My DH just tried to order cocaine to our house!

[Imarriedanaddict]

Regular on here, name changed as don’t want this linked to my other posts in case I get outed.

The back story is that I got with my DH 9 years ago and found out he took cocaine. It’s not something I wanted in my life so ended things with us but he said he refused to let drugs ruin our relationship. I had made it clear that I didn’t like it and wouldn’t have it in my life and that it was a deal breaker. He stopped using and we stayed together and got more serious.

I gradually learnt that his cocaine use had actually been a pretty big issue but he was clean now so I wasn’t going to hold his past against him. (Yes I am aware I was probably very naive here)

A few years later I was pregnant with our first child and he slipped up and used one night. I was devastated, I made him sweat about us but in the end gave him another chance on the condition he knew it would be the end of us and our life together as a family if he ever touched it again. He agreed and also decided to change his phone number so he had no access to any contact numbers. We had our baby and have gone on to get married and have another baby.

About 2 months ago DH was getting really stressed out with work and juggling home life. It was really affecting his mental health. He went to the pub with some mates and he ended up going back to a mates house and taking some cocaine. He tried to deny it the next morning but he was so distraught he ended up confessing.

I was devastated that he’d done it but I was genuinely concerned for his mental well being that I didn’t push too hard. I had my concerns that he now had access to a number and it was only a matter of time before he did it again.

Significant changes were made to his work to reduce his stress and I’ve taken on as much as I can at home.

So to tonight, we’re all at home and DH has been drinking for a few hours, both children were in bed and I was just going to bed. Our eldest woke up crying in pain. We dealt with it together and then DH shut our bedroom door right up and went downstairs. He never does this as I need to listen out for the youngest who still wakes during the night. I then hear the front door open. Thinking DH had ordered more beer, I went down stairs to remind him he had to get up early with the kids. Nope turns out he was leaving money in the porch and had text a dealer. I didn’t catch him in the act or anything, he could have easily lied to me and said it was more beers but he confessed. I looked through his phone and he had sent one text asking if they were about and they replied saying yes. So he hadn’t actually ordered it yet but I know him leaving the money out means he was just about to.

I’ve asked why, I’ve asked what he was thinking, I’ve asked him to explain but I got nothing. He has then decided he is going to leave tonight as it’s best for everyone. But I won’t let him leave as it pretty much guarantees he will end up taking something and I’ll just be worried about him all night.

We’re currently going in a loop of him saying he is going to leave and me emotionally blackmailing him to stay as it’s the only thing he’ll listen to. He finally sits back down then it all starts again 20mins later. I won’t go to sleep until he gives in falls asleep so I know he isn’t going anywhere.

I don’t know what to do. I want to support him but all he ever says to me is there is no reason he does it, you’ll never understand. I don’t want this in my children’s lives or mine but I also love him and don’t want my children to lose out on their dad. I don’t want our marriage to be over.

Does anyone have any words of advice?

@TatianaBis

There does not seem to be much sympathy for those who are ill (addicts) on here.

There’s generally sympathy for alcohol or food addictions. But that’s because some posters here have the same problems.

Drugs not so much.

This!

My friend also passed away because she was a codine addict. A path which her GP put her on.

These people need proper help.

@tonimitchell

Some of the replies on here are unhelpful.

Swop cocain for alcohol and DH for DW.

‘ My wife has had issues with her mental health due to work but we reduced her hours. She’s always like a drink but I don’t drink and she promised to cut it out. But lately she been getting so drunk she passes out or hides drink around the house or gets people to drop it off. I stopped her from drinking last night and she said it was best she leaves and left’

The replies on here would be much different. Many more would be asking what external help she has been offered for her mental health and what services she could get support from.

Mental health, alcohol addiction and cocain addiction walk hand in hand. This man needs one last chance with real external help

No they wouldnt. Honestly people trot out the whole gender reverse discrepency but actually apart from an occasional poster, the advice about addicts is usually pretty similar whoever it is

He needs help, and you can't be the one to make him get it. He needs to want it & seek it himself, then stick to it.

