Loving An Addict
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 1
Loving An Addict
Hello, this is my first post here. I am looking into starting counseling soon and attending meetings but for now, I thought I’d reach out anonymously here and start the process of talking about everything.
My husband is a heroin addict. Our third year anniversary is coming up this December. As far as I know, he has probably been using since the start of our relationship, but I didn’t find out until about a year and a half in, when we got our own house together. I started to feel he was hiding things from me and initially thought he might be cheating on me, so I was hyper-vigilant about keeping an eye on what he was doing. I found heroin in our bathroom one day while cleaning and my heart sank. I’m not familiar with hard drugs (had never seen them in person), and I initially thought it was a smoked up pill on tin foil. Me and my husband have known each other since kindergarten and grew up together, and when we were teenagers we both dabbled in drinking and pot-smoking, and I popped pills at parties sometimes and knew people who smoked them back then. I immediately confronted him with it and he broke down and told me it wasn’t pills, but heroin, and that he needed help and begged me to help him. I was so confused. This was shortly after we had gotten engaged and my head was just spinning. But, I agreed to help him. I was so scared to tell anyone what was going on because I just couldn’t deal with everyone’s opinions on it. I stayed home with him for several days while he went through withdrawal and began the long process of him getting sober and relapsing repeatedly.
A little bit of insight on my husband- he is a commercial fishermen in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. He leaves home to go fishing for usually three months at a time, but he’s been gone as long as six months at a time. He is drug tested randomly and frequently when he is working and has never failed a drug test. He calls being out on the boat ‘seahab’. I know with certainty that he doesn’t use when he is out fishing, because we have a joint bank account and I have access to all his finances, and he never uses any money when he’s over there. He comes home for two months at a time usually, and when he comes home with a bunch of money, he chronically relapses and binge uses, and it seems to be getting progressively worse each time. He started with pills, then he started smoking them, then he started to smoke heroine when he couldn’t find any pills. He says he started using pills when he was 15 after his father passed away.
I’m entirely sober except for the occasional glass of wine and have never struggled with addiction. While my husband uses, he would never seem messed up and was never really a partier so it was hard for me to know anything was up at first. He’s incredibly attentive, takes care of me, and treats me great. He wants nice things and lives a nice life- not someone you would immediately think was an addict or a drug-user, but you can’t ever really know what problems someone has I guess.
Anyway, after initially finding out about his drug use, I started my whole roller-coaster with him. I really believed in him and wanted to help him. I asked him to go to treatment but he wouldn’t. He was constantly relapsing and trying to get sober on his own and things just weren’t working that way and I really felt like I was losing myself in the process. One day, he picked me up from work so high he could barely keep his eyes open, and I told him I was done and kicked him out of our house. I finally called up my parents and told them what was going on with him being an addict. We were apart for a month and I was really getting things together- split our finances, got my own bank account, my own car, and I was getting things in line to finally be independent of him. We kept in touch but I was firm about not wanting him around me until he went to treatment and achieved some kind of REAL sobriety. However, shortly after that, I found out we were expecting a child.
He left for Alaska right after that and stayed up for almost five months, because we wanted to have plenty of money saved for the baby and he wanted to get clean and be away from everyone and everything that had to do with drugs. We saved a bunch of money and were planning to buy a house when he got home. Found out we were having a little boy and I was able to stop working around 7 months pregnant. He came home from Alaska, and it was the first time I saw him with a real determination to remain sober. It was like a light was on in his eyes again and I wondered if things were finally on the right track. He started going to NA meetings and was taking drug tests for me whenever I requested. He stayed clean for about a month when he was home, and then I found him smoking heroin out of nowhere. I packed up a uhaul with all of mine and the babies stuff and drove 4 states away and told him not to come near me until he was sober again.
Now, things are at their worst. As soon as I moved away from him and he realized I was serious, and that no amount of pleading or promising to change was going to change my mind, he started shooting up, unbeknownst to me. I told him that he could come be here when the baby was born as long as he was sober. When he got off the plane, he was dope sick within a few hours. He had drained all of our savings on heroine while I was in the last month of my pregnancy. He stayed with me while I gave birth and for a couple days after, but then he left again, probably because he was still dope sick and couldn’t wait to get high again. He was home for about a week before he left to go fishing, and during that time, a close friend of his told me he pawned his wedding ring for dope money and overdosed at one point while he was with him.
