lulu70

Hello All--Hope this message finds you well. I posted a message about a month ago about my daughters father and him finally admitting he was using cocaine and alcohol and that it had got out of control. He assured me he knew what to do and he was going to stay clean and sober so he could get a good job and get his finances under control (he currently works as a DJ in a strip club....not exactly a good environment in which to get clean.) Since that time there have been two more occasions where he called me, obviously messed up, ranted to me about how he needed to change his life and told me what he was going to do to change it. Our daughter was with me on all those occasions--until today. He called to tell me what time he was bringing Q home, and was obviously intoxicated. After we talked for a few minutes he admitted he and his girlfriend had been up all night doing coke and he had been drinking.

This is the last straw for me, and I need help deciding what to do next. I will not allow my daughter to spend any time with him until I see him take some positive action to get better. I am not under any grand illusions that I will lay down some ultimatums and he will magically get better. I know, because I am a recovering addict/alcoholic, that he is going to have to decide that for himself. However, I HAVE to protect my daughter.

What is a reasonable expectation for me? Right now I am thinking he is going to have to seek outside help at a treatment center where they can assess him and where he will be held accountable (i.e. drug testing). I am fully aware that he may not chose to do this. That is his right. But it is also my right to keep Q out of harms way until he choses to get help. Right?

Have any of you had a similar situation? What did you do about it? I don't want to bring the courts or child services in to it unless I have to (i.e. he tries to take her when I have asked him not to.) I need to figure out some logical and reasonable expectations of behavior, consequences if the expectations are not met, and then stick to them.

This situation is made more difficult by the fact that I, myself, have only been clean and sober a little over a year and a half. He even brought up the fact that he never called me on my sh!t in the 7 1/2 years when I was an active alcoholic. I told him I wasn't going to enable him anymore and he kind of freaked. He started going on and on about not putting labels on him and not judging him. I simply stated that in no way was I judging him, but that I knew that he was VERY sick and needed help. I also said that the fact that he enabled me for so many years didn't make it okay for me to enable him now.

I know the past is the past. This is just so hard. I talked to my sponsor tonight and she mentioned that she thought keeping Q away from him while he is actively using and until he gets some help might be a perfect way for me to make amends to her for being so messed up for so much of her life.

I will quit babbling now. I just really need some help. I am going to do some more reading. This is certainly giving me an even better perspective on what I was doing to my family when I was actively using.

Thanks for being here....