Originally Posted by
Fior 
Oh. Well. Maybe I misread. I didn't go back and look at all the previous posts.
But I can also understand how jarring that might feel. My AXBF was a lot "edgier" when he was clean as well (nothin' there to dull the edginess). He was never ever mean to me when he was clean, but a lot of our then coworkers found him to be so. Unsurprisingly, they all find him to be really cool and nice now that he's using again. That was pretty jarring for me as well, although I suppose I experienced it in reverse.
But dealing with someone you don't know is hard. Either way you look at it. I don't know the particulars of this relationship, obviously. You can want your friend back without the complication of addiction for them. Sometimes it's hard to realize that you cannot divorce the person's behavior and the drugs (i.e. The Nice Dude does heroin--the nice dude part is great, the heroin part not so much, The Mean Dude is clean and likely mean because he's struggling--The clean part is good, but the struggling and the mean is no good). I understand that. It was hard for me too (although I experienced it backwards)
And you are correct, he may see her as a "part of his life with addiction" and just wants to cut all ties to that. And you are also correct in that any relationship with an addict is no cake walk.
Thanks for your post Fior! Makes sense what you've posted. Yes, some people are more mellow when they're using and more edgy when they're not. It takes AWHILE being clean before moods
stabilize.
I have serious co-dependent issues that I've been working on for decades. It's a life long process. I try so hard not to be an enabler. But I don't want to be mean in how I do that. It can be a fine line at times. Tough love and all that jazz.
My first "qualifier" was my DAD. As a kid, I preferred the drinking dad. He was a happy drunk. He was more "mean" when he was sober. He wasn't mean all the time, but he DID have a mean streak in him and could be very hard/tough and had a temper. When he was drinking he was way more fun to be around; things didn't get to him so much and he generally had a big smile on his face and showed us more tender love. (It was hard for him to show love sometimes, but that got better and better as he got older and mellowed out as a sober person.) He eventually did mellow out without using alcohol.
So, yeah, addictions can produce like two different types of people you are dealing with and people do change when they sober up.