Welcome to the board and glad you found us.  Scroll back over prior post and decide for yourself the success rate for those of us who have been in a relationship to whatever level with an addicted person and then inventory how your own choice has come out.  There is NO SUCH THING as a perfect partnership one reason is we are not perfect and to consider one that also includes drug and/or alcohol addiction.  My experience which is long and wide show me that I can love and alcoholic/addict and not be in a close co-dependent relationship with one.  I've never been in one that worked and I've been in just over several.  I was born and raised within the disease...it is what I know most normally...consciously and sub-consciously.  Alcohol and drugs are mind and mood altering chemicals...simply meaning that after they are taken abnormal becomes normal...mind, body, spirit and emotions.  Chances are better with program participation  AND being clean and sober.   

What you are doing is what I have done more than several times.  I won't consciously do that ever again.   Keep coming back and if you have yet to attend face to face Al-Anon meetings in your area ....the hotline number is usually in the white pages of your local telephone book; call, find out where and when we get together and come sit and listen.    Keep coming back here to MIP also.   (((((hugs))))) 

If your dying inside at the thought of losing him, then you are hooked and co dependent already.

I think you have already made your decision. If you think I will whitewash it for you, I can't. We have done our revolution and we have been to 100's of meetings, we have worked the steps, we have done the work. We have raged against the disease, we have blamed ourselves, we have blamed the addict. We have found serenity, we also have been to hell and back.

If you want to walk this path thats up to you, He may end up clean, but not without a lot of challenges for both of you. You did ask our opinion you know. Can he get clean in a relationship? It has nothing to do with you and the relationship, he could use the relationship and you, which I'm sure he will do. He has a problem which he needs to address.

Are you willing to gamble with your future and your life. Choose a door. Hope its the one to an Alanon meeting whether you stay with him or not.

My best to you
Bettina

I could have written a lot of your post and could so relate. I don't know if you have read "Codependent No More" by Melody Beattie great book or "Getting Them Sober" by Toby Rice Drews, but those two books helped me get my legs underneath me and dive into al-anon ways of thinking and have helped me to change my life for the better! Sending you much love and support!

Thanks everyone. You havent told me anything I dont already know. My brother is a recovering addict. I'm super familiar with what recovery looks like. I have only known about the abuse of pills for a week. The first 6 mo of our relationship he took them as prescribed. Hes had several surgeries bla bla bla doesnt matter. The whole point of coming to this board is because I've only so recently learned that my future will look very different in this relationship than I thought. I just need support. I am attending my first Meeting tomorrow. As far as not feeling like I'm worthy of anything better, as a previous poster said, I know my worth but it doesnt make it any easier to say goodby to someone I love. Thanks again everyone. Tomorrow I start working my program.

BTW I borrowed my moms copy of Codependent No More. Excellent book!

I had tremendous abandonment issues most of my life.  Those abandonment issues set me up to be betrayed, lost and deeply attached to relationships that were incredibly self destructive.

I had to really get to the core of what the abandonment was about and generally it wasn't about the relationship I was in.  So many of us really buy that an addict needs tremendous support, care and understand to get sober.  Sometimes that is just the opposite of what they need.  Many of them need to burn every bridge and find that they have lost everything before they seek recovery.  Some people do indeed lose everything including their health.  For some people there is no bottom and there is no guarantee anyone is going to seek recovery and stay sober.

As someone with abandonment issues I wanted a relationship that was guaranteed.  Plenty of people will tell you it is pretty hard to lose an alcoholic.  If you are codependent they are definitely going to stick around because their addictions are often based on being in a relationship that is deeply dependent.  Often those relationships are also very contentious and dramatic.  I saw that kind of intensity as a kind of love in my life.  I really felt that I could not approach describe or work through those deep abandonment issues so I clung onto a person who was indeed working on denying their own issues as much as I was.  The problem was the abandonment issues never went away.  No matter how much I committed myself to these deeply dependent, dramatic relationships I still felt like I would die if the relationship ended.  In fact I was often absolutely suicidal as a result of how I felt.

