Plans? Financial resources? Brain capacity? Ability to work? Honesty? Trust? ALL of it goes up in smoke.
We had plans to marry, to write a book together, to counsel people in grief, to travel, to have dinner parties, to play chess...
it all goes up in smoke.
Heroin, meth, crack, oxys...really really hard to kick.
What people talk to you about here are probabilities. Every single one of us here knows what it is like to love, to care for someone who struggles with addiction. I still love the man, but he is my ex. I can't plan my life with someone who disappears into a crack pipe.
It may seem like you may hear harsh words here and you may resent them. But just let them be...eventually you may need to hear those echoes. In the beginning of my relationship I heard things that made me really angry...no one understood the kind of love we had. I felt like people shamed me for loving him and I hated them for it. I would prove them wrong, I wanted it so badly, I wanted to hang on to that love. I totally believed he would recover...I did everything I possibly could to support his recovery...
I wish you all the best.
Whatever happens with his recovery on his path is strictly between him and his silvery thread of spiritual connection to the universe...you will have absolutely nothing to do with either his failure or success...you are either going to be along for a ride to hell...or on a long road of necessary patience and understanding toward healing. Either one are life long.
And I would be willing to bet that you will always be wondering what might be going on...at the very least for the next few years, and that is IF he beats the very harsh odds and stays clean.