Things I’ve Learned While Loving Someone in Active Addiction.

I learned a lot from being in a long term relationship with someone who struggled with a drug addiction. He never wanted to be like His uncle but he ended up being exactly like him. He was clean until he wasn’t. He would call himself the worst type of addict because he was addicted to the rush of it all way more than the actual drugs. I learned a lot about addiction from him. I learned that he thought that when it was good he thought the world glimmered with hope and when it was bad there was no getting out of it. I used to think that that feeling alone would make anyone stop. That the good must feel worse than all of the people that he was hurting. For him it never did.

When I first started trying to figure out maintain relationship and boundaries while loving someone who struggled with addiction, I wanted to know more about his journey. He experienced a lot of childhood trauma that changed the way his brain worked. He said he was going to get better but that was last October. It felt like I was mourning someone who wasn’t dead yet. I was cleaning up bottles around what I was convinced was going to be his death bed. I know that he was trying I just didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t watch him do what he was doing but I also didn’t want him to feel like I was giving up on him. I know that he thinks I abandoned him but It felt like I was going down on a sinking ship. It was hard for me to see him drunk in the bathroom stall taking pills. He told me that he had a strange need to see how bad he could get. He wanted to be the best addict there was. He said that a sick part of him enjoyed seeing how sick he could get. He knew he was either going to die young or died at 100. He didn’t want to chance living to 100. The last time I saw him he looked so tired.I loved him and I had a hard time seeing him like that. Addicts are still people with value I knew he was more than his use. I also knew that I couldn’t do anything to change it. It felt like he was a universe away but we lived in the same city.

I still see his face when I think about my teenage years. Now I only think about the warning signs that I missed. There is no surprise he turned out that way. All his family did was pray that he would change. even to this day my head spins when ever I think too much about it and I was not the person using. If it was hard for me I Don’t think it was easier on him. I guess we both got exactly what we wanted in the long run. He was a good man with a really bad habit. I felt stuck watching everything from the sidelines when I was with him. Then I felt guilty about feeling that way.

I remember having a conversation with him and his sister. We were begging him to get help. He overdosed 10 hours later thankfully it didn’t kill him. He still refused treatment. It took a long conversation at the hospital after to realize that nothing I did was going to change anything. She told me that I wasn’t allowed to save him. At first I didn’t understand, I do now. Nothing I did was going to make him get sober; he needed to make that choice himself. He never got to make that choice and I think about him everyday.