If you want to help him, then in this order:

1. ultimatum - no more coke ever (or other drugs)
2. He does 12 step plan
3. If / when he breaks this addiction & sticks to it you can re-evaluate your life together.

In the meantime, your children need you to protect them from this. You can't control whether he stops or not, that's on him.

Those saying there's not much sympathy for people who are ill with drug addiction, I don't think that's necessarily true. I would not advocate for criminalisation of addiction but for a health lead approach, it's clear the "war on drugs" approach doesn't work. I do have sympathy. BUT I have much much more sympathy for young children who end up dealing with the impact of their parents addiction, that's lifelong pain and they should be protected from it.

OP you'll never know how often he has been using coke recently. It could be that those 2 occasions just sent him straight back in to addiction.

Does he usually carry much cash? If not then he must have took some out earlier in order to buy the drugs - it was planned. He waited u til you were in bed.

"You about" is the order being placed. Not just an enquiry. Dealers don't want to get caught with actual orders on their phone.

They know his address. Presumably you live in a different house to when he was previously using.

There would have been drugs in the same house as your kids. And an incapacitated father.

His drinking seems an issue. Buying more alcohol to drink alone late at night is not normal either.

You have given your ultimatum. If you don't ask him to leave you have no chance of escaping his addiction. He has to want to stop. Nothing you say or emotionally blackmail him with will work.

Imagine him alone looking after the dc when high. Potentially driving? Acting irrationally, confusing and scaring them.

Asking him to leave is really the only option.

People CAN bounce back from addiction. I know as Ive done it, but the absolute starting point is from within, because they want to stop.
Also depends on what form the addiction takes.
Someone who is physically addicted as well as psychologically is in a different place to someone who binges but doesnt use daily and has more psychological issues or ADHD related stimulant addiction issues etc.

Either way, its a pretty toxic environment for both you and for any children involved, and id say you need to concentrate on whats best for you and the children rather than wasting your time trying to make a cokehead stop using with idle threats and ultimatums you dont/cant manage to carry out.
He needs to sort his own shit out. You cant fix him

He was willing to close op's bedroom door so she couldn't hear the dealer drop off.

He was willing to allow op not to hear if their eldest child woke again in pain, or be in a fit condition to be left with their youngest child in case op needed to drive their eldest to seek medical attention.

He was so desperate to take Coke he basically ran away at the first opportunity.

It also looks like the dealer already knew his address? Imagine that, bringing a drug dealer to your house where your beautiful precious children are asleep upstairs.

Of course addicts need support and sympathy but not from their wife who is having to deal with the horrific fall out.

He’s probably been hiding it from you for a lot longer than you think. Addicts are good liars.

In my experience asking him to stop/blackmailing/shouting/crying/talking calmly, nothing works he won’t stop until he wants to.

What started out with him doing it here and there on a night out soon escalated and by the beginning of lockdown last year we had got to the point where he would take it 3 or 4 times a week. That’s when the shit really hit the fan and the lies, the abuse, the cheating all started making an appearance.

Personally I think the best thing to do is to kick his arse out before you get to this point. If you want to support his recovery that’s up to you, but be very cautious cocaine is an extremely hard drug to recover from and for me his addiction and all that went with it had gone to far, and he’s not willing to stop anyway so how can I?

I honestly don’t feel sorry for my ex. He chose to put stuff up his nose and risk losing his family, which he did. I feel sorry for my children because I made them live with this man for so much longer than they should have done.

He needs help for sure but he was willing to bring a dealer to the family home.

OP, if you want to be with him and involved in his recovery (you don’t have to, this is YOUR choice) you need to make sure your kids and yourself are safe first. That means he leaves and stays gone. Support can be given apart. However, it’s your boundary, if you decide this is the final straw, you are well within your rights to have nothing to do with him, whether he has an illness or not.

Op absolutely does not need to help him and find out why he is an addict. It is highly likely to be at the expense of herself and her children's financial stability and emotional well-being. Op has children to put first. The DH needs to go elsewhere for help.

He will think nothing of financially ruining his family and will feel perfectly entitled to do so. The signs are already there.

