learning to draw a line.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: BFE, Oklahoma
Posts: 6
learning to draw a line.
I've spent the last 7 years of my life feeling like drugs > me. It's a feeling that I would like more than anything to overcome. My boyfriend and I lost one of our closest friends to a drug overdose. It was someone I'd spent countless hours trying to love into sobriety. Now I'm realizing that it's impossible.
Unfortunately my bf is also an addict and regularly takes the same combination of drugs that killed our friend.
I often find myself enabling him. Giving him rides to get the drugs. Giving him money to pay bills (knowing it'll probably go to drugs). For some reason I'm scared that if I stop he won't want me anymore.
He knows he's manipulative, and that I play right into it. We talk about it openly. He says, you enable me. I tell him he's the king of manipulation. He agrees. He tells me there has to be consequences for his actions. That consequences are the only way that he'll be able to stop. If I could stand up to him, then it would help him stop.
But when he finally gets the will power to stop taking the drugs he becomes someone I can't stand to be around. Not because he's does mean things to me (he has never tried intentionally hurt me emotionally), but because his illness and mindset are contagious. It makes me almost as uncomfortable as he is to see him laying in bed, cold, shaking, tossing and turning, sick. I find myself making every excuse I can to leave the house. To get away from his misery. Eventually it becomes more than I can take and I'm often a bit relieved when he finally comes across some drugs. It's like I'm dependent on his dependence.
I want to be able to set my foot down. I want to be able to let him know that he's not just hurting himself here. He says that he'd choose me over drugs, but I don't see it. And more than anything, I don't want him to think I'm giving up on him. I knew he was an addict when I got involved with him. Since we got together he's got (and kept) a full time job, been promoted twice. It's hard to deny him of his accomplishments, because he is doing much better now than he has in years. On Christmas morning he proposed. I said yes. I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew the commitment I was making. I know I am not in control of his decisions, but I am in control of mine. I was hoping someone could help me figure out ways to set boundaries. to establish the much needed consequences. I'm not looking to threaten him with me leaving because I think that it would be unfair, but perhaps I'm wrong.
Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
I want more than anything to learn to draw a line between being supportive, and being an enabler.
Unfortunately my bf is also an addict and regularly takes the same combination of drugs that killed our friend.
I often find myself enabling him. Giving him rides to get the drugs. Giving him money to pay bills (knowing it'll probably go to drugs). For some reason I'm scared that if I stop he won't want me anymore.
He knows he's manipulative, and that I play right into it. We talk about it openly. He says, you enable me. I tell him he's the king of manipulation. He agrees. He tells me there has to be consequences for his actions. That consequences are the only way that he'll be able to stop. If I could stand up to him, then it would help him stop.
But when he finally gets the will power to stop taking the drugs he becomes someone I can't stand to be around. Not because he's does mean things to me (he has never tried intentionally hurt me emotionally), but because his illness and mindset are contagious. It makes me almost as uncomfortable as he is to see him laying in bed, cold, shaking, tossing and turning, sick. I find myself making every excuse I can to leave the house. To get away from his misery. Eventually it becomes more than I can take and I'm often a bit relieved when he finally comes across some drugs. It's like I'm dependent on his dependence.
I want to be able to set my foot down. I want to be able to let him know that he's not just hurting himself here. He says that he'd choose me over drugs, but I don't see it. And more than anything, I don't want him to think I'm giving up on him. I knew he was an addict when I got involved with him. Since we got together he's got (and kept) a full time job, been promoted twice. It's hard to deny him of his accomplishments, because he is doing much better now than he has in years. On Christmas morning he proposed. I said yes. I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew the commitment I was making. I know I am not in control of his decisions, but I am in control of mine. I was hoping someone could help me figure out ways to set boundaries. to establish the much needed consequences. I'm not looking to threaten him with me leaving because I think that it would be unfair, but perhaps I'm wrong.
Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
I want more than anything to learn to draw a line between being supportive, and being an enabler.
Drug Addiction Has No Mercy
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Milwaukie Oregon
Posts: 875
He can't make you responsible for his addiction .. though he is right you do need to stand up to his addiction and put some boundaries and give some consquences for crossing those boundaries.
Did you know that the addict is the codependents addiction? While your addict is lying in bed sick, detoxing from his drug use .. You are there waiting for him to get better .. so that you can get your fix. Hes drug sick .. your drug sick. The addict is the codependents drug. You just want him to hurry up and get better so that you can be happy with him at your side again .. it is a sick cycle ... and those that love an addict can end up sick if not sicker then the substance abuser themselves.
Have you tried Nar-Anon meetings? Read co-dependence no more, read about enabling, detachment with love. You need recovery too. SR is a good place to get you headed in that direction .. Hope you will stick around
****{Hugs}}}
Passion
Did you know that the addict is the codependents addiction? While your addict is lying in bed sick, detoxing from his drug use .. You are there waiting for him to get better .. so that you can get your fix. Hes drug sick .. your drug sick. The addict is the codependents drug. You just want him to hurry up and get better so that you can be happy with him at your side again .. it is a sick cycle ... and those that love an addict can end up sick if not sicker then the substance abuser themselves.
