[Indiglo]

Hi, I am 39 years of age. I am disabled from Fibromyalgia, OsteoArthritis, 2 compressed disks in my back and the pain is made worse from hypothyroid. 1 year after I was diagnosed I met what I could only say, is the love of my life. This was 4 1/2 years ago. The love at first being blinding and intense. When we first met he told me about having a previous drug history, but that he had been clean for 3 years. Accepting that, we started dating.

I knew at once that we were going to be together. And, he felt the same way. However, within 6 months he fell off the "wagon" and started doing drugs again. He left shortly afterwords, saying that we shouldn't have gotten together. I couldn't understand what happened. This man, whom was so gentle and caring had turned into a demonlike person. He was always angry and yelling at me. Even when he came back 2 months later.

I had never dealt with the aspects of the "drug user" and therefore didn't know how to deal with it. He finally became clean again and we went to relationship counseling. The counselor told us that because my "boyfriend" didn't see a need for it, he was unable to help us. The relationship immediately became one in which I had expected when he and I met. The loving person was back. During this time he was also going to group counseling.

In late October of last year he had to have emergency surgery to have his gallbladder removed. By the middle of December he had disappeared. No one knew where he was for 3 weeks. When he came back he took me to where he was staying. It was a crack house. He wanted me to understand that it was not me that he ran away from, but himself. However, this time he was unable to pick himself back up. It has been my experience that when ever he "falls", that he starts to hate himself. Which in turn lead to more drug use.

I never gave him money, never let him have money more than a dollar or so at a time, and I controlled the finances. Like I said, our relationship was not the problem. The drugs are. He was never violent, never stole, and never was abusive to me in anyway. He only seems to hurt me by abusing himself. He hasn't been able to pick himself up ever since the incident in December.

I finally got very angry with him for not doing something to get some help for himself. Without telling me he left the next day. I haven't had any contact with him since. He is staying with his father in the next city, about 3 miles away. My car does not work so I am limited in what I can do about this. I have tried to call, but he does not answer. I miss him very much. I was not even able to cry about it until about 3 weeks after he left. I think I was sure that he would come back. He has now been gone for 2 months.

His father finally emailed me and told me that my "boyfriend" has accepted the fact that he must get clean on his own. I understand this, but I do not believe that anyone can do this sort of thing without positive support, unless he has no one to support him. We have never had a codependent relationship. Only an interdependent relationship as a relationship, I believe, should be.

I do not know what I can do to help him or to show him my support if he will not talk to me or be in contact with me at all. I have no way of knowing what his frame of mind is. Being in limbo is the hardest I believe. I need some sort of resolution as to which direction I need to take. His and my relationship is not one that I would ever want to give up if it can be helped.

This time, when he was using he did not act like a hateful tyrant. He just went into a very deep depression. I never saw him using drugs, but one of the ministers I have been seeing is positive that he was using without my knowledge. She and her husband have known my "boyfriend" since they were children. They believe they can help. Her husbanddid drugs with him before he changed his entire life. That is their ministery now.

How can I resolve these issues without talking to him to find out whether he wants to get help or not? How can I mend my very broken heart not knowing if he is trying to make his way back to me? I am trying to go on with my life as best I can. However, being retired for over a year now, it is hard to think on other things. Need some very good and helpful advice. Thank you.

[ray]

Hi,
Drug dependancy is a difficult situation to deal with because of the effects it has on a persons mental state when they are "high" and when they are "coming down"
I don't know what he is taking but to me it sounded like it was a "meth", speed? ice? If he is using these kind of drugs the chances of permanent psychological damage are real, I have seen it. I live with people who use party drugs and it is not the best of situations but I aviod contact when they are on drugs.
Most people who use drugs will use recreational drugs like speed for a while as a way of getting through life or just casually enjoying the feeling every now and then.
If he is using the stuff to get through life then he does need the help of professional counselling, rehabilitation.
As for your situation, I think it is difficult for you to do anything for him if he does not admit he has a dependancy and if he is not prepared to seek help.
I don't want to sound negative but I feel you will have to wait and see if he is going to help himself if he wont respond to your attempts to contact him.
Try to be in contact with his immediate family, get them involved in trying to get him help, is this an option?
Concentrate on improving and enjoying your life as much as possible in the mean time and try to spend time with those around you that care and are supportive of you.
Ray.

