joplin

I’ve never posted before, but I’ve read a couple of posts and think I’m finally ready to get some help for myself. I live with and have been dating an addict for the last four years and I’m currently 8 months pregnant with our child (unplanned pregnancy). We live together, I’m financially tied to him because I'm unable to work due to my pregnancy (long story). He was laid off from his job about six months ago and is now working at a “temporary” job that doesn’t pay much, but it does help to pay the bills at least.

His addiction was mostly to coke and alcohol until about a year ago when he started using painkillers. To make a very long story short, he no longer uses coke, he rarely drinks, and is attempting to curb his opiate addiction. Before we were together he did coke daily, then quit several months before we met. After we got together, he relapsed several times and would do it infrequently (once every 2 months). I always knew when he did it because he’d always tell me the truth afterwards and it was usually pretty hard for him to hide. He did coke for hopefully the last time about 9 months ago when he OD’d and nearly killed himself – that scared him straight and he hasn’t touched it since.

He started taking painkillers about a year ago when he broke his foot, then got worse with them when he stopped doing coke. At first he was “just” taking vicodin/percoset, but about six months ago started snorting oxycontin, now he snorts/shoots oxycontin two to three times per week. I didn’t know how often he was using the OC and I had no idea he was shooting it until about 6 weeks ago. About two weeks after I found out he was shooting , he went off the deep end and started writing checks against our account (bouncing it and lots of other legitimate checks), taking his father’s ATM card to take out money, borrowing money from people that he knew he couldn’t pay back, etc. I kicked him out several times in the last 6 months, but always took him back mostly due to financial reasons with promises from him that he was done. Miraculously, he has no criminal record and has managed to get away with his addictions pretty much scot-free. After this though, he knows that I’m closer than I’ve ever been to leaving him and that I’m not willing to raise my child with a lying, stealing junkie.

After he got everyone mad at him for taking everyone’s money and lying, he realized that his problem was pretty severe and started making real efforts to get clean. For example, he started going to a psychiatrist to get medication for his bipolar disorder – for the first time since he was diagnosed several years ago, he has been taking his meds consistently and has admitted that he feels better than he remembers ever feeling before. His whole personality really has changed for the better and he seems hopeful for the first time. He’s gone back to the doc regularly which is also a first for him. He is saying that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get clean which is something that he’s never said before (he’s agreed to NA/AA, see a substance abuse counselor, go to rehab, whatever).

He detoxed himself last week (it really wasn’t that bad from my perspective – no vomiting, etc. which he says is because he had cut back so much recently). Unfortunately, right after he detoxed, he relapsed again when he got around his cousin who is also a junkie. So, then he tried to detox himself again this week but on the third day couldn’t handle it and went and got suboxone from his dealer friend (instead of getting OC like he normally would). I am still angry that he didn’t just quit cold turkey at that point, but it’s better than the alternative I suppose. I know that he’s desperate to quit before the baby is born and is terrified that he will become a father like his father (an alcoholic who made his childhood hell), so he really is interested in making things better. I’m still hesitant to believe that it will actually happen though.

So, given the recent change in events, I just don’t know what to do. For the first time, I am hopeful that he may actually change. I think that an inpatient rehab would be the best course of action for him, but unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to deal with the financial burden that would ensue from him being out of work. The only other solution (and one that he has agreed to) is for us to move back to my hometown with one of my relatives who has offered to let us stay with her. If I were to leave him, this is where I would go anyway so this isn’t really a bad solution for me. Plus, ever since becoming pregnant, I’ve been wanting to move back anyway so I can be near my family. His idea is for both of us to move in with her so that he can have a change of environment, get away from his current influences, get another job, and start over. While he’s there, he’s promised to go to NA/AA, continue taking his meds, go see a therapist, etc. Once he’s completely clean and can afford it, we would get another place together. My family is pretty fond of him, but they don’t know that he is a current addict or any of his recent addiction problems.

So, what do I do? Should I take a chance on him and do this or should I give up on him altogether calling it too little, too late?

