Relapse, return and heartbreak.

I stopped posting here around May last year, which is approximately when my relapse process began. I did not immediately return to the horribly destructive behaviors which nearly killed me last time around. It actually took about 3 more months before I started to really use the way I was before. The beginning of the relapse though, was certainly the reason I stopped posting to this blog.

Let me back up a bit. I hadn’t shared this on my blog previously but I was involved in a relationship throughout my entire time as a heroin user. This person was my life partner and my strongest supporter. She provided a safety net for me when I spun out of control, repeatedly. She was there despite all the deceptions, mood swings, the thefts related to the late stages of using, everything. She was an island, a refuge in my bitter ocean of confusion, self-hatred and pain. 

Except, all was not okay with her. She began after a while to be so demanding of my time and attention that I literally had to start focusing 100% on her instead of on my recovery as I should have been doing at the time. I didn’t realize it while it was happening, but I began to spiral down. I stopped going to meetings, I stopped talking to the close friends I had in the fellowship that I had known from before things went to shit in our lives. I even stopped talking to my own parents, my siblings. My support system dropped away. I stopped posting my thoughts here on this blog (which should be private but wouldn’t have been with her there). I was completely isolated. From there, it was a relatively short step to an occasional use of a substance, then it became THE substance, that bad one. I quickly lost control as addicts do. Each time I lied, cheated and stole for my habit, it drove a wedge between us of mistrust. I never really stopped to think about her motivations for doing what she did … staying when she clearly should’ve left. I always assumed it was out of pure devotion and love toward me, and I certainly felt the same way about her. But the thing is, if someone is “normal” i.e., a non drug user, then it’s in fact pretty sick for them to latch onto an addict like that. It was all just one massive cycle of sick, fucked up behaviors.

Let me back up again. I started therapy in addition to my usual 12-step approach to recovery after I nearly died again this past April. That was a new thing for me. I had never talked to anyone, not even my drug counselors, about my relationship with her. I guess there was some sort of protective instinct there; maybe on a subconscious level I knew something wasn’t right? I don’t know. What I do know is that as soon as I started talking about it, first with my therapist and then with family members and friends, it became really clear to me just how dysfunctional we were. I also became aware (finally) that I was not the only fucked up one in the relationship. She had developed a vicious co-dependence with me, and it had to be broken off. I had to stop it because she never ever would do that on her own. My hand had been forced.

I decided to do it after she used a really nasty tactic with me to try to control my behavior. After it became clear I was going to go out without her one night after yet another argument, she called an ambulance and took herself to the psychiatric unit claiming “I can’t be alone”. I returned home to an empty house. I was beside myself. I immediately called the hospital after finding some info she’d left in an open browser window on her laptop.*** However, at this point I was able to consult my therapist and my family members on what to do about it and I was advised by multiple people to do the same thing: Back off. In other words, do NOT allow this to bring the situation back under her control, it isn’t healthy for either person involved. Finally I was able to see it (because of how dramatically it had escalated when I walked away). It hadn’t been the first time she’d threatened to kill herself and didn’t actually follow through. With me, if I hadn’t received the interventions that I had, the heroin would have killed me. I just know that from how much I was consuming; I couldn’t have survived it for very long.

That decision to end the relationship was about 10 days ago. I’m still trying as best I can to work a program but it has been made a thousand times more difficult than it ever has been before by this complicating factor. Each time I put my recovery first (where it should be), she attempts to sabotage it somehow. She’s exhibiting classic co-dependent behavior. I only wish that I could have seen it sooner, that I could have stopped it sooner. I could have spared us both some heartache, maybe.

Now, please don’t get me wrong here. I *love* this person. Present tense. I deeply wish her the best and most happy life she could have. I just don’t see it with me… There would always be that mistrust, the tension, control issues, guilt, anger … the list continues. I have to be the strong one despite my own weakened state. Despite her repeated attempts to sabotage what I am doing. First using guilt, then trying to use sex to manipulate, then anger, and now, finally, silence. I have had to remain stoic through all of it and somehow manage to hang on to what precious little sobriety I do have.

