duet_4-8

I had this saved on my computer; not sure if it is a sticky somewhere. I thought it might help someone today.
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Addicts Plea

You can't make me clean; I know it is what you want for me to be, but until I want it - I won't be.

You can't love me clean ...because until I learn to love myself. I won't be.

I know you must wonder how can I learn to love myself when I am caught up in a lifestyle of self-hatred and self destruction.

I can learn from my own experience ... I can learn from the things that happen to me along the path of my own mistakes.

I can learn by being allowed to suffer the consequences of my choices. Life has a funny way of teaching us the lessons we need learn.

I know it devastates you to watch me hurting myself. I know you want to jump in and save me.

This helps ease your pain, but I don't think you understand just how damaging it is to me.

You see although I look and sound like your loved one, Me, the person, is locked away deep down inside my being.

What you see before you is a addict ruled and reigned by my addiction. The main focus of a addict is to feed the addiction.

Every effort you put forth in the name of helping me *the person* falls prey to my addict giving more power to the addiction to shackel down *the person in me .. a little more each time.

I feed my addiction enough ... please don't help me.

The only way for the person in me to get free is to be free ......
....free to fall as far as I need to go in order to find the strength to fight back and break free.

How can or will I ever be able to get clean?

The same way I gave myself over to my addiction is the same way I can give myself over to my recovery.

BY MYSELF.

By allowing me to reach 'rock bottom' you move over and allow me to find the my own way back .. It is in the fight to break free that I will find myself .. it is in the fight that I learn to love myself .. the more I love myself the more I will do to better myself.

I am aware that when I use I am playing russian roulette with my life. I know this, but that is a chance we take when we use. The addict in me is willing to take that chance in the name of getting high.

Rock bottom is but a circumstance away. I can't get there if you are blocking the entrance ...

Please for the sake of the person in me .. move out of the way .. and let me fall as far down as I have to in order to reach the bottom .. and pray for me that when I do hit .. that it is not with the impact that leaves me for dead (I know that is your greatest fear), but if it comes to that .. be sure to tell my story so that others might learn and live.
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With love, prayers, and hope for a better tomorrow for all of us and the addicts we love.

Jewelz

Thank you I needed to read this today!

Hugs,
jewel

wheretobegin

I can not let go. Letting go to me means I have given up hope, please do not tell me I am crazy I fear that already.

I love my addict and I am afraid, afraid of things that are to come, afraid of my ability to deal with it all.

To those of you that have found a place "to deal" with it, I applaude you, I am not there yet.

duet_4-8

Just take care of yourself, too, wherever you are. Don't completely lose you while holding on to your addict.

We all love them; letting go doesn't mean we don't love them. It is just that some of us have reached the decision that we can love them best by handing them over to God and letting Him take care of them, because we realized that nothing we have done has helped them.

Trying_in_Texas

Oh, Wheretobegin... I am so sorry you are feeling this way. I know it sounds really weird, but I kind of "found" my hope again when I gave up control. I realized a long time ago that I couldn't do it for anyone, but that just left me feeling helpless. When I finally gave it over to God, I figured out that I had given it to the one being that could really do it. It was freeing.

Thanks so much for posting this, too. I have been fighting off a large amount of guilt over breaking my relationship with ex-ABF off this month. This is what he really needs to say to me, and would if he could. I needed this really, really badly. I got out of the way, but wasn't really comfortable with where I was standing instead.

This made me feel like I am right where I need to be - out of the way, so he can get better. Now I'm going to remember that I really did make the most loving choice of all - by not doing what was "easy", but by doing what was necessary for him to deal with this own stuff.

LiveLife

You will never know how much I needed to see these postings tonight. After what I thought was a wonderful week of love, passion and sobriety, my ABF calls and says he will be home in a couple of minutes and would I like him to pick any thing up for me.

True to his pattern when he goes to get high, he never came home and wouldn't answer the phone. I went to a vacant house he goes to when he gets high (he's there alone) and asked him for the house keys and my truck keys. He gave them to me willingly and just walked back in the house. I called and told him he could find all his stuff on the sidewalk and I was shutting off the phone.

It's been four years of this. I love him desperately, but this is killing me. He is an amazing man when he is sober but it only lasts for a couple of weeks at a time. Then we walk through hell together, I take care of him while he "kicks," then my world is perfect for awhile.

Sometimes love is not enough. If I could, I would make him better, but I can't and he won't. I can't understand what makes an addict give up everything. It hurts more than I know how to say. I've never put him out on his own before and I'm having a really difficult time. I'm afraid he may not make it, because we are soul mates and for one of us to lose the other would be devestating.... but then when you try to build a relationship around addiction, I wonder if you ever truly do experience the love you think you have. There are so many lies involved with addiction that I makes me doubt the sincerity of the rest of our lives together.

He "kicked" this past week because we are going on vacation next week with my 4 and 6 year old boys. He had been looking forward to it and wanted to be clean. I guess it wasn't important enough for him.

Sorry for the long note.... I'm in so much pain, I just needed to get it out.

Thanks for being there.......

Trying_in_Texas

Hey LiveLife...

So sorry you are feeling this way.

I found that, for myself, the "soul mate" concept was extremely dangerous and totally illogical. I can't walk around in life expecting that my "other half" will find me and make everything okay. To me, it would make what I've lived through and all the experiences that I've had without this "other half" worthless - because I wasn't "whole" at that time. I can't discount myself and my own life experiences like that anymore. I have come to realize, through studying and working the steps of recovery, that I am wonderful and whole just like I am, if I will accept it and live it.

I also noticed something else in your post - please take it for what you will, and leave the rest. I started going to Alanon a bit begrudgingly, but also a tad hopeful just because I was so lost that I thought I might as well try anything. One thing that stuck out almost automatically was the insanity of what I was doing. I would very, very often get into my car at crazy times of night and, with full knowledge of what I was doing and technically in control of all of my faculties, drive toward a place where I knew that illegal activity was occuring - in fact, to "catch" it.

I have so much to live for - to stay okay for - to not get arrested for - and I don't have children. I realized almost instantaneously how insane that was - to drive toward the "bad stuff". Normal people, it seems, would run. That's when I realized that it was just as much me, as my ex-ABF and addict mom (now 2 1/2 years into recovery, woo hoo!), that was causing the insanity and unmanageability in my life.

I hate to tell people what to do. It isn't my job. But I will tell ya one thing - going to an abandoned house (which is almost exactly what I did not so long ago) to walk in on drug use is just not a good idea, and you gotta find whatever it is that will make you stop doing that.

I realized I had just as much of a problem as my ex-ABF, and I decided to get help. He didn't, and we're not together anymore. And you know what? I am happier for it. But it took a lot of work.

You seem to just be beginning to realize what this is - even though you've actually been living with it for four years. For me, it was about three. My rope ended. It's over. For you, that may not be the answer.

But at least consider the idea of getting help for yourself. I would hate to go through life waiting for my "other half" to come along, and I hate it for you too, because, for me, the truth is that I am whole and great just like I am - and I would be willing to bet that you are too.

We codies underestimate our strength. If you can live with active addiction for four years, I pretty much figure you can live with anything - including the challenges of recovery for YOURSELF.

HUGS tonight.

duet_4-8

I did the same thing SO many times I cannot count them. Along with confronting him in bars, acting like a complete idiot (me, not him).

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Love you guys!!