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Have you tried making contact with Cocaine Anonymous UK? They are open 24/7 and can help you get on the right track, if you’re willing to let them.
Good luck.
i totally second what ash is saying debbie.. it’s not your fault… he is in the grip of a powerful addiction and anything he says comes from there, not the man you fell in love with.
we can’t tell you what to do but i will say that for your own sake, and the sake of your mental health i wonder if a little break would do you some good. your family sound very supportive too, can you talk to them about how desperate you’re feeling? i think you should seek professional help for yourself too. we’re all suffering from addiction. yes, the addict takes the drug, but everyone around them is affected and hurt and damaged. we all need to access recovery. sometimes we need professional help in our own personal journey.
have you tried looking at the cocaine anonymous web site? there are support group meetings for families of addicts. i didn’t go down that road, i went into talking therapy and after nearly a whole year I’m finally moving on. my addict has faced his issues and knows my boundaries. he knows if he breaks them he’s out.
please don’t blame yourself, from what you say this originated way before your relationship, he just concealed it from you.
ive spent a lot of time blaming myself and feeling guilty and ashamed… but it’s not my fault. it’s just the way it is.
please be kind to yourself debbie x
I’m not quite sure how to respond to this information.
It does sound a bit like you are justifying your own personal use of drugs, which i do find makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I have used drugs myself (rave generation from 1992 to the present time), but i don’t do charity work. I’m not sure of the relevance. Cocaine in particular is drug that many people use very frequently and still just about function… or they think they are anyway. From the outside looking in, not so much! Trust me on that!
I might also say my husband almost completely destroyed his relationship with his kids because of his obsession to use. He would of course all along have declared how much he loved them, but only now he has a properly clear head can he see how utterly horrible his behaviour was during his active addiction years – he couldn’t see it then and the drug stopped him giving a ***k. He is rebuilding relationships gradually but has wasted precious years getting high – he won’t get them back ya know.
Anyway, i am glad you’re happy with yourself and the direction your life is going though. Your story isn’t his.
I did wonder what you mention about your law degree…do they not insist on drug testing in that type of workplace…or will you cross that bridge when you come to it?
Good luck on your journey wherever it takes you.
sorry for the typos!
hi lou, you can regain your aelf esteem i promise you. It is a long hard road, but every step is important. Please try contacting Cocaine Anonymous UK. They will welcome you and get you on the road of recovery. My husband gave ul on life but 10 months on he is living proof there is a different way of living. You can do it too. Good luck.
hi debbie
i hate to say this, but from what you write it sounds like your husband is a regular and long term user of cocaine, and doesn’t see any problem with it.
It also sounds like you are afraid to have any serious conversations with him about it because of the ructions it might cause.
This relationship sounds so distressing for you and so unhealthy for you both.
Maybe ive misunderstood you, in which i fully apologise if ive caused offence to you.
It’s just so not okay for your feelings to be completely crushed by this situation. It’s not fair.
Some wives are able to accept drug use in the marital situation, if that works for you then that’s fine.
We all have to set our own comfortable boundaries and that’s purely a personal decision.
My goodness me what a harrowing story, and good for you to be brave enough to go through the legal channels. That’s absolutely amazing.
Have you contacted Lighthouse.. they should be able to offer you support with this distressing crime. You may even be able to do court via video link rather than facing him in the court room.
i think you should also speak to the team here at adfam and/or icarus trust. You should not have to go through this horrible ordeal alone.
My husband got violent with me a lot of times in his active addiction and it was utterly terrifying. I didn’t know about the drugs at that point and assumed it was alcohol. I threatened him with the police and that was usually enough to make him see sense before i got hurt too badly or the house was completely destroyed (probably because he didn’t want to get busted for drugs). He also was very paranoid and one regular argument we had was about him having cctv installed around the house. I refused and it got nasty… what was i hiding? he would scream at me. He’s also tried raiding my phone to the point i had to hide it in my kids bedrooms a fair few times. It isn’t their true self behaving like that but at the same time it is, but it’s up to them to choose recovery for themselves. We can only stand by and lovingly detatch to protect ourselves.