The last thing I’ll say is that I could NOT have done it, staying clean through this stuff, without my sponsor and my close friends and family members’ support. That’s one thing I know beyond a doubt now. When you take a support system away from somebody, it can destroy that person. The really sad thing for her is, because of her life choice to come to a foreign country for education, as well as her relationship with her parents being extremely dysfunctional, she has nowhere near the level of support and compassion in her life that I have. All she’s had for three years was just me, nobody else. Can you imagine? It kills me inside.

Edit: *** I later figured out that the open web browser, the tortured notes, the begging for sex … those were all VERY CALCULATED and INTENTIONAL efforts to control me and my behavior. It’s just more of the same cycle of behaviors as before, only now it’s much more dramatic and obvious because I have stood my ground and she’s become desperate. All of this stuff makes me so incredibly sad still. I find myself suddenly becoming overwhelmed with emotions when my thoughts go there, despite my not wanting them to. It’s a journey I’m still taking and it hasn’t been that long, though time seems to stretch out from that decision point until now…

How Addiction Warps Us

This is dead on. Contemplating the emotional damage I have caused to my loved ones during my drug use is painful and uncomfortable, but a necessary part of moving forward.

A Walk on the Wild Side

From the film “Silver Lining Playbook” about mental illness

He was already high when I picked him up from the bus station to bring him home.

I’d hoped after a month in jail he’d be clean and sober and ready to make a fresh start on the road to recovery. That’s why we were letting him stay with us. He had nowhere else to go, and we wanted him to be safe until we could get him into rehab.

But it was already too late for safe, for clean, for a fresh start.

I could have refused to bring him home, of course. I could have left him at the bus stop. But I didn’t. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t absolutely certain he was high.

I was sure a couple of days later though when, after I refused to give him a ride into town, he disappeared in…

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The Role of Religion in A.A.

Generally speaking, Alcoholics Anonymous is a program based on spiritual growth. So (in theory), any connection with spirituality should work to that end. This is the program’s official stance on spirituality, taken from the A.A. text and repeated at meetings every day across the country. In the day-to-day reality of my A.A. life however, this is seldom the case. On the surface, most people would quote the same thing I just said about spirituality when asked their opinion on it. I can tell though, that there are definite lines being drawn between the religious and the non-religious people inside the fellowship. In a really insane way, I actually envy the reverence of the bond shared by religious people. I also become extremely annoyed when people go from genuine interaction to what I would call “polite non-association”, as soon as this subject comes up in conversation. Of course, this type of behavior is not supposed to be encouraged at meetings and so as a result, nobody would ever own up to it if questioned. I guarantee it is happening though.

For the record, I think that any type of personal growth is a good thing and is an ideal we should all strive toward. I don’t see anyone’s faith in a higher power as being a problem for me, as long as I can be free to believe as I like as well. I do have a problem with the group being split along religious lines though. It is a phenomenon based purely on narrow-minded fear, and I just have a really hard time tolerating that. I feel reduced to making cryptic remarks at tables in the hopes of weeding out the few “fellow atheists” that I want to meet and talk to. I don’t even like looking at it that way but I almost feel forced to. As atheists, many of us feel the need to avoid being honest about our beliefs in order to fit in. This program is based heavily on the principles of honesty and integrity, so you can imagine the cognitive dissonance there! It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.

6 Months – Sixth Step

I hit six months of sobriety on April 24th. Being clean feels amazing, and I am still working the steps as best I can. Recently, I finished steps 4 and 5. Becoming honest about my character flaws with my sponsor was not easy, but I’m told that’s a common experience for people the first time they do it. I felt a definite relief to have all of my bullshit laid out in one place for the first time ever in my life. At the same time, it was painful to have so many bad memories resurface. For years I had been trying to escape from those exact things.

An obvious issue for atheists in working the sixth step is this: How does God remove my defects of character when, in my mind, God does not exist? I have tried all sorts of ways to form an intellectualization of this, and I believe I have found something that will work for me. As I become more willing to be open about my character flaws to my peers in the AA fellowship, I will be able to gain a mindfulness about myself that will make it easier to work on those things. I fully believe that nobody else will do this work other than myself. It seems that some expect themselves to magically transform into better people upon taking this step and then are surprised when they find themselves still the same as they were. The cognitive dissonance surrounding these ideas is staggering. I will not allow myself to fall into this trap. Self-awareness is a HUGE component of recovery, and I hate when people say it’s not important. As I continue to become more aware of my own nature, I have the opportunity to grow and improve on myself.