I’ve gotten so numb to his lying and betrayal at this point. I truly just want him to get better, whether or not that means we have a relationship is trivial to me. I haven’t handled this addiction or my role in it perfectly so far. I’ve called him horrible names, told him what a worthless husband and father he was being, and have done my fair share of enabling in cleaning up his messes for him. I’m trying to get healthy in this and learn what I can do for him to help him, while still retaining my autonomy with myself and his son. He doesn’t want to be around his child in the state he’s in, and for now is remaining coherent about that. He has always taken care of me and has never been malicious. Our relationship is complicated by the fact that even though we’re technically ‘separated’, he still supports me and our son completely. I’m trying hard to convince him to enter treatment, and right now, he says that he is willing. But he often agrees to things when he is sober and in the right frame of mind. I fear that when he is home again with access to money and drugs, he’s going to kill himself this time.
All I can do is take this one day at a time. I love him and don’t want to give up on him, but I’m struggling to keep healthy boundaries with him because he makes me feel responsible for his drug-use progressing. He tells me I was ‘saving’ him, and now that I won’t live with him or be around him he has no reason not to use 24/7. He cries and begs me ‘not to let him be a bad father’, as if I have ANY say over his decisions. He’s getting so out of control. Any support would be much appreciated. I feel like I’m going through my role in this all alone, and I fear what our son is going to feel like when he starts to understand what’s going on with his father.
My husband is a heroin addict. Our third year anniversary is coming up this December. As far as I know, he has probably been using since the start of our relationship, but I didn’t find out until about a year and a half in, when we got our own house together. I started to feel he was hiding things from me and initially thought he might be cheating on me, so I was hyper-vigilant about keeping an eye on what he was doing. I found heroin in our bathroom one day while cleaning and my heart sank. I’m not familiar with hard drugs (had never seen them in person), and I initially thought it was a smoked up pill on tin foil. Me and my husband have known each other since kindergarten and grew up together, and when we were teenagers we both dabbled in drinking and pot-smoking, and I popped pills at parties sometimes and knew people who smoked them back then. I immediately confronted him with it and he broke down and told me it wasn’t pills, but heroin, and that he needed help and begged me to help him. I was so confused. This was shortly after we had gotten engaged and my head was just spinning. But, I agreed to help him. I was so scared to tell anyone what was going on because I just couldn’t deal with everyone’s opinions on it. I stayed home with him for several days while he went through withdrawal and began the long process of him getting sober and relapsing repeatedly.
A little bit of insight on my husband- he is a commercial fishermen in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. He leaves home to go fishing for usually three months at a time, but he’s been gone as long as six months at a time. He is drug tested randomly and frequently when he is working and has never failed a drug test. He calls being out on the boat ‘seahab’. I know with certainty that he doesn’t use when he is out fishing, because we have a joint bank account and I have access to all his finances, and he never uses any money when he’s over there. He comes home for two months at a time usually, and when he comes home with a bunch of money, he chronically relapses and binge uses, and it seems to be getting progressively worse each time. He started with pills, then he started smoking them, then he started to smoke heroine when he couldn’t find any pills. He says he started using pills when he was 15 after his father passed away.
I’m entirely sober except for the occasional glass of wine and have never struggled with addiction. While my husband uses, he would never seem messed up and was never really a partier so it was hard for me to know anything was up at first. He’s incredibly attentive, takes care of me, and treats me great. He wants nice things and lives a nice life- not someone you would immediately think was an addict or a drug-user, but you can’t ever really know what problems someone has I guess.
Anyway, after initially finding out about his drug use, I started my whole roller-coaster with him. I really believed in him and wanted to help him. I asked him to go to treatment but he wouldn’t. He was constantly relapsing and trying to get sober on his own and things just weren’t working that way and I really felt like I was losing myself in the process. One day, he picked me up from work so high he could barely keep his eyes open, and I told him I was done and kicked him out of our house. I finally called up my parents and told them what was going on with him being an addict. We were apart for a month and I was really getting things together- split our finances, got my own bank account, my own car, and I was getting things in line to finally be independent of him. We kept in touch but I was firm about not wanting him around me until he went to treatment and achieved some kind of REAL sobriety. However, shortly after that, I found out we were expecting a child.