I’m lucky, my husband is doing well in his recovery and I’m gradually working through my mental health issues. I have severe ptsd and am very depressed and anxious. I go to talking therapy weekly which helps.
Your partner may not be ready to change but the courts may enforce some kind of rehab order.
I hope your friends and family csn be supportive x
Aw that’s a very sad story and one we can all identify with. This life is like death of a thousand cuts. Little by little we lose ourselves. The whole family needs help and support to recover from addiction.
Are you still separated? Have you got support from friends or family? I hope so. If not you can get help on here and also from the Icarus Trust. It sounds like your partner is very deeply caught up in his addiction and unfortunately it means that his behaviour is not his true self. The drugs have basically hijacked his brain. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less, but it isn’t any mark on you. Just a horrible and tragic situation that you and your poor kids need to heal from.
Sending you love and hugs, as there but the grace of god go all of us. We all know your pain xx
oh dear, debbie i am so sorry x
if you look online and start researching fully you will learn that the drugs rewrite how their brains interpret life… basically they start to inadvertently consider.that no normal life pleasures compare with the drug of choice.. once this happens they begin to prioritise the drug above anything else that would normally be pleasurable.. you can learn this by googling and checking healthline. it’s hard reading but it makes sense in that we can learn how to protect our selves x
first off remember that you are definitely not stupid, none of us are, we’ve all been dragged into this lifestyle.
we can’t tell you what to do other than keep as calm as you can and most of all please be true to yourself….and remember what he says may be a load of rubbish especially if he has been taking drugs recently.
i wish you luck x
same xxx
absolutely agree with what ash says, we have to look after ourselves and try not to lose ourselves completely in all of it, it’s a very hard situation to live through but we can survive.
i didn’t do support groups as i tend to try not to think about everything too much, i come on here now and again but do find facing up to the way it is so painful. some people swear by them but in honesty i dont like talking about it all very much. in 18 sessions of counselling i still have barely mentioned it as i will just break down. writing it on here is a little easier than voicing it, though if I’m having a fiwn day i tell my husband and he listens and comforts me. it helps him accept what damage he has done and gives him the chance to put things right (i know there is an element of codependency there but done in the right way i think we are okay at the moment).
the key things are that they can get better if they are determined enough and until they are well clear of drugs their word cannot be trusted at all. our best position is to get as much information as possible, i read a lot on healthline but a lot of other places too and then we have to decide what we want from all this, we need to set our boundaries and be prepared to enforce them and sadly be prepared to lovingly detach at some point further down the line x
sadly you are right, there are too many of these same stories and they are all heartbreaking in their own ways.. but it is a comfort of sorts to know that we are not alone and to me it helps me realise I’m not completely crazy, my feelings about all this are 100% valid. i just wish he did not put me in this category of people, it’s a horrible, horrible position to be in.
your husband does sound determined, that’s good. do you believe he has stopped? i said on an earlier reply somewhere we did drug tests at first but i am pretty sure i could tell from here onwards if he took cocaine as the difference now from what he has been like the past 2 years is like night and day.
i don’t know if you saw my story but my husband and i used to occasionally use cocaine/party drugs at parties, never, ever separately in 18 years together and never at home, above all NEVER ever around our kids. Unfortunately after a Halloween party in 2018 he had some kind of mental breakdown and started doing it alone as a form of escape from stress of home and work. It genuinely had been a very difficult few years, including a 4bed house move which he had to work through and i handled 99% alone. In that time he had become isolated from the family and responsibility of family life. So a little at first one night turned into every time we argued, turned into picking arguments as an excuse to storm off and use. I didn’t know what was actually happening though.
