Addicted to... an Addict??

 So I received my first anonymous confession through this link! 

"I saw that you've been in a relationship with an addict. Can you give some advice for anyone going through the same situation right now? How do you get them to stop?"

Yes I submitted that myself lol. But I think this is a really challenging situation that I went through and I would love to share more about my experience and advice I wish I could have told my past self. 

Warning that this post will talk about addiction, please skip if that is a difficult topic for you. It is also a pretty heavy topic in general. So read with caution, love you guys!

For the sake of staying as anonymous as possible, in my initial post (which you can read here) I tried to be very vague and not mention any specifics. However now I'm a little more comfortable with the fact that it's pretty unlikely anyone I know will find this blog and connect the dots. So I'll include a lot more in this post. 

I also want to give a disclaimer that being in a relationship with an addict is a very nuanced and difficult situation to be in. Everyone's relationship is different, and everyone's partner is different. There is no correct way to navigate something as difficult as this. I want to be very clear that if you are in any abusive situation - please reach out and get help. There is no "navigating" abuse, you need to put yourself and your safety first. Even if there is no abuse in your relationship with someone struggling with substance use, I still think it's important to get professional help. Look up resources in your area - not just for the addict, but for you too. There are groups like AlAnon that support people who's loved ones are addicted to something. Mental health is also very important, talking to a therapist helped me a lot (especially when I felt like I had no one to talk to). Just know that you are not alone in this. Something that also helped me a lot was the alanon reddit (r/AlAnon) - just reading that other people are going through the same thing made me feel so much less alone. 

The Rundown

First I want to give you guys a brief summary of my experience. My boyfriend (I'm going to refer to him as Sam) is an alcoholic. I knew this from the very beginning of our relationship, but I didn't realize how serious it was. It started with him going out to bars every weekend, which he stopped doing as we got more serious. But he was hiding his drinking from me, probably the biggest indication of a problem. He could only stay sober for like a couple hours. He would buy cheap whiskey or beer, then chug a bunch. You can only hide that for so long. It started getting worse, he would drink more at a time. Buy bigger bottles, a bottle a day. And really it isn't the amount that they drink that matters, but their behaviors around drinking. He would be okay after the first drink, but as time progressed and he got more drunk he started to be mean. He would pick fights with me, get upset if I disagreed with him, turn a small situation into a big blowout argument. And fighting with a drunk person is like talking to a wall. His brain wasn't working normally so there was no reasoning with him. And the worst part? He wouldn't even remember any of it the next day. Eventually, Sam started suffering physical symptoms of drinking excessively. He was in a lot of pain, very anxious, terrible memory, had hand tremors when he didn't drink, throwing up often. It was not good. Finally it became enough for him and he made a decision to go to rehab. He's now one year sober and doing so much better, but it was not an easy journey at all. For either of us. 

How do you get them to stop? 

Simple answer: you don't. I can't even count how many times I googled this or something similar (google really was my best friend lol) 

"How to get someone to stop drinking"

"What to do when you're dating an alcoholic"

"How do I convince my boyfriend to go to rehab"

"Effects of alcoholism"

"How to quit drinking"

"How to make someone get sober" 

There's lots of answers in there. Have an intervention, talk to them one-on-one, support them, set boundaries, take a break, give them resources, have them talk to a therapist. But they almost always said the same thing, that you can't make someone get help until they want help. Which is not at ALL what I wanted to hear. 

I am very much a control freak. A big problem during this time was I felt it was my responsibility to fix him. In all honesty, even though it worked out with me and Sam (and I am so so happy), I shouldn't have even gotten into a relationship with him in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I love him more than anything, but that was genuinely the worst. As we got closer and I fell more in love, I felt more and more responsible for stopping his drinking. And this made me feel more and more trapped. I told myself that if I left now, he would never get better. If you take away anything from this - please do not ever ever ever make yourself feel responsible for "fixing" someone else. It's never gonna work. 

I begged him to stop every day. I cried, screamed, wrote letters, sent long messages, had calm conversations, tried (and failed) to set boundaries. But none of that worked. The only reason Sam is sober now is because Sam wanted to be sober. No amount of begging or crying I did was ever going to make him stop. Which was so hard for me to accept. 

One thing I should have done, but didn't, was set and KEEP boundaries. I didn't ever keep them, I always gave in. Don't give them any money, don't drive them to get more substances, don't lie for them to cover up their drinking. 

I would never tell anyone to break up with their partner because for me, that was legit impossible. I just couldn't do it. I wanted to sometimes, but I could never follow through. If you can do that and it has gotten to that point, I think you should seriously consider it. If you two are meant to be you will find your way back. But again, there really is no right answer. 

Codependency is very, very real. If you are in a similar situation, I highly recommend just looking up "codependency". Research it, find ways to reduce it. Understanding why you act the way you act helps loads with changing your behaviors. 

How I got through it:

TBH I didn't really. I mean I did, but I was struggling every single day. I cried constantly because I knew Sam was a good person deep down and I hated to see him hurting. I felt like such a hypocrite because if any of my friends were in my situation I would tell them to dump him, but I just defended him and made excuses. I cried seeing couples do normal things because I hated being in public with him when he was drunk. It was always on my mind, always hurting me. 

My therapist was a godsend throughout this experience. It took me ages to be honest with her though. I had been seeing her before Sam and I got together, and I just barely spoke about him. I felt so much better once I opened up. She was the only person I could talk to that wasn't involved in my life, and I could trust her to be real with me. And it was so nice to finally talk about everything I was hiding and keeping to myself. 

Like I said before, reddit was very helpful as well. r/AlAnon and r/stopdrinking were my go to's. I posted a couple times, but mainly I just wanted to know that other people felt the same way as me. It also let me read real life stories of people that didn't do what they were "supposed to", as in people would stay together with their partner, even though they knew breaking up would probably be better. I also liked reading from the perspective of people who were the alcoholics. I did everything I could to try and understand what Sam was dealing with. I'm not sure that helped me a whole lot, but it was one of my coping mechanisms. 

Closer to when Sam went to rehab, I was finally able to let go of my control. I stopped trying to "fix" him. I didn't talk to him about his drinking, I hung out with him less often, I didn't cover up for him or try to solve all his problems. This lifted such a weight off of me. But it wasn't easy at all. Something that helped was making my schedule busier. I had to redirect my energy that I was spending on him somewhere, so I focused on myself as much as I could. I signed up for workout classes, hung out with friends, went on weekend trips, picked up more shifts at work, went to events. 

Journaling was also very helpful for me. It was somewhere I could be completely honest, even more honest than to my therapist. If you're scared someone will read it - rip up the pages, write in code, scribble over your words with sharpie, burn them. It is so important to have an outlet to get all your feelings out and be completely honest with yourself. Covering up your emotions does you such a disservice and makes you feel even more isolated. 

There's a lot I wish I would have done differently, but I suppose that's why we go through things. We have to learn somehow. There really is no right answer of how to deal with this. Being in a relationship with an addict is truly the most difficult thing I have ever experienced. It really makes you see the world in a whole new light. You realize that it isn't as simple as "just stopping". If you are going through something similar, I feel for you so much. It is so hard. Please message me (anonymously or not) because I would be happy to be your outlet that you can be honest with. You can find my email at the very bottom of my blog page. 

Thank you so much for reading this.