Have you tried Nar-Anon meetings? Read co-dependence no more, read about enabling, detachment with love. You need recovery too. SR is a good place to get you headed in that direction .. Hope you will stick around
****{Hugs}}}
Passion
Member
Join Date: May 2006
Location: NY
Posts: 2,859
When I detoxed me and my fiance literally slept in seperate bedrooms. I explained how I would be, act, sick, miserable, wanting drugs, not sleeping, crapping ALOT, sweating. It was my own hell let me repeat that MY own hell. Not his I owned it I lived it I got over it. I told him to go about his day like I wasnt home no need to make him feel my misery. I think thats what you will have to do.
Look up heroin withdrawls cause the pills he takes are in the catagory that heroin is an opiate. Funny we associate heroin as the worst drug yet when its in a pill form well its NOT that bad.
Let him suffer the w/d's no need for u to suffer too. Maybe go away for the weekend or so. The worst of the w/d's start at about day 3 and last 5-7 days then you can slowly move on with your life. He can do it IF he really wants to.
Look up heroin withdrawls cause the pills he takes are in the catagory that heroin is an opiate. Funny we associate heroin as the worst drug yet when its in a pill form well its NOT that bad.
Let him suffer the w/d's no need for u to suffer too. Maybe go away for the weekend or so. The worst of the w/d's start at about day 3 and last 5-7 days then you can slowly move on with your life. He can do it IF he really wants to.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: BFE, Oklahoma
Posts: 6
i don't even take the drugs yet i feel almost as bound to them as he is. when i think about it rationally i realize that there is no reason that i should suffer also. perhaps some time away would serve us both well. i'm supposed to be a friend, not a caregiver. i think deep down he realizes it's something he has to do alone, it's just easier to drag me into it, that way if things don't go as planned he can try and pawn some of the blame off on me. i don't want to be a part of that cycle anymore. i worry about him being sick but really, the discomfort of the w/d is nothing in comparison to the consequences that are inevitable if he doesn't stop using.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: ca
Posts: 103
Boundaries - for me it's about having a choice - I can say YES and mean it and NO and mean it, too. For so long I was bound by what my AH was or wasn't doing. I let myself believe that I didn't have an identity, any self worth, and be strung along like a little rag doll. His actions dictated my REactions. I realized that I was the one tethering myself and my happiness to him and the addiction.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Between the ocean and the mountains
Posts: 653
misslib,
wow, you agreed to marry an active addict who isn't in recovery? you said "i know what i'm getting myself into", but saying "yes" to marriage to someone whose emotional, mental and physical life is controlled by an overwhelming compulsion to pursue drugs above everything else...i think you have haven't a clue about what is ahead for him and for you.
it is encouraging that he wants to stop and has even tried to stop. it means he knows he has a problem. many addicts don't even know it's the drug making them miserable and creating chaos in their lives. so it is encouraging that he sees the drug use as a problem and has times of wanting to get clean.
you don't have to walk away from him. you don't. but you are the only one in the relationship whose mind is not chemically deranged by drug use, so you are the one who has the best chance to make a choice for recovery.
here is how: go to 12 step meetings regularly. educate yourself so well about addiction you could teach the class on it. don't clean up any messes your addict creates, including his vomit and drool. love him and go to war against the addiction.
if you do this, things might change, over time. it might take months and months. if you can hold off on the wedding for at least a year, you may have one to which you invite beautiful recovering addicts living joyous lives. keep this dream, as you make your choices ahead.
all the best to you and the man you love.
wow, you agreed to marry an active addict who isn't in recovery? you said "i know what i'm getting myself into", but saying "yes" to marriage to someone whose emotional, mental and physical life is controlled by an overwhelming compulsion to pursue drugs above everything else...i think you have haven't a clue about what is ahead for him and for you.
it is encouraging that he wants to stop and has even tried to stop. it means he knows he has a problem. many addicts don't even know it's the drug making them miserable and creating chaos in their lives. so it is encouraging that he sees the drug use as a problem and has times of wanting to get clean.
you don't have to walk away from him. you don't. but you are the only one in the relationship whose mind is not chemically deranged by drug use, so you are the one who has the best chance to make a choice for recovery.
here is how: go to 12 step meetings regularly. educate yourself so well about addiction you could teach the class on it. don't clean up any messes your addict creates, including his vomit and drool. love him and go to war against the addiction.
if you do this, things might change, over time. it might take months and months. if you can hold off on the wedding for at least a year, you may have one to which you invite beautiful recovering addicts living joyous lives. keep this dream, as you make your choices ahead.
all the best to you and the man you love.
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