[khall]

First thing: I can’t believe there are so few online communities where people with an addicted spouse can chat. I know addiction is a disease that touches so many of us. Why are there not more options to find community support online?

My husband is one of five children. He was often overlooked as a child and taken under the wings of his grandparents and one caring aunt. Even so, I know he has spent his life trying to feel worthy. As an adult, he works in a very toxic environment where the employees are daily abused by their bosses. He won’t leave because it pays very well. Five years ago, his father died and I guess that’s where our addiction story begins, although I didn’t know it at the time.

My husband was never a big drinker. In fact, there were years where he might not have more that 12 drinks in a year. After his dad died, he and his siblings celebrated their father’s memory with alcohol. My husband, very slowly and over a lot of time, began drinking. I didn’t pay much attention. His drink of choice is craft IPA beer. I didn’t think beer was something someone could become an alcoholic drinking.

Over time, my husband began to drink more and more frequently until he was getting buzzed almost every day. That’s when my warning bells went off. I talked to him and he agreed he was drinking too much and wanted to cut down. This went on for basically two years. Then things got worse.

My husband’s job got more ugly, COVID hit and I was gone a lot for work, our daughter became a preteen and wanted less to do with us and he found himself with free time on his hands. Sometimes he would get black-out drunk. I tried to keep him away from our daughter when he was like this. The next day he would always say that he knew he needed to cut down. I don’t know why, but I believed he would and he could. I didn’t realize that he was too far gone already.

Within the past year, my husband began using cocaine. I don’t even know how he met anyone who sells it. But he did. He has spent close to $10,000 on cocaine and alcohol in the past three months. When he’s sober (in the morning) he apologizes and makes promises. We come up with game plans: I take his keys (he’s banged the car up three times in the past two months); I take his wallet; he’s on house arrest. None of this has worked. He finds ways to get beer and cocaine still. He goes from very loving to extremely angry.

This past weekend, my daughter went on vacation with her best friend. My husband shut himself up in our bedroom and snorted cocaine for two days straight. I finally decided enough is enough. He’s now day 3 in a rehab facility on the other end of the county. I called and worked out all of the logistics while he was sleeping off his weekend. He agreed to go and he went.

I’m not optimistic but I’m not pessimistic either. I know he realizes he needs to get healthy. He wouldn’t have gotten on the plane if he didn’t know that. I truly hope that this is the beginning of a new chapter for him and our family.

I guess I don’t think he is an addict as much because he loves alcohol and cocaine as because he uses alcohol and cocaine to escape life. He feels like a failure and I haven’t been able to convince him that he is a caring, intelligent, beautiful human. The rehab facility he is in focuses on mental health. He’s on three medications for anxiety and depression and I hope they can figure out a treatment that will actually work for him. I may be misguided, but I believe that if he can figure our the mental component, he will be able to ditch alcohol and cocaine. I hope that the staff at the facility help him work through some of the deep hurt and feelings of being unworthy.

I am holding up. All at the same time I am hopeful, lonely, sad, angry… I love my husband. He is an amazing person that’s been lost for a while. I don’t want to do life without him.

Sending love and good vibes to everyone else out there dealing with addiction.

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