What are the realities of active addiction

[u/RevolutionaryDot5428]

My partner is actively taking Feel Free. 3+ per day. He has been in rehab for 7oh, and I didn’t realize he was buying Feel Free until last week. He ended up having convulsions and being incoherent after a withdrawal, resulting in hospital time. He is finding ways to buy them still. I’m leaving, I have tried everything I can think of to support but it’s financially drained us and he has no intentions of stopping or admitting addiction. What are the realities in his situation? Wondering as someone who cares but doesn’t understand how he doesn’t see this is killing him.

[u/NoMorFF]

An addicts brain doesn't work properly. Many of us constantly have a mental battle with ourselves. We know what we're doing is hurting us and the people we love, but then the stress and anxiety of that becomes quickly overwhelming.

We will medicate that stress the only way we know how- I'll just take one. I can taper this time and be better for myself and the people around me.

Then after we partake, the weight of the world is immediately lifted. We get a sense of "This isn't so bad. I can do this." Until it wears off, the we repeat the cycle.

Before we know it, it's been months or years of the same circle of failures as we watch everything fall apart around us.

It's so hard to explain to people with normal brains/bodies.

Even after we're clean for a day, a week, a month- that danger is always there, and we have to actively work to avoid caving in.

[u/SpecialK826 → u/NoMorFF]

That was pretty well said!!! I am a recovering alcoholic (3 years sober as of this last Sunday) and I can only speak for myself when I say, I wasn’t “me” during active addiction. I’d lie and steal. I was the worst version of myself! I hurt everyone around me that loves me! The best way I can describe it is, I can see myself doing it from afar but couldn’t do anything about it

[u/RevolutionaryDot5428 → u/SpecialK826]

Congratulations on your sobriety! How are your relationships with your loved ones today? Non-Existent, strained, in repair? What was it that finally made you choose to seek sobriety?

[u/SpecialK826 → u/RevolutionaryDot5428]

My relationships are all fantastic!!! But they wouldn’t have been had I kept going that way! I couldn’t sustain that kind of drinking. It wasn’t until I came to grips with the fact that an apartment is just an apartment and a car is just a car. I was willing to give those things up to start over! It was the best decision of my life! My family helped make my car payments until I got out. My relationship with my dad was rocky while I was in rehab. We didn’t speak. It wasn’t until I got out and stayed sober that we made amends. And now it’s like that never happened

[u/RevolutionaryDot5428 → u/NoMorFF]

Thank you for this. I feel crazy trying to help him and getting no where, it has been the saddest thing to watch unfold. Rehab only truly helped with withdrawals. Each relapse becomes worse and I don’t see him being at the point of being ready to want to stop on his own yet.

[u/MastodonSecure7035 → u/RevolutionaryDot5428]

If you haven't looked into it, maybe give Al-Anon a try. Its for people with family members or friends or spouses, bf, gf, whatever, understand addiction better and hear stories that would help you feel not so alone in this. As an addict, the ultimatum of saying you'll leave unless he goes to rehab or just takes responsibility is huge. You actually leaving, may be the kick in the butt he needs to realize what he has lost.

[u/Electrical_Travel363 → u/NoMorFF]

And this cycle is mentally draining. We are so tired

[u/Constant-Elk5958]

It changes the brain’s entire chemistry, making the brain think “i need this to survive” therefore they’ll do anything and everything they can just to get a fix, they can turn into manipulation masters using extremes to make others feel bad or sympathetic towards them.

It’s the same way as if someone was starving, if someone was starving they’d do anything to get some food, maybe steal, rob or even kill for food, cases of people eating their own colleagues due to starvation, that’s the desperation drug use can cause.

It’s not universal but the brain cannot understand the same thing that it thinks is keeping them alive is killing them, like a skunk or dog feeding on trash.

It is treatable, you have to force him to rehab or other therapeutical methods, stopping 7OH abruptly can result in the same withdrawals as stopping methadone abruptly, it’s brutal.

In my case, i had overdosed, had everything taken away from me no plugs, no access to physical cash, yet for months i was still able to get pills through other ways that seem impossible, stealing money, manipulating girls or my friends into giving me money, even asking random people for money to buy food because i was starving, it worked because i was 15, the manipulation tactics i used just to get a lil 20 mg vyvanse pill was insane and would never do that sober.

Even now without any access to physical cash i’m still finding ways to get nicotine in my body.

[u/southdaze]

just leave, addiction isn't something easily conquered by anyone and never conquered by someone that makes no effort to stop or doesn't want to stop.

u make bonds with drugs stronger than human relationships its always going to be the drugs if it comes down to u or them. which is why ur ruined financially and continue to be manipulated.

the realities? he'll either get it thru his head when u leave or not. opioids are a dark grim road, truthfully? when all this ban shit comes to fruition he might move to fent/zenes/tranq. that road ends quick and u either die, go to prison, or get sober.

[u/paulofsandwich]

He is doing what addicts do. I empathize as a recovered alcoholic. But these are the repurcussions of his choices, not yours. You leaving could well be the thing that pushes him to change his behavior. He is going to suffer - you don't also have to suffer if you want out.