I wanted to make a resolution to blog every day, but most of the things I want to blog about deal with my husband, and it's hard to blog about him when he's looking over my shoulder. It's not that the things I say here would be any different than the things that I say to him. It's just hard to type freely when whatever I post could begin another discussion/fight. But anyway...
My guy is a drug addict. According to his recollection, he has been treated with some type of opiate since developing migraines after a nasty fall when he was 13. He claims to have tried other medications, but none have worked as well as an opiate.
What complicates matters is that my guy believes he knows what's better for him than any doctor does. He takes more than the recommended dosage, because he insists he has a high tolerance to opiates, and needs more than doctors prescribe.
When we first met in person, around two years ago, he was using oxycontin. He could get it regularly from his doctor back in New Hampshire, but had trouble finding a doctor here who would prescribe it to him. He ended up becoming a regular in the emergency rooms around Chicago in an effort to continue receiving the stuff. When he couldn't get Oxy, he would settle for Vicodin. Not a great trade, but at least vicodin was cheaper.
The constant cost of paying for doctors' visits and medicine has kept us in the poor house for two years. We can afford things, but we constantly have to borrow money his mom and my parents to make ends meet. This is a constant source of shame for me, as I worked hard to establish my financial independence as a single mother living in the Chicago area. After he arrived, we could no longer afford the Chicago lifestyle, and moved back downstate, to my hometown.
In addition to being hooked on opiates, my guy has also had an addiction to alcohol. As the warnings on the pill labels suggest, pills and booze don't mix. In the early days of our relationship, the combination made for some comically scary hallucinations for him. Once, he attempted to open up the wall in my bedroom, insisting that there were some sort sliding doors there. At another point, I woke to find a trail of shredded cheddar cheese from the refrigerator in the kitchen to the couch, where he had passed out with the package opened at both ends.
Of the two habits, booze has been much more destructive. We have had many more problems come from his drunkeness than we've had from the pills. Last year, he wrecked our car at the end of a country road. Someone brought him back to our house, so I took the blame for the accident, even if it left him with a concussion. He has never hit me, but he scared me so badly that I left him for a few months. He promised to clean up, so we got back together.
The "cleaned up" only lasted a few months. The last time he had some booze, he attempted to piss on the front door. The time before that, he broke out one of the panes in our front door and pushed me over a chair.
While both are a strain on our limited finances, the pills are a bigger strain. Most of the time, he goes through the rigmarole of visiting the local emergency rooms, where the nurses know him on a first-name basis. He has found a few doctors sympathetic to his needs and enough doctor rotation that he can usually get what he wants. He has also switched down to tramadol pills, but takes them in enough quantity and at a regular enough rate to still need more than one doctor to fill his needs. When he does go to a doctor, it take another $50 to $100 out of our small budget.
We have had many, many fights over his habits. He agrees that the addictions aren't doing anyone good, and has decided that he would rather have my daughter and me in his life instead of booze.
He has successfully beaten pills or alcohol singly, but has never been able to conquer both. He has currently been alcohol free for around a week, but still insists he needs the pills for the migraines.
Hopefully, if I can spill my guts to this blog, I can organize my thoughts enough to tell him the right things when talks of addiction come up. Wish me luck.
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