BNH34

Hello everyone. My name is Barbra. I'm 34 and engaged to a wonderful, loving, hard-working, handsome, intelligent man....who has recently become addicted to benzos and pain pills. It turns out that he has struggled with this in the past and I did not know about it, or at least nowhere near the extent of it. He has taken pain pills since we have been together, and the pain pill prescription started because he really did have a very bad accident and fractured his back in 8 places a few years ago.... and that's never really been an issue. He doesn't usually take too many and they don't affect his personality. But he got a prescription for Xanax because he gets very stressed out at work...and he started taking copious amounts of it everyday and it completely changed his personality. I mean like he was a completely different person. He was angry and irritated all of the time, he was slurring his words, he was nodding off while standing...this was happening at work and at home. And he would get in these weird moods where he had to rearrange things around the house for hours. We couldn't get anything done, I have not been able to get registered for school or find a new job because I have to babysit him all the time. When he is on the stuff he is completely uncontrollable and unpredictable. We've had a rough few weeks where he has promised several times to not ever touch the stuff again and keeps relapsing. I don't have anybody to talk to about all of this. I can not tell my family... they have just gone through this with my brother and my mom worries so much anyway I do not want to add more stress to her. But I need help, I need someone to talk to, someone to guide me and give me advice. I don't want to enable him I just want to support him. What drives me crazy is that anybody I have talked to just says "leave him its all you can do. " That's not all I can do. I can help him, I can support him, I can be there for him, I can understand him and what he's going through and why he keeps doing this to himself. Because when he is sober he is very aware of the situation and how bad it is. He has seen videos of himself and he has cried and he is disgusted with himself. He wants to change but he can not resist the temptation. He is going to tell the doctor he does not want to get the xanax prescription anymore and that sounded like a solution to me at first, until I realized he gets the stuff from people at work and then lies to me about it. I'm so tired, I'm so sad, and I feel all alone. I have an 8 year old son, who is not my fiance's son but he loves my fiance dearly and my fiance loves him dearly and I very much want him to be a role model for my son. My son has a dad who loves him but he is like a big man child. My fiance, when sober and before he got into these pills, has an IQ in the 150's and is incredibly talented and intelligent. He has the most incredible work ethic I have ever seen. He tries so hard at his job and he is so good at it they have already promoted him 3 times in the past 6 months. Unfortunately though the past few weeks have been very rough and I'm afraid that he might lose his job. I am tired of the fighting. I'm tired of him acting like a cruel monster. That is not who he is, not even close. We talked about it and I said something to him along the lines of...it's almost like you keep punishing yourself for something you didn't do. And his eyes got big and he said oh my god you are right I have been doing this since I was a kid...and I know he had a rough childhood so I do understand the root of the issues. I just don't know how to help him be strong and resist these drugs. I can not be with him all day everyday and as much as I want to trust him he has lied to me so much the past few weeks I don't know what to do. He says he wants to get help but then lies about doing the drugs so he acts like he doesn't need any help because everything is OK when it is very very far from okay because he is on drugs that suck the light and life right out of him, and he has such a beautiful light. Anyway... that's the gist of my story. I hope to find some good friends and support and help here. And I thank you for reading this.