I don’t want this to become a huge rant but this is my first time posting and I just feel like there’s so much I have to get off my chest. My loved one is struggling, hard. But then sometimes I feel like he is addicted to the drama, addicted to the pain because it validates his own feelings about himself and it means he can be the victim of an awful disease that he has no control over. Now I know addiction is a disease, I mean who would choose to live as addicts do, but what I don’t get is the constant blame of other people, the lack of ownership over his actions and the repetitive nature of them.
Also I have felt for a long time that I am to blame or at least am making things worse and not better by supporting him and not letting him hit rock bottom. But to be honest rock bottom could be death for all I know as I don’t think anyone else would step in here and his other mental health issues (anxiety and depression) just make it so much harder to give the tough love that sometimes I think he needs.
To give this rant some purpose I’m going to make sure I ask questions.
Firstly, what do I say when I am blamed for his addiction? For example, I am constantly manipulated into driving him somewhere he shouldn’t be going, because he can’t drive and is likely to get himself in a fight or arrested if he goes alone, then once he’s had his fix he throws it back in my face - ‘you were the one that drove me to get the drugs in the first place!’
Secondly, I am often accused of ‘abandoning’ my husband, or putting anything and everything in front of him and his needs. For example, if he has been on a bender and I have work the next day I sleep in the other room so I can get some rest. But he says I am being selfish and I don’t care about him in his hour of need. On special occasions, be they birthdays, christmases or anniversaries, he commits to coming with me to see my family who live a couple of hours away, then will binge the night before and say that he is ‘too anxious’ to attend the following day. Not always but sometimes I will go anyway and leave him behind because quite frankly I’m pissed off and don’t feel I should miss seeing my family because of his drug use. Later I will be told by him that I should have stayed and part of me agrees but part of me struggles every time to make the decision and ends up being resentful for being given such a choice in the first place.
The drug use is getting worse, the lies are getting worse and to be honest my mental health is getting worse. I am trying so hard to be understanding, I put up with so much abuse and heart ache and see the same situation unfold again and again and it’s making me cynical. I consider myself a total optimist, always believing every time he says it that he really is done with drugs, he really is going to change, but now I am losing hope.
To my friends without experience of addiction the answer would be clear and they would tell me to leave and let him deal with the consequences of his actions. For that reason I can’t talk to people about this because they do not get it. And that makes it a lonely place to be.
Despite everything I love my husband so much and all I want is for him to be himself again and not the empty shell he seems to have become. I know he is in there somewhere but I’m scared the longer things go on the less chance there is of him ever coming back.
How do I know if I am the thing standing in the way of his recovery? What can I do to help him without losing myself completely? How do I know that the things he says are not true, that I am not abandoning him and being selfish?
He always says that I should read a book on addiction and recovery and doesn’t believe that I have because according to him I should know what to do if I have read about it and I should be able to stop him. I have explained the three Cs of al-anon and yet this isn’t good enough for him. In his eyes it is everyone’s fault but his own, and it is down to others to save him, not himself.
I just don’t know what to say or do anymore 