It's difficult to talk about addiction without dredging up pain. It's been over fifteen years since I was with my previous spouse whom was a cocaine addict and still time has not healed all the wounds, they are still in many ways too fresh and maybe they aways will be. In regards to many things, even myself, I have often heard people say love the sinner but hate the sin and many times people encouraged me to love the addict but hate the addiction. I wish I could say I was a big enough, compassionate enough, loving enough person to do that but it just isn't reality. Not yet at least. I am filled with hate for the addict and addiction far too much.
I had a wonderful relationship with a woman I wholly loved. I can't remember a time when there was ever a need she had that went unmet and rarely if ever any desire that was unsatisfied, so in some regards I was an enabler even if I didn't conciously know it or want to admit it. Life was starting out in that story book fashion, almost a fairy tale of two young people full of love living in a paradise setting with so much early success in life and so much more to come. I thought it was all that at least, but the reality was far different.
I was well aware my love had a substance abuse problem dating to a time prior to our meeting. Throughout our courtship this had been discussed and I was assured it was a thing of the past and saw no evidence to make me believe otherwise. Everyone makes mistakes, I had certainly made plenty so who was I too judge? I, in my naivete, believed love was enough to keep her from temptation and off cocaine. When I saw she had relapsed in a way, smoking pot specifically, I was a little concerned but I told myself it wasn't cocaine and these were very different drugs so there was no real harm. I admit I enabled her in this regard.
I watched a progression of seeing more and more money slowly drain from our savings, all the more exasperating since she quit her job and I had to take on a second just to keep us viable. Still I told myself it's not cocaine. I watched things like the grocery budget stretch far less than it used to, new people in her life that had to raise concern. Still I just didn't see it or more accurately didn't want to see it. Every inch of logic, every tell tale sign was there but I couldn't face the fact that cocaine had re-entered her life which meant even though I wasn't using or physically purchasing it, it had entered mine as well. I didn't want to face what that said about me, her, or us.
It got to the point we had to talk about it, something I knew would not go well, but what could I do? A bright vibrant person I loved was wasting away and becoming a person I couldn't even look at. Odds and ends from our home were disappearing, first bits of jewelry, dvd's, compact discs, even the change jar was left with nothing more than a handful of lint. When I finally asked how long she had been back on the coke I was met with bile and venom unlike anything I had ever encountered, and believe me I had been face to face with plenty in my then young life.
Instead of me being the inquistor the tables turned and it was as ugly and hurtful a tirade as I had ever experienced. According to her it was my fault, I drove her to this. I didn't love enough, when I did I loved too much. I was always gone or I was always home. I was too distant emotionally only to hear right after I was smothering her. I had no idea how to decipher it all. Everything that was wrong in her life was now my fault, even events from fifteen years before we met were somehow my doing. I begged her to get help. Her answer was "you need help." I knew or at least felt there was no recourse but split, but I loved her, at least the person she was when we met.
The next morning I tried a bit of tough love and drained the bank accounts, not much was left but I had to. I re-opened them in my name alone reasoning if she couldn't get money she couldn't keep using. The result was worse. She decided if I wouldn't give her money she would get it herself. She began dealing, to finance that dealing she prostituted herself. Addicts make poor drug dealers because they use more than they sell which led to her selling herself even more, something I only believed was happening after not, one or two, but three trusted people made me well aware and proved to my very eyes it was happening. Being confronted with that and even a heart attack in her mid twenties didn't stop her love for the drug more than even her love for herself.
To make a long story shorter she was eventually arrested at the airport for trafficking drugs. As we were on foreign soil the implications were dire as you can imagine. Part of me wanted to rescue her but a bigger part of me knew I couldn't. The embassy had no interest in the least in getting involved. There was no doubt or denying what she had tried to do. Her own family, people I never met which should have been a sign, wanted nothing to do with her, she had destroyed them already as well. Within weeks I found the person I once loved never even existed, she was a well crafted person created to escape a past made unlivable by cocaine. In many ways I helped allow that to happen, at least that's what people on the outside looking in told me.
I spent years actually believing the relapse was my fault, even sometimes today I think maybe it was. Cocaine stole my love, my trust, my faith, my dignity, and nearly my career and life itself. I never even used it or saw her use it, it was just near me and it took from me all that. Even today certain things I can't even aticipate at times trigger some response that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and calls those feelings and anger all over again.
Living with a cocaine addict is about living with lies, danger, hate, and almost any piece of negativity you can imagine. It doesn't just destroy the user, in some way it taints everyone touching the addict to varying degrees. Even today a part of me still loves her, or who she once presented herself to be. A small part of me has even forgiven her only because I know I'll never see her again, but in my entirety I will never forget what the cocaine addict did to me. I am reminded all too vivdly, I am reminded everytime doubt, fear, or anger enters my mind.