[Benjamin Fry]

This sounds like a terribly hard time in your life. Iím sorry that you have suffered so much in this relationship. It is inevitable that you have become dependent for your own happiness on the state of mind of another person and that is always a very disempowering place to be.

As you may know there are support groups to help people whose lives have been turned upside-down by the addiction of a loved one. Al-Anon is a 12-step group that provides this kind of support. If there is a meeting in your area perhaps you could try to get to one. There you will find a great deal of human empathy.

Iíd like to offer an observation on your post: itís not really about you. It is a catalogue of your boyfriends ride through addiction and recovery. You feature only as a reactive element in that dynamic. This is an easy trap to fall into when addiction comes into your family life, but it is also something that you can look at to try to help yourself.

There is no way that either of us can determine what will be the outcome of your boyfriendís behaviour. That is a universal truth for all relationships that we all have to live with. Taken to its extreme, any of us who love other people must accept that our lives could be shattered in an instant by a cruel act of fate. If we are to love, we are to risk and that is inevitable. You have loved, and risked, and perhaps lost. But it is what you have lost that concerns me.

There is a reason that you found this man so irresistible in the first place. It is likely that you were unconsciously aware of the fact that he was unavailable. (this is a very common theme encountered among those who fall in love with addicts ñ active or not). Usually this is as a result of some intimacy issues which prevent us from wishing to be too close to others. We are lonely and want company, but also are afraid and want distance. So we chose people who we can be with, but also never quite be with. Itís a fragile solution and can easily end up breaking, as you have seen.

The path to mending your broken heart lies not in changing the destiny of your boyfriendís recovery but in changing your own issues with relationships and intimacy. This needs to be done by examining what your present reveals about your past. Somewhere in your life you began to be afraid of true emotional intimacy ñ this can start from birth ñ and the emotional repercussions will have been felt in the explosive attraction that you experienced for your somewhat unavailable boyfriend. In effect you have contrived to find an addiction of your own: an addiction to him. This (like any addiction) masks the underlying emotional issues.

It may not be that you are looking for a solution which helps you to move on from this relationship, but if you are then you need to start to think about where your own emotional patterns were set up. Then if you treat these emotional issues, you also treat the pain of not being in this relationship. Then one day you wake up and donít mind any more. It might seem unlikely and even unwanted, but Iíve been in a similar situation myself, and frankly I strongly recommend it.

The bottom line here is that you canít treat the relationships while only one person is in it. Therefore you have to treat yourself. You are obviously not adverse to counselling and spiritual guidance and this is a great start to helping yourself. Perhaps you need to find a little direction and then you could start to move away from this place of pain that you have unconsciously navigated into. The direction comes from understanding what your current circumstance are trying to communicate to you.

The emotions that you feel right now relate to something that is unprocessed from your past. You need to discover what that was and work on facilitating an emotional resolution of it. Perhaps your father (or father figure) was remote? Perhaps someone left your family and you experienced a great deal of powerlessness over your sadness as a child? There are many possibilities and if you wish to discuss it here please do.

At the core of all this are frozen emotions that are stuck in your mind-body system. They want to come out, but we arenít very good at letting them. Your unconscious mind guides you into situations that help you to release these feelings. Your current distress will be an echo of your past distress. It is trying to trigger the thawing of those old feelings by a resonance with the presence. The best thing that you can do is to let it. The second best thing you can do is to try to help it.

[sassy]

Hi Indiglo

That is quite the story about your boyfriend! I will let you know that I chased a Drug abuser type for about 2 yrs and he was very similar to your story he was very up down with his emotions. It was really hard cause all I wanted to do was try and help him and be there. However all you can do step back and let ride there train that they picked because there is nothing you can do help....because it will tear you up inside....They will have to want recover for themselves and trying to help just will push them further away. Now that I moved from that boyfriend and basically gave up on trying to contact him all the time...I did find someone else who adores me and wants to be with me all the time and believe it was like a breath of fresh air again. The weird thing is my past drug abuser boyfriend now tries to contact me to go back to him...I will amit apart of me wants to but I then remember how much I suffered from his actions and the constant changes he pulled. Frankly thats enough for me to close the doors on him and say sorry I can't help cause always remeber your #1 and you need to look out for what is best for you! Like I said what was best for me was to move on forgive and forget for he was not healthy for me to be around. He has friends and realtives that will help him so he will be okay. So its hard but you has a person deserves to be loved all the time not just when it suits him!!!!! Good Luck I hope all goes well!