If he goes to NA in a new town, isn’t it possible that he will just meet other addicts who can connect him with drugs since he will be losing all his connections in our current town? How often does that happen?

On top of everything else, I’m really upset that I’m pregnant and unmarried. For my own reasons, I don’t want to have a child out of wedlock and since I’m getting ready to give birth pretty soon here, I’m just totally torn as to what to do. Obviously, I don’t want to marry a drug addict. But, this would be a decision that I would make for my child and I feel like it would be worth it for my child to know that her parents were married at the time of her birth even if we end up getting a divorce two weeks later. I know it sound ridiculous considering the fact that marriage isn’t even really necessary anymore and given his addiction. But, I also know that, no matter what, I will always regret not being married when she’s born.

hello-kitty

Hi and welcome. Umm... I was left speechless when I read this:

Two wrongs don't make a right. Keep reading and posting. It could help you avoid making a mistake that you will regret for the rest of your life.

Do you have a pastor or a counselor you can talk to about this?

teke

hi, joplin, welcome. you come to a good place for support. have you thought about alanon for yourself? keep reading and keep posting.learn as much as you can. theres a lot of good info in the stickies at the top of the forum page.

i guess it does sound like you have a situation here. first of all, i tried being married for the kids and it didn't work for me. addiction really does effect kids in a real way. its up to you to protect your unborn child so i commend you for not want to raise your baby an addictive enviroment.

sounds to me like maybe your bf is swapping drugs for other drugs if he has to in order to continue his drug use. it good for him to say to you how much he want to change and to be willing to make all these promises but what is he actually doing. try to watch his actions and not his words.

you mentioned about all the money he has taken from others, are you sure you want to take a chance on giving him the opportunity to start in on your family, their money and their valuables?

as far as relocating as a means to stop using, in my experience, that don't work either. the drug or dealer is not the problem, its the addict that uses the drug and look for the dealers. an addict can and will find drugs basically at any corner in the blink of an eye, if thats what he wants to do. sorry but i think maybe you should take the focus off him and what he do/don't do and focus on the kind of life you want for you and your unborn child and work towards that goal.

i pray that your bf is serious about getting clean and that it all works out the way you plan.

joplin

Thanks for your response. I'm not surprised that I left you speechless. As you can see, I'm all over the place - talking about leaving him in one breath and marrying him in another (and I'm not even sure about the marriage, because I talk about divorce immediately after that). I realize that it could be a nightmare and that it sounds ridiculous to even consider marrying someone who's in this state. But, it's not her fault that he's a drug addict, so I don't want her to pay the price for his addiction by always knowing that her parents were never married and the societal implications of that. I hope I don't sound like some sort of judgemental idiot for saying this bothers me. Personally, I couldn't care less if someone's parents were unmarried, but I know that society doesn't necessarily agree and I don't want her to ever feel judged for this. Even my own family has been judging me for not getting married yet - I don't want her to have to deal with that also. Despite how ridiculous this sounds, part of me doesn't see the harm in getting married and hoping for the best, then leaving him if things don't turn out the way I hope.

As you can see, this goes far beyond just religious reasons for me (although religion does play into all this too), but unfortunately, no, I don't have a pastor to talk to about this.

outtolunch

There is no such thing as cutting back. Addicts and alcoholics are not truthful about how much they use/drink or the frequency. Addiction is progressive. Heroin is a very likely next step for him, if he has not already crossed over. It's a better bang for the $ and often easier to come bye.

You say you are staying with him because he is your financial support. Yet, he is unemployed except for a PT job and unable to provide for his family and thinks it cool beans to move back and live off of your relatives......but he has money to buy drugs?

You have a safe haven to go to, back home. This is good for the short term. What are you planning on doing to sustain your own life and that of your child? Moving is not a cure for addiction.

Having a child out of wedlock was a decision made 8 months ago. Parenthood is not a cure for addiction. In the long run, that you were married or not, probably is not going to matter as much as raising a child in a home with the chaos of an active addict.

