Tot

So my ex has been out of rehab for about 9 months. A couple weeks ago she relapsed, not hard..as far as I know anyway. She admitted to taking a few shots but only after I probed. She has since said that she is more motivated now to stay clean and she's been going to more meetings and talking to her sponsor etc. Last night I was at her house and I found a baggie of Ativan under her pillow. She denied taking any of them, said they were from before rehab and she was cleaning her room and found them under her mattress. She said she tossed them on her bed and must have gotten distracted and forgot about them and that's why she didn't throw them away. I don't believe her for one second obviously.

But my question is, what is the best way to handle these situations? I know I can't protect her, if she's going to use she's going to use. But every time I find something, I want to tell her mom. She lives with her mom right now and I just feel like she has a right to know. But my ex says she thinks she doesn't need to know bc a "relapse is a relapse" and she doesn't want her to worry. Her mom already knows about the relapse from a few weeks ago, so my ex doesn't see the need to tell her about some pills I found under her pillow, as it will only make her worry more. But I think it's about being honest and not hiding things! And her not telling her mom is just so she can get away with it more easily. If she tells her mom, yes her mom would worry but she would also be watching her more closely. And she's under her mom's roof so wouldn't she need to know?! But is it my place to tell her? Or am I supposed to just step back and hope she does the right thing?? It seems like every time I look I find something. I don't know what to do, and keeping quiet about it just doesn't feel right. But I know she has to take responsibility....thoughts?

atalose

My opinion, this is not a relapse but she’s using again. She’s lying to you and her mother and without you having to say a word to her mother, more will soon be revealed.

I guess my questions to you is, you did say EX right? Maybe you being so overly involved with your EX is not a healthy decision for yourself. If everywhere you look you are discovering drugs, lies and manipulation………….what are you sticking around for? Your eyes don’t lie, you see what you see and you know what you know.

The fact you are sticking around when someone is lying to you, can be enabling because she's manipulating you.

If it were me, I’d put a whole lot of distance in this friendship/ex relationship and if her mother asks why you don’t come over or call then you can say I believe she is using again and I chose not to be around it.

Ann

Ditto to what Atalose said.

She is using, she is lying, and you are her "ex", so I would keep a safe distance and move forward with your life.

Her mother will know soon enough, she probably already does know. As a mama of an addict myself, I knew every sign...no matter what excuses were given.

Hugs

Tot

Yea she's my ex...it's hard because she broke up with me after rehab because her emotions were all whacky and she didn't know what she felt from one day to the next, which I guess is common in the first year of recovery...I was blindsided and it's been hard to walk away because we are still very close and I feel like I know her so well, but yet she can lie and hide things from me and I find myself thinking "who are you?!"

So you say you think this isn't a relapse, she's just using again? So a relapse is like just a hiccup? And you think she's using on a regular basis? I know i need to distance myself and I've probably got some codependency issues to sort out but there's hardly any al-anon or nar-anon meetings around here and it's really hard to find the strength to stand back. I just keep thinking like, why wouldn't she just call her sponsor instead of taking that shot? Call someone? Did she forget what it was all for? All she went through to get to this point, just to throw all that hard work out the window! I mean she almost died a few years ago! And still she was in the hospital trying to find drugs. It's almost impossible for me to stand back and watch her go down that path again if I think I could do something to slow it down or i dunno, just something..I didn't really think about me enabling her by staying in her life...and I dunno, sometimes I think her mom is clueless. I mean she was taking the vivitrol shot every month which was like a safety blanket in a way bc even if she did decide to drink or do drugs, vivitrol would prevent her from feeling the high. But she just decided last month that she wasn't going to take it bc she felt like she didn't need it. And when she told me that I was like "what??" And it didn't make sense to me, but it's almost as if her mom was just like "oh ok, I trust you." My biggest fear is that her addiction will kill her and there's nothing we can do. I feel so helpless

Ann

For years and years I asked myself those same questions about my son. He has been in and out of the revolving door of active addiction/relapse/full blown using for about 20 years now.

Do you want to wait that long? Do you want to do the repeat cycle and spin for the next 5...10 years?

That fear has kept many of us hanging on, hoping that something we did, something we said, might save our loved one. If love could save our addicts, not one of us would be here.

There is a book called "Codependent No More" that has been an important read to many of us who just couldn't figure out why we were the way we were, and helped us learn about codependency and how we could overcome it. I highly recommend reading it, if you can't do meetings then some solid reading with a commitment to learn more about yourself, just may help you find your balance again.

ladyscribbler

If in person meetings are hard to find, there are electronic and phone meetings available.

Al-Anon Phone Meetings

http://www.al-anon.org/electronic-meetings

It's hard to let go of someone you care about, but sometimes that's the best thing for everyone.

atalose

Feeling helpless comes with loving an active addict because that is the reality, there is nothing we can do to help them, stop them or slow them down…………no matter what we tell ourselves. And this is where it becomes our own issues that needs to be carefully looked at.

Think about that, what has you sticking around by her side done for her so far in HER battle of addiction?

She is still using, she is still lying to you………so you being present in her life sadly doesn’t really matter at this point because she is not ready to give it up yet.

Baffling and cunning disease where we are constantly left with those WTF moments of disbelief of their actions.

And sometimes being clueless is denial and denial is a sort of self- protection from having to make very hard life decisions.

Yes, al-anon on line meetings, books – research on addiction and addictive behaviors. Read the stickies here on SR, learn as much as you can about addiction and also about codependency.

Drugs are a drug addicts trigger, alcohol is an alcoholics trigger and relationships are a codependents trigger.

August252015

"You didn't cause it, you can't control it and you can't cure it"- AA and Al Alanon mantra for so many reasons.

You are asking a lot of questions none of us, including you, can answer.

As hard as it may be to watch, only the addict can choose to quit for good. Smart exes chose to be my exes for reasons just like that one. Others stayed in the picture to different degrees and it was bad for both of us, enabler/enabled, manipulator(both of us)/ manipulatee, etc.

My gentle suggestion is you gotta do you. Each of you focusing on yourselves is probably the best thing- perhaps especially for you as the sober one.

Good luck.

Sephra

From the mom side ... if they were living in my house, and I didn't know , I'd want to. But also from the mom side... she probably has a good idea. When living with it, (or even loving an addict) you begin to know and see the signs. It has gotten to hard in my world to decipher lies from truth, so I began to only believe my eyes, and there are a lot of signs when an addict is using. A few years ago, I couldn't have told you any of the signs, but I've gotten smart enough to be able to differentiate heroin from meth usage in my addict, those that see it but don't "see it" I think are just in denial. Anyway, if mom doesn't know, and thinks daughter is clean, I would probably give her a heads up, it's her house and she has the right to know. (I would also add...it will probably not make a bit of difference if you do tell her or not, except to YOUR conscience.)
I agree though, if this is an ex, you probably need to put more distance between you, as hard as that is. You can't save her, she has to want to stop for herself. It gets so so easy to be consumed by someone else's addiction, and it sounds like you are being weighed down heavy with this.

PuzzledHeart

Tot, my sister-in-law is in active recovery. And she immediately jumped to mind when you wrote this about your ex.

My sister-in-law's reaction would have been completely different. She would have completely freaked out about the relapse. She would have flipped over the Ativan discovery, and would have most likely told even the dog across the street about it (besides everybody close to her) in the effort to be truthful and transparent. There would be no Ativan under her pillow because she would have told her parents immediately and would have asked them to take it away.

The fact that she doesn't want you to tell her mom means that she's not in recovery. So tell her mom if concealing this knowledge weighs heavy on your conscience.

But then you have to let her go.