I understand this train of thought wondering if it's really an addiction or if it's just using drugs like 'normal' people...
My husband is not the addict (yet?) that uses every single day or disappears for days at a time because he's on a bender.
He goes for periods of time not using, then he uses again, then he stops, then he starts again.
This last month it was the worst event of using since we have been married (last summer). So I ran to Al Anon meetings and have been going ever since. It's really helped.
Currently my husband is not using. He is going to a couple of AA meetings each week. My mind has tried to start telling me that I made WAY TO BIG A DEAL out of this all in the last month.
That I blew it out of proportion and it wasn't that bad and maybe he's not an ADDICT but just someone who drinks and takes pills every now and then.
This is certainly how HE sees himself...
And I have found myself (in some way) wanting to believe that too.
But then I STOP.
It is not NORMAL what he is doing with drugs and alcohol in ANY WAY.
He IS an addict. He has had issues with drugs and alcohol since high school.
He has gotten a felony DUI several years ago. And that was not enough to stop him from picking up again. His cousins are alcoholics and have been in jail tons of times. It does not register with him that what he does is an addiction. He thinks it's just his bad choices.
Whatever he thinks it is...that's his business.
I see it for what it is...the disease of addiction.
Come to find out that my dear husband has done TONS of acid and mushrooms in his past. Smoked loads of pot. Taken TONS of pills over the years and gotten loaded on alcohol at the same time. He has done coke and heroin - thankfully never to the point of no return.
But even that I can not use as an excuse to tell myself he's not an addict just because he didn't keep doing coke and heroin. I can only thank God that for whatever reason he was able to stop using it.
He said the first time he did heroin he hated it. Made him feel bad - especially compared to acid and mushrooms and pot that he loved so much.
And yet HE DID HEROIN AGAIN! AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
When I was in college, I did acid once. I got in a car accident and totaled my mom's car. It was a bad scene. I never did acid again and convinced myself that if I did, it would kill me because my brain just couldn't handle it.
I'm not an addict. My husband is. He is sick and can't help himself. He has this propensity toward using that keeps coming back and back and back. It runs in his family. It is a disease.
I am busying myself with going to daily Al Anon meetings. Working with my sponsor. Reading the messages here on the board. Posting when I can. Focusing on me and my business.
I don't know what the future holds, but I know that I am becoming a stronger version of myself. And that my husband and his addiction are in God's hands.