How fortunate that you have a relative willing to take you in. How unfortunate to bring addiction into that home and more importantly, into a baby's life.

Ignore what he says. Pay attention to his actions. If he is motivated to get and stay clean, let him prove it, over time. Sending prompt child support money orders would be a good sign. If he remains an active addict, he's more likely to blow his money on opiates in one form or another.

gowest

THE HARM IS THAT ALL HIS LEGAL AND FINANCIAL PROBLEMS CAN BECOME YOURS.
He can ruin your credit, go through your funds, etc .... the list is huge!!

hello-kitty

How interesting that you think that it is more important that you are married than you think it is to provide a safe, calm, drug free home for your daughter.

I think that having an active addict living in my house, around my baby, would have a far far worse permanent damaging effect on my child than the fact that I am not married to his father.

I chose not to marry a drug addict. I chose not to invite that kind of chaos into my childs life. I did it to protect my son from drugs. I thought it was more important than being married.

I don't want my son seeing his fathers bizarre behavior, experiencing the devastating insecurity from never knowing if daddy was actually going to show up when he said or come home wasted or not at all. My ex's constant disappearing and lying always made me feel unloved. I never wanted my son to feel like that.

My son will learn that two wrongs don't make a right. My son will learn to be responsible for his actions. My son will learn that mommy doesn't allow illegal activity in her house. My son will learn that drugs are not acceptable.

My son will have 100% of his mommy's attention. I will not allow him to see me heart broken and distressed over his fathers irresponsibility and inability to care about anyone because of his addiction.

My son will feel safe and secure when he grows up.

outtolunch

That her daddy is the town's junky is likely to have more implications than mom and dad having never married.

This is the sort of thing that becomes a big deal only when you make it a big deal. Single mothers ( by choice) are common.

teke

i know you said your family loves him but you also said they don't know about his addiction. i guess i can understand that they may wish you were married under the circumstance, so why not tell them the whole story and see what they think after that.

i just don't think being an unwed mother is the worst thing could have happened to you or your child, but that just the way i think. if i had to marry my ah all over again, knowing what i know now, children or no children, i would have to see long term recovery first. you think you are kind of confused right now, just think what it might be like if he forgets to do all that he promised you he would. i pray that he does but what if he doesn't.

outtolunch

Good point.

His debts become the OP's debts.

joplin

Yes, I am actually very interested in getting involved with alanon. That's actually how I found this site in the first place. I know that I have been codependent for way too long and just now am I starting to put my own needs/wants ahead of his. Maybe he senses that and that's why he's starting to change in ways he never has before? I don't know.

I don't want to stay with him in any way if he continues to use. In good conscience, I can't raise my daughter in that environment. I feel like a parent (who's supposed to be a role model) who uses gives his/her child a free ticket to use themselves and I'm not willing to take that chance with my child. No matter what happens, if he continues to use, I would leave him before she was even able to crawl. For some reason (low self-esteem), it's easier to make good choices for her than it is for myself.

That is one thing that I'm worried about - allowing him to potentially steal money from my family. That would only happen once, but is even that one time something I want to take a chance on? I have a hard time believing he would do that, but I also had a hard time believing that he would steal money from his own family so I guess anything's possible.

joplin

You say you are staying with him because he is your financial support. Yet, he is unemployed except for a PT job and unable to provide for his family and thinks it cool beans to move back and live off of your relatives......but he has money to buy drugs?

Actually, it's a full time job but yes, I see your point. He has only moderately been providing for his family since he's been using since at least a third of his money and sometimes more goes to drugs. Believe it or not, even the little bit I see does help me from being completely dependent on my family for money.

bluejay6

Oh joplin,

What a mess. So glad you found us. Welcome.

I agree wholeheartedly with OuttoLunch's post. Please know that he is very likely lying to you about his "detox" and the level of his use and possibly even about the bipolar med (lithium?) being the main source of his good feelings, that his addiction has perked up its ears and is panting enthusiastically at the possibility of the soft cushy nest your relatives are going to provide him and his addiction, and that your child is going to come WAY FAR BEHIND his self-centered quest for more drugs until he has SOLID clean time, meaning at least a year.

