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hello everyone, i am new to all of this: being with an A (h. addicit), al anon and these forums. id like to thank everyone because so far reading others expereicnes really helps.
on march 7th, its our 1 year anniversary. when i met him, he was 4 months clean. He is in the beginning years of trying to get clean, at 25, he has only tried willingly to get clean the past 3/4 times. he has been clean for the larger part of the past three years, with brief relapses. I know that h. is a chronic relapse thing, and i accepted that when i we got engaged, that i knew at some point he would relapse. i knew that that didnt mean it was the end of us, but it would be very difficult to work through. of course you have no idea how diffucult until you actually end up feeling sorry them when you see the pains of withdrawl...needless to say its all been much harder than expected. we dont have the money the money to send him to rehab, and although we have tried many times at home, it never works. this last time, it seemed promising (and maybe it is). We had hit bottom, i had tried to prevent him from leaving the house when he was sick, and physical violence insued, and i ended up coming with him against his will to a very dangerous place to score. i secretly wanted to see how much danger he was willing to put me in for his addiction. stupid of course, because an addict would probably eventually end up killing me if he thought i was full of heroin.
anyways. i am in a situation where, if the truth is what he is saying (everyone says this is unlikely but i'm still not sure if he lies all the time when he is using), than he is clean. i would love to not leave it up to his word, or engage my detective skills, i would love to leave it up to science, but he is taking tramadol in order to stay clean and it shows up on a drug test as positive for opiates, so that is out.
my problem is, i am living with him abroad, and i need to make a decision that i cant make without the truth. I have a bottom line, and last time he relapsed, i made a list of the courses of action i would take should it happen again. Basically, i would want to go home to my family and wait for him there until he was clean, gone to rehab, ready to engage in life again. i wouldnt leave him, i would just detach from him. i have a friend who says leaving her addict boyfriend was the best thing she ever did for his recovery, because we do not help, and now he is clean and they are living together..for the time being
how do i make this decision without knowing the truth? i think he is using, but how does asking him help? he will lie and give fake but reasonable sounding explanations for all the clues he has left me. i have struggled deeply in the past few weeks to not go through his phone. but small amounts of money keep going missing and he forgets to bring reciepts for his lunch, so its possible that he is using. this morning i couldnt take it anymore and i went through his phone and found what i was afraid of. however, thats not confirmation. texts with drug users about meeting up is not a guarantee that he is using, its just really really close to one. (he will tell me they are clean and helping him get tramadol). but, i dont know how to get the truth. i need to know for a fact that he is using before i can buy the plane tickets and change our life plans for the next year. i am lost. i love him and i know he loves me, and one thing i really dont understand is why he cannot see that if he is going to be sick, he needs to also detach, or he will ruin us. if we keep up a hishonest relationship for too much longer, the resentment will grow and everything will become sour. i know i cannot trust him. so what can i trust? how do i make a decision? he is good to me at home, if i dont look for clues that he is using, i wouldnt know. if he wont admit the truth then how can i make a decision based on strong feelings? how can i know the truth i am going insane and i want to keep this relationship!
It sounds like so much of your decision is weighing on "if he is using...if he does this...if he..." What about you? There are many hard questions to answer. Being with an addict (in my experience) causes you to constantly reframe your expectations for what you want out of life and to accept less than what you hoped for and what you really want. Of course people are going to recommend going to Alanon meetings and reading alanon literature here. I think that would be a good idea too.
It will take some soul searching and praying to figure out what you really want and what you will accept. In the end, he has to go through whatever pain and loss is necessary before he will stop using for good. I know people that embrace the term "chronic relapser" and that is a cop out so that they can go back to using and not take responsibility for their own problems. Heroin is a serious addiction. I doubt it can be kicked for good without a program of recovery in NA...
I am an alcoholic and have attended AA and been sober for a couple years. All I can tell you is that when I started going to meetings I was told that in order to stay sober I had to be williing to do "whatever it takes" and I had to be willing to "change everything." Basically, the shift in my attitude was intense and I went all out with AA...got a sponsor, started working steps, got involved in sober activities and groups...My whole life changed. Without judging, I believe what you are describing about him are half assed attempts to do recovery his own way and on his own. In my experience, that speaks loud and clear and anyone in AA or NA would tell you it's going to be relapse after relapse until he fully surrenders and embraces a new way of life which is recovery. Real recovery is obvious and you can tell someone is in recovery from what they are doing. You would not need to do any detective work...I wish I could tell you something that would help you get him to embrace recovery, but I don't know if there is anything that would work...Each person has to hit their own bottom.
Anyhow, this is about you more than him. A life that revolves around an active addict is insanity...Alanon will help you reallign your life based on a higher power, spirituality, and what is instinctively right for you. Also...I'm not telling you that you should leave him or not....Just take whatever I have written and I hope it makes sense and helps you be true to yourself.
I had a similar situation with my ex AH -- I kept saying, "But I have to know he'll definitely keep drinking before I leave." And since he was full of lies, it was very hard to know what was going on. He'd alternate between telling me he didn't have a drinking problem and telling me he used to have one but now he had it under control.
This is what I finally figured out, after years of learning the hard way. Unless they're working a strong program of recovery, they'll be doing their addiction. Working a strong program of recovery would mean things like going to 12-step meetings (every day, at least, for the first three months and often the first year or more), or being in a full-time rehab and then living in special accommodation and going to meetings ... etc. It does not mean doing it on their own. If doing it on their own worked, it would have worked already.
What no one told me is that all addiction recovery also has a very low long-term success rate. I've read that the success rate for drinkers who go to AA is 20% (more recently I read 5%). That's for people who go. A lot of addicts never start recovery in the first place. That's how powerful addiction is. I can't think the statistics are any better for heroin.
So those are the odds (except 20% would be an overestimation in your boyfriend's case because he hasn't entered a formal program of recovery). Faced with this, a lot of us are like the addicts: in denial. I know that feeling of grasping at straws trying to find reasons why my addict would recover (even though he wasn't going to meetings), and why I wouldn't have to face the fact that I should leave. Because I did know that living in that chaos was destroying me too.
So my experience is that if the addict is not visibly working a strong, genuine program of recovery with other people (not just trying to go it on his own), he will relapse. He might not be relapsing today. But it will only be a matter of time. My AH was a binge drinker -- he could go six months without a binge, or longer. But when it came, it dragged everything into insanity. Lying, stealing, DUIs, destruction of property, thousands of dollars squandered in various ways, endangering himself and others, including our young son. When I realized that he would always keep on relapsing, I finally was able to face the music. It is nine years later and he is still drinking.
So as they say -- he's going to do what he's going to do -- what are you going to do? What is your game plan for taking care of yourself if his addiction continues? Because sadly the chances are overwhelming that it will. I hope you are getting all the support you can -- reading here, attending meetings locally and/or online, and whatever other support is available. We are sucked into the insanity also, and we need recovery too. Hugs to you!
-- Edited by Mattie on Friday 4th of March 2011 05:16:40 AM
