Somber2Sober

Five years ago I fell in love. First boyfriend. First man who ever liked me back and wanted to be in a relationship with me. We started our long-distance relationship, then traveled back and forth to see each other, then he moved to my city and eventually moved in with me. Half a year from when we first talked, he then became my first husband.

He was depressed, he rarely wanted to go out, he enjoyed telling his stories and listening to mine. Somewhere among the wild excitement of new love, sometime during those late night conversations, he told me he had used heroin in the past, with an emphasis on "past"; that he was only taking prescription medications for his depression, anxiety, PTSDs, whatever else.

There were days of me being upset at him trying to get medications from someone else who was selling them, taking long train and bus rides with him to get suboxone (it never registered in my head, in the early days, why someone who was not using heroin needed suboxone - I barely remembered all the medication names then because there were so many, and only later realized in retrospect that he was getting high on the sub.) There were nights of me crying because he wanted to smoke marijuana and I would somehow give him the money because he wanted it so badly, because he seemed nicer when he was high, because he treated me better when he was on some pill or some weed.

As the disease progressed with him heading toward coke, crack, heroin, and all the addict behaviors that came with the territory, it also progressed with me increasing my tolerance for bullcraps, lies, and levels of pain I'd never known existed in me.

Through the years, dangerous situations and behaviors ran the gamut: getting robbed (him), being duct-taped and held at gun point (him), sitting in the car with a dealer with a gun in the backseat (us), getting sent to the psych ward for suicidal attempt (me), making attempts but backing out last minute (me), selling & stealing & lying to get money for drugs (him), trying all the pills and drugs at least once to figure out why he got addicted (me). The list went on. For days and weeks and months and years it felt like the life went on, too, with no end in sight, as he overdosed a couple of times with death waiting at the door every time and came back to use even harder. I was waiting at the door too, and kept coming back to him, every single time.

We spent almost every day of those five years together, didn't really spend much time with other people - partly because it became a habit, partly because he wasn't big on going out, partly because he was jealous when I went out with - or sometimes even just when I talked to - other people, and partly because I started to feel the same way toward him.

Early this year he went away to treatment across the country. I went through what I later found was withdrawal from my AH. He was my drug. He is still my drug. I was severely depressed, isolated myself, got into horrible mood swings, ate, starved... I went to work every day, and went straight home every day, locking myself up in the apartment, sometimes just to cry myself to sleep. It took me almost two months to start feeling somewhat okay to get out. I went to a meeting the first night I went out. I kept going back to that meeting every week, made it to a few more meetings. I felt better. He was doing well, he was hitting 90 days clean (he hadn't been clean that long since we've known each other and even for years before that.) Life seemed to look hopeful.

He'd left sober housing and moved in with a friend after the program went down from full time to three days a week. He wanted me to come visit. My trip was planned after his 90-day mark, since we both thought it would be safer then for him and me emotionally, to have somewhat of a significant period of sobriety in place before we saw each other again. He got depressed, relapsed on marijuana a few days before I was supposed to come visit. I cancelled my trip, said I didn't want us to see each other before we both got clean and healthy. Later on I found out he'd also talked to his old psychiatrist, got a few prescriptions, and essentially overdosed on one of them. After going through the ER and detox, he refused going back to treatment, checked himself out, called and asked me and everyone he knew for money, got no money from anybody. As of last night his phone gps was off, and he seems to have disappeared. Perhaps the phone has been used to finance either drugs or a ticket to get back here or both. I have no idea.

I also found out he'd flirted with a bunch of women including ex's & old friends & rehab acquaintances, tried to get on dating sites and apps and CL to find women to be his girlfriend or to have sex with. He never had a strong sex drive and always held me to standards ("flirting/fantasizing about another man would be considered emotional cheating" kind of standard), so I assumed these sexual behaviors of his were a combination of getting clean and lonely (during those 90 days) and getting depressed and lonely (after those 90 days).

If he comes back, I'm praying I have enough strength and courage to tell him he's not coming into our place, and that he can go check himself into treatment somewhere or find some other place to stay. I've told him several times I don't want to see him until we are both healthy. Even with all the insanity going on, I still have feelings for him. This is insane in itself, but I'm not sure I could turn away from the love I've known and had, even as I'm trying my best to turn away from the enabling behaviors I've known and had all these years.

I am now in my late 20's, him in his late 30's. When people are at our age, usually they can reasonably say "you have your whole life ahead of you!" With us that saying seems a luxury. I've been through so many ups and downs I can't even envision tomorrow, not even a week, a year, ten years from now. He's been through so many ups and downs I'm never quite sure if I'll come home to find him unconscious in the bathroom, OD on our bed, or get a phone call about a car accident he got into or about him being in an ER somewhere (all have happened.)

During those 90 days I had some hopes, for sure, but I also realized how much emotional trauma and damage had accumulated and surfaced - from my years with him, from digging into my childhood and life with the therapists with whom I started to meet a couple years into the marriage, from going to the meetings. I've found I have an eating addiction as I eat to cope with my feelings. I should focus on working on my issues and me, not his and him, but this crisis mode, I'm letting it paralyze me... I wish I could get out of my head, I wish I could stop trying to get into his head, I wish I could begin to live the life I'm supposed to live, whatever that looks like.

I named this thread Late night stories because night has been the best and worse time in a day for me. No matter what happens, every night I usually get at least a few hours of sleep during which I do not have to consciously be in this very life.