You moving in with family while HE stays put, goes to meetings, continues with the psychiatric treatment for bipolar (who's paying for that by the way?) and keeping safe distance from him until he has proven he has changed in both words and actions over many months....that is the responsible thing to do.

I once married because I, too, did not want to just live with the father of my child. In spite of my modern views, modern sexuality, and fairly liberal ideals, suddenly i became ultra-conservative about a baby being born to two unwed people.

Oh my goodness, how naive I was. How unfortunate for the child, who then had to experience the dissolution of his family a few years later. When he could feel it.

please do take care and make good decisions.

Bluejay

teke

i hope you are aware that for some reason his addiction goes untreated in some way, he will get progressively so much worse. once in, it harder to get out. it took me 21yrs of pure h;ll to figure out, marrying my ah was not the best decision i could have made.

joplin

Sorry, I obviously have no idea how to quote someone else in my response. Lol.

Hello-kitty: Thanks for that post. What you're saying really does make a ton of sense that it's better to not have an addict in the house than it is to be married and I couldn't agree more which is why we haven't gotten married yet despite his desire to do so. I actually made that point to him by asking him if he would ever allow an IV drug addict to watch his child in a million years. Of course, his answer was no, so my next question to him was why in the world would he expect me to do it then by allowing him to stick around? I just have an irrational fear of her being born out of wedlock, but let me repeat, that I would never let her be raised by him if he was using. I just want to make that point clear. I'm irrational, but not that irrational. Ha ha. But, you do still make a good point that even if she has to know that her parents were unwed when they had her, at least she will know that the reason why is because her mother loved her too much to allow her to have to live that life.

hello-kitty

That's funny. When all else fails, at least we can laugh at ourselves.

Just don't make any rash decisions. I hope you will keep reading and posting here. You will gain lots of insight into your struggles from reading about what others are going thru. Youre not alone. You are not the only one to have gone thru this. And you will come out on top as long as you make the wisest choices you can based on the knowledge that you have available to you right now.

joplin

Teke: Thank you. I am really sorry you had to go through hell for 21 years, but hearing yours and everyone elses experiences is really helping me to see what's important in this whole situation. To answer your question, I haven't told my family because I know that they would never forgive him and if he ever did get his life together and get straight, it would be hell for me if I did stay with him. They'd never trust him again and they would lose respect for me also. I'm SURE they would have NO problem with me NOT being married if they knew, though. I couldn't care less about being judged by them for this - that's the least of my problems, for sure.

joplin

Thanks Bluejay. That's basically where I am: the liberal with modern views who all of a sudden has turned uber-conservative about having a child out of wedlock. It makes no sense, but I just want what's best for her and I'm trying to figure out if she can have her cake and eat it too, but I think that boat sailed about 8 months ago. If he keeps using, then she's already going to be at a disadvantage (even if I leave him and she never sees her father) and the last thing I want to do is make things worse for her. I can only hope that he does what's right by her.

His insurance is paying for his psych visits and his money is paying for his insurnace (I handle the bills so I know what is and isn't being paid) and, in all actuality, this decision to move to my relative's house is not an easy one. The relative we would be moving in with is NOT easy to live with and he's very much aware of that. Life is actually going to be harder there than it is here as far as quality of life. But, he's looking at it as a way to start over and get away from bad influences and I'm looking at it as support when we have the baby since I could never depend on him the way he is now. So, as weird as it sounds, this actually is a sacrifice on his part - his life is much cushier now than it will be and he knows that.

I was with him when he detoxed both times and there was no faking it. It wasn't as dramatic as it is in the movies, but there was no way it was being faked. His level of use could absolutely be faked though - I'm sure it's entirely possible he's using more than he says although, for whatever reason, he always eventually tells me the truth - things that I NEVER could find out on my own. I think it makes him feel better for me to know and eases his guilt in his moments of actually feeling guilt.

