good to "see" you Cyranoak! i very much echo what you said about hope...in my case, hank and i are both recovered crackheads, 8 years now. which is a truly wonderful, miraculous thing....but i would never tell anyone here that because we today are on the other side of a horrid addiction that just doesn't let go that others should stay and fight and it will get better. it's not that we are a special, or unique, it's that the odds of two people breaking free of addiction, staying together and both still clean a number of years later is frankly quite RARE. and the other outcomes are heartbreaking.
it was only because thru my own drug recovery AND SR's help with being the loved one of an addict, that i came to believe that i HAD to put ME first, MY recovery, MY sanity, MY life. and i was in no shape to be anybody else's sober coach!!! i couldn't be around someone who still wanted to get high. no matter how much i might love and care about them.
i'd also never be so smug as to think that i had anything to do with hank getting clean. that was going to happen one way or the other, in it's own time. considering the night we met he was three hours IN to a relapse, and then for the next 4.5 years we smoked together, it's entirely possible my coming along PROLONGED his using. there's just no way to know.
things happen when they happen. if they happen at all. IMHO, the very best thing ANY of us can do for another, is to become strong and healhty in body mind and spirit. to be resilient and steadfast. to live that life we wish "they" would, clear up our own wreckage. make our own amends and be at peace. make sure we are more than enough, so that when we do give or share to others, we are not diminished, or made weak.