by Kate Manning

Created on: July 29, 2010   Last Updated: August 09, 2010

I was only 19 years old when I moved to America and got married. That was five years ago now. When I met my husband, I learned of his injury that he had sustained five years prior to then, in 2000, when a horse he was riding flipped over backwards and landed on him, crushing his knee and in turn causing a very quick onset of degenerative arthritis. As a result he had been put on pain medication. But as time wore on and his knee wore out, his tolerance to the medicines built, and soon he had to take stronger doses to combat the pain. The trouble with narcotic pain medication is the effects it has on the body and the mind. He was now dependent on it. If he ran out of pills for even a day, his body would experience withdrawal symptoms, nausea, vomiting, shaking, cold sweats, insomnia, to name but a few of the effects. Therefore he was stuck in a Catch 22. The more pills he took, the more dependent on them he was, but without them, he would experience severe illness and on top of that, the unrelenting pain in his knee.

When I met him, I did not understand very much about narcotics, nor what he was going through with his knee. But I knew I loved him, and he loved me and that was all that mattered.

The Drinking Starts.

Having come from England where the legal drinking age is 18, I was no stranger to alcohol. My husband would buy wine which we would share at dinner, and he would sometimes buy liquor – Vodka or rum – which would make some nice mixed drinks. But it wasn't long before I started to notice that he was drinking more and more. Occasionally I would find him early in the morning with a glass of Vodka and coke, with a good third of the glass full of vodka. This concerned me, but I didn't know what to say, and the fact that I drank too made me feel hypocritical.

At times I would question it, but was told that the alcohol helped with the pain, and make the medication work better. I had seen him without any medication and I had witnessed the pain he went though, and so for now, this was a reason I couldn't argue with. When you love someone so much you definitely do not want to see them in pain.

Some days would be lonely, when he would get drunk or drowsy and fall asleep for most of the day. But I would busy myself around the house or indulge in my hobbies, unwisely turning a blind eye. I did not know at the time, but I was enabling this bad habit because of my love for my husband.

The Smoking Stops.

Another bad habit my husband had was smoking. He

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