ThirteenYears

Honey, I understand you fully in terms of your old fashioned value concerning family planning but it's a little too late for that now. I say I understand because me and my first husband raised our two (26 and 28) on my value: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the wife with the baby carriage. Because of that, at 49 I am not a grandmother because my children are not married. Because my daughter is ready to have a child, she is now engaged, planning a wedding for next year and then a year later, to get started on the baby making.

I don't play those games so I fully understand old fashioned values.

But let me ask this since you mentioned the "f" word -- FAULT. When you got pregnant by him did you know he was an A? If so then maybe that's something you need to live with -- that she's here because of YOUR fault?? I'm married to an addict for 13 years and the ONLY reason I did not bring children into this marriage because i think it's unfair to the children to have to live the lives we adults do when we entangle ourselves with these addict men.

What it sounds like to me is because you had your daughter out of wedlock, that you are now *trying to clean that up* with a marriagewhen you full well know there will be no turn for the better. We HOPE there will be but what we need to KNOW while we HOPE is that the chances are very low. Some addicts consider changing their lifestyles and habits, which can directly affect how well they do in maintaining sobriety but oftentimes when he's got a support system, they don't change, what they do is wear their support system out IF the woman allows his drama to run her life.

This is 2009 -- our young people are NOT sweating whether they're parents were married at their times of conception and whathave you. If anything, they are sweating WHERE IS MY DADDY, and maybe WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO HAVE ME WITH AN ADDICT, SOMEONE WE CANNOT DEPEND ON.

I don't think this is about your daughter, but about you.

joplin

Hmm, I appreciate your comment but I definitely disagree. I was also raised with "old fashioned values." My parents were married for a few years before their first child was born and then stayed together for 40 years until my father died of cancer. My brother and sister also do not have children because they've never been married. That being said, things happen. My brother and I do both live with our significant others, much to the dismay of our parents. My father wouldn't even come visit me in my home that I lived in with my ex-bf because I was living with him out of wedlock. So, raising your child with old-fashioned values doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to do the same as you. I can name many people I know that were raised with old fashioned values and went on to not have children until they were married. However, not one of them waited until marriage to have sex the first time and many of them had unplanned pregnancies which resulted in abortions (at least one, sometimes more) because they didn't want to feel the burden of judgement that may be cast upon them by their family and their parents never found out. So, their old fashioned values may have prevented them from having children, but it certainly didn't prevent them from doing other things that weren't very old fashioned. I didn't believe in abortion for my own situation (not offense to anyone else who's had one, I've supported friends who have gone through them - I just don't believe in it for me), although trust me, it would have been an easy answer for me when I realized that I was going to have to deal with all this. Maybe not in the long run though.

This has nothing to do with me. If I had cared that much about my family's (or anyone else's) judgement of having premarital sex, I would never have told them that I was living with current boyfriend, much less my ex. I feel like I made a bad decision by staying with an addict and then getting pregnant (accidental or not) by him. I feel like these are things that can't be changed. I just don't want to make it worse for her by also making her bear the burden of my mistakes in other ways (i.e, being born out of wedlock). I don't want her future to ever be tainted because of something I didn't do that I NOW have control over (since I don't have control over the mistakes I've already made). If she wants to run for president, I want her to be able to do that without being told that she can't because she doesn't represent "family values." If she shows her birth certificate to a new employer (for tax reasons), I don't want her to feel ashamed in front of her new employer because it lists her parents as unmarried. As a matter of fact, if I could get married for one day (the day that she was born), I'd be okay with that. Is that ridiculous? Yes, I'm sure of it. Are these irrational fears, especially given the fact that so many people are born out of wedlock nowadays? Yes, probably. But, that's how much I fear the offchance that she's going to be judged by society for something that I've done. Hopefully, that clarifies the reason behind my desire to get married before she's born. Let me add, though, that since I've discussed this on this post and heard the experiences of other people, I'm beginning to realize exactly how ridiculous and irrational I'm being. I just don't want to make any more mistakes, for her sake.