He left for Alaska right after that and stayed up for almost five months, because we wanted to have plenty of money saved for the baby and he wanted to get clean and be away from everyone and everything that had to do with drugs. We saved a bunch of money and were planning to buy a house when he got home. Found out we were having a little boy and I was able to stop working around 7 months pregnant. He came home from Alaska, and it was the first time I saw him with a real determination to remain sober. It was like a light was on in his eyes again and I wondered if things were finally on the right track. He started going to NA meetings and was taking drug tests for me whenever I requested. He stayed clean for about a month when he was home, and then I found him smoking heroin out of nowhere. I packed up a uhaul with all of mine and the babies stuff and drove 4 states away and told him not to come near me until he was sober again.
Now, things are at their worst. As soon as I moved away from him and he realized I was serious, and that no amount of pleading or promising to change was going to change my mind, he started shooting up, unbeknownst to me. I told him that he could come be here when the baby was born as long as he was sober. When he got off the plane, he was dope sick within a few hours. He had drained all of our savings on heroine while I was in the last month of my pregnancy. He stayed with me while I gave birth and for a couple days after, but then he left again, probably because he was still dope sick and couldn’t wait to get high again. He was home for about a week before he left to go fishing, and during that time, a close friend of his told me he pawned his wedding ring for dope money and overdosed at one point while he was with him.
I’ve gotten so numb to his lying and betrayal at this point. I truly just want him to get better, whether or not that means we have a relationship is trivial to me. I haven’t handled this addiction or my role in it perfectly so far. I’ve called him horrible names, told him what a worthless husband and father he was being, and have done my fair share of enabling in cleaning up his messes for him. I’m trying to get healthy in this and learn what I can do for him to help him, while still retaining my autonomy with myself and his son. He doesn’t want to be around his child in the state he’s in, and for now is remaining coherent about that. He has always taken care of me and has never been malicious. Our relationship is complicated by the fact that even though we’re technically ‘separated’, he still supports me and our son completely. I’m trying hard to convince him to enter treatment, and right now, he says that he is willing. But he often agrees to things when he is sober and in the right frame of mind. I fear that when he is home again with access to money and drugs, he’s going to kill himself this time.
All I can do is take this one day at a time. I love him and don’t want to give up on him, but I’m struggling to keep healthy boundaries with him because he makes me feel responsible for his drug-use progressing. He tells me I was ‘saving’ him, and now that I won’t live with him or be around him he has no reason not to use 24/7. He cries and begs me ‘not to let him be a bad father’, as if I have ANY say over his decisions. He’s getting so out of control. Any support would be much appreciated. I feel like I’m going through my role in this all alone, and I fear what our son is going to feel like when he starts to understand what’s going on with his father.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Dallas TX
Posts: 2,282
We are all terribly sorry for what brought you here, troubledseas.
But with that being said----you came to the right place. There are a
ton of resources here, starting with the 'stickies' above. Pure wisdom
from people who know this stuff inside and out a hell of a lot
better than I do.
Your husband has crossed paths with something very wicked and
extremely dangerous. The one thing I can promise you is that you will
NEVER be alone here. We help each other---it's what we do. The gang will
be along in a few.......tell 'em Vale broke the ice and they will roll their eyes.
I'm 'kinda famou..........uh..........notorious around here. I'm Vale the duck.
Congratulations on your first post. I think you will (as I have) ....find this
place to be a hell of a nice shelter in an awful storm.
But with that being said----you came to the right place. There are a
ton of resources here, starting with the 'stickies' above. Pure wisdom
from people who know this stuff inside and out a hell of a lot
better than I do.
Your husband has crossed paths with something very wicked and
extremely dangerous. The one thing I can promise you is that you will
NEVER be alone here. We help each other---it's what we do. The gang will
be along in a few.......tell 'em Vale broke the ice and they will roll their eyes.
I'm 'kinda famou..........uh..........notorious around here. I'm Vale the duck.
Congratulations on your first post. I think you will (as I have) ....find this
place to be a hell of a nice shelter in an awful storm.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Wilmington, DE
Posts: 393
Welcome troubledseas! Sorry to hear of your troubles, but rest assured that you are not alone - you just need to know where to look for help, support and a place to vent -- congratulations you have found one!
"I love him and don’t want to give up on him," - a truism as posted by Ann in another thread just today, "Love cannot save our addicted loved ones, if it could, not one of us would be here."
"...but I’m struggling to keep healthy boundaries with him because he makes me feel responsible for his drug-use progressing. He tells me I was ‘saving’ him, and now that I won’t live with him or be around him he has no reason not to use 24/7."
