Families & Friends Of Addicts Support Group

You should read the post titled "to leave or not to leave" Also you may gain some insight into my personal struggles through my journal.

Until he decides to get help and begins a recovery program, this is going to be a cycle for him and you. He will have remorse and make all kinds of promises and behave for awhile, then he will begin using again. Maybe as soon as a day later. He means it when he says it, then the addiction will start talking to him and convince him he will be able to handle the drugs this time. He is sick, he has an illness and there is no known cure. He has to come to the realization he needs help. He is the only one who can help him. All of your love and support will not turn him around. He has to do it by working some sort of recovery program be it AA, NA, CA, SMART or any other. There is no magic pill. It all comes from within him and his inability to cope with life.
You can be there for him. But be careful investing too much love and money on him. Recovery takes a lot of time. It may take a year of being drug free for him to begin thinking clearly.

I am an addict. I have been clean for 17 months. It has taken a lot of hard work, determination and support from my loved ones. My spouse stayed with me through 8 years of hell. I am now in the position of trying to get my better half sober. It is very frustrating. I have made my final ultimatum and am hoping I made my point and help is sought.

I feel for you and your situation. You are lucky you don't have children involved and years of a relationship. I would think long and hard about ending the relationship or be prepared to be hurt over and over again.

Thank you both very much for your advice. I know leaving him would be the most intelligent decision I could make at this point. I just don't want to be one more person to walk out on him. I don't want to be just another excuse for him to escape from real life. I guess there is nothing I can do until I take care of me and not him.

02suture, thank you for your response. I think it always helps us to hear the perspective of someone who has battled the disease of addiction and come out of it on top. APM81, I've been in a very similar situation. My boyfriend of a little over 2 years has battled an addiction to pills along with coke. It has been incredibly hard, because I love him so much and he promises to get better and I've always believed that he will. I know that he means for a bit, and then I think he falls back in thinking he can handle a few pills here and there. I've begun to realize that by being there for him, by supporting him and helping him, I'm not really helping him fight this battle. I don't think that I'm enabling him, but I do think that maybe he needs to see that he will lose everything, much like your boyfriend, if he doesn't finally decide to get clean, and to do it for himself. I figure after almost two and a half years of me being there for him, etc, something isn't working because he's no better than when we started. I love him more than anything in the world; I wanted to marry him, we already knew what we were going to name our kids. When things were good, man they were amazing, but the bad times are awful. I've started trying to remember back to the person I was before all of this, and to remind myself that, much like him, I have value and derserve to be loved and taken care of. I'm trying my hardest to pull away from him, because I really feel like that is the only thing, if anything, that will finally make him see that he's destroying his life. Because this is something that could kill him. I'm here if you ever want to talk. I'm not trying to push leaving addicts, but I'm just saying from my experience, staying with him has not helped him get clean. I don't know if he ever will. My only hope is that when he sees that I won't stay any longer, maybe he'll finally get clean and come back to me like I've begged him too...

I hate to be a "downer" here,but I have fought AND lost the battle to keep my ex-husband off the crack. It does not matter whether you stay or go... bottom line they will NOT stop until they are ready. They not only lose their significent other, they lose homes, jobs, vehicles, pets, tools, 401k's,they lose everything. But the absolute LAST thing to go is their drug of choice! I hate to rain on anybody's parade that they think by giving their significent other an "ultimatum" stop or I will leave. They don't hear you! You can only take care of yourself, or you will also lose! Noone fought harder than me to stop his addiction. It is not possible. They must decide whether or not they have had enough! God Bless Deb

I think your comment may be a little harsh for the newby here. Besides here we touch on the same subject over and over in these posts. I just hate to see anyone young make the same mistake it took me 10 years to see was a mistake and who knows how long to recover from. That's right. I'm talking about enabling. Let's stop talking about how we will help the addict and start talking about how we will help ourselves. Start a thread even.

I plan on helping myself by continuing to use dailystrength to express my feelings and to overcome the enabling that got me into this situation in the first place.