Hi Kulstar,
thank you for your posts. As a new member to this, reading them has filled me with hope and it is so useful to hear your story as, like you, my husband is a good man just gripped by this horrible addiction.
You have mentioned your wife a number of times in your post and she sounds like an incredible, strong woman. I’m wondering if you can give any advice on how she has supported you through the process? I have read up on needing to be positive and trying to encourage your partner… but as you can imagine it is so hard. Your story sounds similar to my husband’s and I think his addiction really took a hold of him during the pandemic.
He has many typical symptoms of bloody tissues around the house / a whole in his nose (which for a long time he wouldn’t recognise was connected to the drug abuse) / not coming to bed at night (we rarely sleep in the same room anymore) / days of exhaustion where he can’t get up / eating takeaways non stop and trying to hide the evidence in the outside bin / disregard for personal hygiene.
However, recently he sought help (in the last 3 months) and has been seeing a therapist but not consistently – so he seems to recognises he has a problem and appears to want to make the change but can’t quite get there – he used on Christmas Day when we visited his family as I found messages from a dealer on his phone and he’s used again this weekend after getting bad news about his job.
He’s always been a proud man, works hard with a good job but in the last couple of years it’s been getting more and more out of control. Looking back I’ve been enabling it as I initially didn’t consider drug use and when I did was in denial that he could actually be an addict.
Is there any advice you can give on how, as a spouse, I can help him.. the do’s and don’ts I guess? I want to sort it NOW and know there’s no quick fix but I need to talk about it. He has told me in the last couple of day his therapist has tasked him to tell me when he is thinking about using as it will break his cycle of lying. He’s only told me this though because I asked him if he took coke this weekend and said no, but I found a baggie so he had no choice but to then come clean.
I’m quite scared that more is going to come out of the woodwork of what he has actually been getting up to, now that my eyes are open and I can trust myself more and my instincts but that’s anxiety for another day!
Any advice and thoughts are much appreciated.
All the best to you – stay strong, you’ve got this! X