I can tell you al anon helped me more than any other tool I had in my life. Certainly therapy helped on a lot of levels.  I was also helped by talking about what was going on for me on many levels and I am deeply grateful to those people who listened for hours to my pain.  I was driven by that pain most of my life.  In al anon I learned so many techniques to deal with that kind of abandonment pain.  I learned to care for myself. I learned about addiction.  I learned about setting limits with myself.  In Al anon we work around a maxim of HALT.  That is not allowing ourselves to be hungry angry, lonely or tired.  If you are as mired in abandonment issues as you seem to be certainly your HALT is at maximum level all the time 24/7 because even the hint of someone being capable of leaving you is enough to send you into a panic.  Who can live in a panicked state all the time. Certainly I did and the toll was enormous.

Whatever your boyfriend does and really we have no control over what anyone does, you have options. Beating yourself up for staying with him is certainly one option but that feeds into the abandonment issue.  Taking care of yourself is another one.  Being kind to yourself when every part of you wants to remonstrate why am I here again is such a tall order but it is possible.  Taking it one moment at a time is helpful too.  There are no guarantees with any alcoholic/addict what they will do next.  The bottom line is that everyone here knows that addiction is tremendously self destructive.  There are casualties all around someone with an addiction.  That is inevitable.

I set a lot of limits these days on how much I will give to others.  My abandonment issues drove me to give all.  My abandonment issues drove me to tremendous levels of pain and panic.  Al anon helped me to mitigate that kind of feeling.  Sometimes I would just go into the chat room and feel the love and concern of others. Sometimes I learned to watch what others did when they were trapped in tremendously difficult situations.  I learned that if they could do it so could I.  Most of all I learned I am not alone.  I have never been alone really I just felt I was.  I learned I can reach out and ask for help and that was one of the hardest things I ever did and then I had to be willing to accept help and suggestions which of course I was always indifferent to before.

In these rooms you an learn to care for yourself and accept yourself just where you are and that is a huge gift whatever your boyfriend does or doesn't do you can get better.

Maresie.

What I have learned is just like Bettina said, if we feel like we are dying inside, we are already in a not so healthy relationship.

I had one bout with my manfriend that it was actually no anything i thought it was.

But I learned that I do love him so much, and I KNOW he won't leave me. If he does he is nuts anyway.

Just becuz you are seeing how people are telling you as far as success, its really fleeting with an A. If one is talking kids, or wants kids within their relationship, would you think of having kids with him? You know the disease is forever, no cure. From what I have heard pills are one of the hardest to kick.

Apparently he is abusing them out of addiction not need, as he is nine days without them, and not doubled up in pain....Plus really we have NO idea if they are using or not. That is a fact. Even if you glued yourself to him he would find a way to use if he wanted to.

People offer others pain pills all the time!

Maybe you are upset becuz you realize the futility of your relationship. It has to be horrible to face what you are.

And hon there is no walking to his recovery. It is forever, he needs to be in recovery forever. Will need AA or NA. He will need 90 meetings or more in 90 days. He has to develop his own program of recovery that keeps him as well as he can be to stay off the drugs forever. Almost all A's relapse.

It's up to everyone to make their own choice. Myself I would not get involved in an intimate relationship with an A. If I learned my sweet love now was an A, I would have to walk away. no question. Would kill me for awhile, him too. I just cannot survive anymore of that horrible pain of the disease.

you may just have to give yourself time to really feel what you want to do or not want to do.Hope? Hope for what? A non a and an A don't speek the same language, there are so many things neither of you will understand about the other. you cannot put yourself in his place nor him you. Their emotions are not the same as a non A. I don't know him or you, so i cannot really say more.

HOnestly take your time!! Keep an open communication as best as you can. He is white knuckling, means zero. If he was wanting sobriety, he would use this time to go to meetings, be reading things, learning skills to stop using.

I know I love my guy and him me as we share everything. If I were you I would tell this guy how I feel about it all. Be honest. In all my years this is the first time I have been able to be naked in all things about me. Well not all yet...I don't believe in certaint things till after marriage....I love this honesty.

You shared an important thing. thank you

Keep coming!! hugs,debilyn