The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
My ex is an addict/alcoholic with whom I lived (on and off because I left several times due to abuse)for 14 years seems incapable of running his own life, and doesn't seem to want to. He seems to have an ingrained expectectation that women---me that is---should take care of him, rescue him, and keep giving him money no matter how broke I am (or have been) becoming.
I had to leave him last year because I was supporting him and he was also abusive. I have become financially unstable because of this and lost all my savings. He won't believe it because my father was wealthy.
I didn't speak to him for a year. He had to leave our apartment because I couldn't pay for it anymore (and pay for my own lodging), and now he's in a shelter for addicts. He says it's awful, he doesn't belong there, etc. Sure, he doesn't LOOK the part. He looks like the boy next door, good looking, very charming and charismatic, can be sensitive and sweet, a very talented artist... He says he's clean and going to meetings now (but I've heard that before, a zillion times).
I said, but you're a hard core addict, and that really upset him. I said "non-addicts don't get arrested for drugs 6 times a year.
I had reconnected with him a bit because I wanted to make sure he was OK, but now he expects me to fix his life and rescue him. And he keeps asking me for money constantly. Yet when this is not going on, we have great conversations and there's affection between us. I'm keeping him at arm's length. I won't let him know my address, but he has my cell phone number. He wants me to save him from this shelter. I tell him I can't, but he acts as though I'm supposed to.
I already got all his stuff out of the pawn shop and gave him a little cash, but it's never enough. He always wants more more more, as if I'm a money machine. And I'm already having financial problems of my own. But he only hears what he wants to hear.
He does talk about recovery, and some great recovery books he's read and all that and meetings he's gone to. He seems better than he was. But why is he so helpless?!!! It drives me nuts. I'm going to have to stop seeing him soon I guess.
My thing is, I have my own problems. As a survivor of family abuse, I'm reserved and I've been isolating. The lonliness made the connection with him hard to resist. I'm in crowded NYC, where I feel like a sardine, and I need a lot of personal space, so I isolate, because I can't stand the crowding. And then, I am put off by the arrogance and superficiality I see all around me, and the competitive back-biting. Please everyone (I want to say), get real! Get over yourselves and behave like human beings! So I don't find that it is socially sympatico here, as I am not interested in preening and prancing about and showing how cool I am (who give a flying ...).
I digress. The question was, what to do about a man/addict/alcoholic who behaves like an infant?
Thank you.
-- Edited by JadeM on Sunday 31st of October 2010 04:50:42 PM
-- Edited by JadeM on Sunday 31st of October 2010 04:54:07 PM
Your situation is very familiar and definitely part of living with the disease of alcoholism . This is a dreadful illness and it is cunning baffling and powerful
We are powerless over alcoholism and all the efforts that we we use in an effort to "Help" or Control the alcoholic are doomed to failure.
The best you can do is to seek recovery for yourself. Living with or dealing with this diseases causes friends and family of alcoholics to be come ill as well
Please look in the White pages for local alanon meeting in your community. I live in NYC and find I am very fortunate as there are meetings there all day and evening Every day of the week.
We also have online meetings here 2xs a day and chat room 24/7. Isolating and withdrawing are symptoms of our disease and that is why meetings are so important
Please keep coming here and sharing and know there is hope and help
Thank you Betty. Sorry if my posts are negative sounding in parts, but I have been depressed, and yes I know I have been negative.
You're right. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Some meetings are better than others though. I like the ones where they are really serious about the program, as opposed to seeming like just social events.
I used to go to AA, as I drank alcoholically in my 20's. Still go sometimes. My home group was a very serious one. Some of the other ones I've gone to in NYC seem like social events, with women dressed as though they are going to a party, and people talking and socializing during the qualification.
I need something like Alanon because I've lived 14 years with and drug abuser and raging alcoholic (he cycled between freebasing cocaine, pot, and massive alcohol benders; he was easier to deal with during the pot phases).
My parents were not alcoholic, but they were abusive, and my father was mentally ill.
You treat them like one, in my opinion u have done the right thing for you now if you can only stop giving him money and let him grow up or stand on his own maybe he can have a fighting chance.
As long as he can fall back on you he will.
Please get the help you need from alanon or naranon.....we are here for you you are not alone.
Addicts are the best liars in the world and have a wonderful of making us feel guilty.
work a program for you and let him work a program for him it's the only way it can work in my opinion.....Let God and Let go.....God grand me the serenity comes to mind.
Work on getting you well first and foremost and the rest will follow. Remember you are not alone...love ya sister
Aloha Jade...you arrived at a solution early on that you should stop doing what you were doing which wasn't working for you. In Al-Anon it's called a relapse or going back to my own addiction to the alcoholic addict. I had stopped and then I started back up again and the only consequence is that it would all come back to me and it did in spades; over and over and over. I changed addicted spouses and relationships and it was always back to fixing someone. When I stopped fixing others and did what you have found out yourself...that you have a life to build and fix of your own then the insane problems I had with alcoholics and addicts stopped. It wasn't easy and still isn't and it is all worth it.