You are correct in stating that you do need to get to a support group meeting on a regular basis - there you will discover that the addicts in all of our lives are very manipulative and very good at it! -- the above is a classic story -- heard in every Nar-Anon meeting on the planet. Keep your boundaries firmly in place!
You are also correct when you came to the realization that you have absolutely NO say over his decisions.
"The Three C's of Addiction" - You did not Cause it, you cannot Control it and you can't Cure it.
I am amazed that your husband is willing to go through self imposed opiate / heroin detox when he returns to "seahab", then will start using again as soon as he is back at home -- but addicts do amazing things........
Keep coming back!
Jim
"I love him and don’t want to give up on him," - a truism as posted by Ann in another thread just today, "Love cannot save our addicted loved ones, if it could, not one of us would be here."
"...but I’m struggling to keep healthy boundaries with him because he makes me feel responsible for his drug-use progressing. He tells me I was ‘saving’ him, and now that I won’t live with him or be around him he has no reason not to use 24/7."
You are correct in stating that you do need to get to a support group meeting on a regular basis - there you will discover that the addicts in all of our lives are very manipulative and very good at it! -- the above is a classic story -- heard in every Nar-Anon meeting on the planet. Keep your boundaries firmly in place!
You are also correct when you came to the realization that you have absolutely NO say over his decisions.
"The Three C's of Addiction" - You did not Cause it, you cannot Control it and you can't Cure it.
I am amazed that your husband is willing to go through self imposed opiate / heroin detox when he returns to "seahab", then will start using again as soon as he is back at home -- but addicts do amazing things........
Keep coming back!
Jim
Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: USA
Posts: 574
sometimes, we, become the excuse that they fall back on - to continue drinking or using and lying/manipulating - so that they can live with the torture that addiction causes. That someone else is the cause of it.
an addict is a person in pain. They latch onto people who have codependent tendencies. People that they can manipulate. People to blame for their DOC. And more often, that person becomes addicted to the addict, the drama and the adrenalin. The addict feeds us the words needed - just enough to keep us dependent, upon them.
all the help and support won't help them. They must to help themselves.
take care of yourself, because no one else is going to. I wish you peace accepting his choice and hugs while you set boundaries and save your own life.
I lost my high school sweetheart to a night of drinking/weed while on a motorcycle. My ex husband died this spring from complications of alcoholism. And my love, my best friend - died this spring also either from fentanyl laced heroin or suicide. No answers here but in each instance, I had learned to save myself.
an addict is a person in pain. They latch onto people who have codependent tendencies. People that they can manipulate. People to blame for their DOC. And more often, that person becomes addicted to the addict, the drama and the adrenalin. The addict feeds us the words needed - just enough to keep us dependent, upon them.
all the help and support won't help them. They must to help themselves.
take care of yourself, because no one else is going to. I wish you peace accepting his choice and hugs while you set boundaries and save your own life.
I lost my high school sweetheart to a night of drinking/weed while on a motorcycle. My ex husband died this spring from complications of alcoholism. And my love, my best friend - died this spring also either from fentanyl laced heroin or suicide. No answers here but in each instance, I had learned to save myself.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2015
Posts: 58
That's the best advice you can get -- take care of yourself. Put him out of your mind, no matter how hard it may be, and don't humor him with this "it's all your fault" or "I'm trying to get better" crap. Convince yourself that he is lost, because there is literally not a damn thing you can do to fix him, change him, encourage him, or make him quit using. It has to come from him. I hope it does, but either way you won't be there to see it. Honestly, at this point, there is so much resentment and pain embedded in your relationship that it can never go back to the way it was in the early days. Your marriage is broken because you will never trust him again, and you deserve a partner that you know will always have your back.
I know first-hand how hard it can be to cut off someone that you still love with all your heart. Someone who is a good person, sweet, caring, and kind, but crippled by an addiction that turns them into a monster. But keeping a hardcore heroin addict in your day-to-day life is only going to bring negativity, pain, suffering, and anxiety, and you need to surround yourself and your child with things that are positive.
You can't save this man, and he has nothing positive to offer you. You can save yourself, and you should.
I know first-hand how hard it can be to cut off someone that you still love with all your heart. Someone who is a good person, sweet, caring, and kind, but crippled by an addiction that turns them into a monster. But keeping a hardcore heroin addict in your day-to-day life is only going to bring negativity, pain, suffering, and anxiety, and you need to surround yourself and your child with things that are positive.
You can't save this man, and he has nothing positive to offer you. You can save yourself, and you should.
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