I have been posting in friends and family because my primary issue *today* is separating from my alcohol and drug addicted husband. However, it was a long road to get to today. I am the adult child of two alcoholics and drug addicts. My mother who had primary custody was very non functional, unable to hold down a job or provide much in the way of care for me. My father was more functional but very emotionally absent. Soon after my mother and father divorced when I was 10, she remarried my stepfather who was also a functional alcoholic. My mother got clean for the final time when I was 16 and embraced the recovery lifestyle for 11 years until she died of cancer at age 53. I was 27. We rebuilt our relationship as best we could during this time but it was still very codependent, especially when she was diagnosed with cancer. She lived 4 years after diagnosis and much of that time I was her primary caregiver.
I dabbled in alcohol and pot and LSD in high school but it was very sporadic. In college, I began dating my now AH. On our first date he asked me if I smoked pot and I said yes and then we went on to smoke nearly every day for the next 14 years. We were not big drinkers until around 2003 or so. We did LSD if we could get it and we especially liked pills. Our entire relationship had a component of substance abuse to it. We do not know how to relate without substances.
In 2006, I was prescribed a year's worth of tramadol for some musculoskeletal pain that I was having. I very quickly developed a raging addiction which would continue until mid 2011. I was drinking and smoking pot during this time as well.
One day in mid 2011 I woke up and the idea of continuing down that path was scarier than the idea of quitting. I began tapering the tramadol and got completely off of it by September 11. I quit the pot cold turkey. I quit smoking cigarettes. I cut the drinking down to one beer a night until it was the last substance I was addicted to. I attended weekly therapy for months. In late 2011 I was ready to get rid of that one last beer- that I think was more symbolic than anything else. I wasn't ready to be free of it ALL until I was.
I have continued in weekly therapy since. My AH continued to drink and smoke pot daily until April 12 when we attempted marriage counseling. The counselor told him that it was unlikely that any counseling would help until he addressed the substance abuse. He cut down but would not quit and would not see an individual counselor or attend AA. This pattern has continued since.
I have attempted to separate from him 3 different times since then and at the last minute I have gotten scared and backed off. Each time, I pick alcohol back up. I don't like him when I am sober and I don't know how to be with him without alcohol. So I make the choice to drink because it is the pattern that "works" for us. Except that it doesn't work for ME anymore. Each of these times, the drinking has been minor, a few glasses of wine a day or two a week. But it starts me down a slippery slope that I don't want to go down, and I've come to realize that I don't want to connect with him in this way anymore. It's not real connection, it's just the only way that we know how.
We had attempted marriage counseling again over the last few months with a different counselor- my individual counselor who knows my whole story. She again gently suggested that joint counseling likely wasn't going to go much further without him addressing his substance abuse and considering individual counseling. He said again that he was not interested.
I gave it a few days to think about it and decided that I was done. I needed time and space to work on ME without these unhealthy patterns that we are so used to. I asked him for a separation. He spent the next two nights drinking and smoking. The following morning, I had a follow-up conversation with him and he said that was it, he was DONE this time. I said that I hoped that that was the case but that I still felt that I needed some time and space. He made it one day before he was drinking again.
I don't know what to call myself or where I fit in. I know I'm an ACOA. I know I'm a codependent. I know I am an addict. Am I just a triple winner and fit in everywhere? Can you attend AA and Al-anon and ACOA meetings all at the same time? How do you focus on what to work on? I've done great work in therapy but now that I will have some time and space and room I want to do more. I just don't know where I fit.
If you read this far, thank you