For 2.5 years things got worse and worse, his drinking was through the roof, he didn’t want to know me or the kids, he acted like he hated me. After a year or so he was getting so mad he was pushing me around, hitting me sometimes and smashing up the house. Over lockdown i threatened him with the police most weekends and sometimes during the week too. He terrorised me to the point i was suicidal but at the same time petrified to leave him unsupervised with the kids. I asked him many times if he was on drugs because om some occasions he was talking utter mad, paranoid gibberish. He sometimes would drag me out of bed accusing me of messing around with myself..to the point i would put my hands on my pillow and pretend to be asleep because i was so confused i needed to catch him out as talking rubbish. Which he was..i felt like i was losing my mind.
I issued an ultimatum sort it out or leave. He begged chance after chance all of last year.
Finally his business partner caught him out scoring and it all fell into place. So bloody obvious now looking back. I feel like a complete idiot! I wish i had called the police on him. But he didn’t want to be caught and i trusted him. Silly me!
But…. we can’t be held responsible for their behaviour and to a point they aren’t in control of their behaviour either. Their thinking is hijacked by the drug. The more they do the more removed from rational thinking they get. But when they really, truly want to stop they can if they take the support. Ca are very good, they helped my husband completely change his outlook on everything. He always was selfish and unhappy. Now he was given a lifeline he’s very grateful and is doing all he can to repair the damage he has done.
We are always talking honestly about it now, which was extremely hard and painful at first. For both of us. Plus it took several months for him to really honestly open up to me. At first he would just say random crap to get me off his back.
The worst things i learned were that he took drugs at our family ny party this yr (me, him, our then 10yr old daughter and 13 yr old son), nearly got caught drug driving by the police but got away with it, though my children have been in the car when it seems he should not have been behind a wheel and also that on several occasions he overdid things to the point he thought he was going to die… imagine that… our kids could have come down for their breakfast to that!!!!
Anyway that’s my story. Im 6mths into therapy now and it helps. And we’re 9 months down since it came out and our relationship is strong but hurt. We’re working on it. I have severe ptsd from all of it plus stuff in my past that has been dragged out because of all this. I have chronic bad dreams, insomnia, amnesia and am very depressed and anxious. I was always a very cheerful and outgoing optimist. Now i hide away and expect the worst. I hate that i missed spotting this situation and feel huge guilt, despite rationally knowing im not to blame.
So the long and short… there is hope if they want to change but it’s a long. hard road. He knows if he goes back, he is out. I refuse to allow my kids childhood be destroyed by that shit.
Sorry if you find I’m rabitting on!
Big hugs to all of us living this nightmare xxx
hi potter fam,
when i found out about my husband i basically broke down. i couldn’t eat or sleep or do anything except the barest minimum for the kids. thankfully we were in lockdown so i didn’t have to contend with school runs, clubs and social events. i was so horrified and sickened not just by the lies and the money, but above all how he could bring that absolute shit into our kids lives. we have two youngish kids together aged 11 and 13, plus two adult kids who already moved out. what I’m saying is it’s almost impossible to carry on normal life with this awful worry hanging over us and by us doing it we’re basically allowing them to avoid taking responsibility for everything they have done. i know it’s not necessarily easy but can you get away for a few days and stay with family? just for a bit of breathing space.
i was very lucky, my husband wanted to stop and when it all came out he was so disgusted with himself he swore never again. obviously i worry every day something might cause relapse and at first i felt i had to babysit him to keep him from falling back down but once the fog cleared he has go stronger every day since. i wouldn’t say he was thinking clearly until he’d been clean of all mind altering substances for several weeks. now he is much better.
do you think your guy genuinely wants to stop? if so i 100% recommend ca or similar, how big was the problem do you know? maybe even it’s a rehab situation.
either way you are under a huge amount of stress right now and i wanted to let you know we all know that horrible, sick, anxious feeling you’re having and send you a big hug.
xxxx