I find it a bit odd that because he has a drug problem, the automatic response is you should leave him. Isn't it normal for you as a family to try and get him help to work through it rather than walk away?

As I said modern dealing involves couriers to the house not the dealer themselves. This is fairly standard. People don’t go out to buy drugs in the street/dealer’s house any more.

You issued him with an ultimatum right at the start, and told him it would be the end of your relationship should he relapse again. But then you didn’t follow through on that, and so now he knows that it was an empty threat. This is always going to be a problem, so you will need to accept he has an addictive personality and just accept who he is, or you need to ask him to leave and sort himself out. If he leaves he might hit rock bottom, but they say an addict sometimes has to hit the bottom before they realise they need help. It’s not fair on you or your DCs to have to put all your energy in trying to help someone who clearly doesn’t want to help himself.

@NeilBuchananisBanksy

I agree, and that's why in my previous post I told the OP to leave him while he sorts himself out, or doesn't, as the case may be.

I'm sorry to hear that you had a difficult childhood

Just imagine when he has a drug debt, they won't be leaving packages on your doorstep then.

They have your address OP, that would be the end for me.

Okay firstly if alcohol and cocaine were 'fatal' then half of Britan would die every weekend. Stop scaremongering.
I didn't say the combination was inevitably fatal. Stop getting huffy replying to things that nobody said.

Cocaethelyne (which is produced in your liver when you metabolise alcohol and cocaine at the same time) is bad news. Will it kill everyone? No, if course not. But it significantly raises your risk of things like sudden stroke, heart attack, blood clots and so on. For people who choose to use both alcohol and cocaine, a specific harm minimisation technique is to avoid doing so in such a way that they'll both be in your system at the same time, purely to reduce those risks. If half of Britain don't already know that, well, consider this a PSA.

Okay firstly if alcohol and cocaine were 'fatal' then half of Britan would die every weekend. Stop scaremongering.

And you stop exaggerating. HALF of Britain? I doubt I know more than 10 or 15 people who have taken cocaine and that's a generous estimate. I certainly know more than 30 people.

People can absolutely bounce back from addiction. I’ve seen it

They certainly can. I should know, I've been clean for almost 12 years. Change can only ever come from within. No amount of facts, rehab, therapy, nagging, emotional blackmail etc will lead to sustained change if the addict does not want to quit. The desire to stop has to come from the addict alone.

[quote Imarriedanaddict]@trunumber I literally said to him everything you have said.

Not that this actually makes any difference, I really don’t think he is a regular user, but I know I’m naive and I could be wrong. He told me after the other month that he had got the number from his mates, which given one of them is supposedly my friend too I don’t think he would make it up. When I looked through his phone tonight, with him watching, I found that he’d logged onto his mobile phone account and had searched for the number on his call log record. He was obviously intent on getting some but if he was a regular user surely the number would have been more accessible?

It was only a few months ago I found out that before we got together he used to sit at home and do it on his own a few times a week. So doing it at home on his own isn’t actually that far a leap for him as it would be for most other people. Again I’m just explaining, I know it really doesn’t make a difference.

I have to admit I thought there would at least be some responses telling me that he is ill and I should support him through it. I think I wrote this post for the handhold and so I could naively ignore the people telling me to leave and listen to those telling me to stay. But I know I need to strap on my big girl pants and follow through with this whenever he resurfaces.

Our 11 month old won’t understand what’s going on but the 3.5 year old is going to be devastated.[/quote]
Well yeh but you rather you left your 3.5 year old in his care at some point, he got drugged up and then basically a big accident happened and the 3.5 year old was injured or died. I mean I know you wouldn’t leave him with the kids alone right but that shouldn’t be the norm. It’s not any way to live a life. Sometimes the emotional devastation is required to avoid a genuine threat to life.

Narcotics anonymous, you can contact them too, there will be groups for partners, families. Also local council have drug and alcohol services.
It's a hard road, sorry op, put children first, tough love and don't accept any nonsense, he can only use help if he wants to. Good luck

Addicts have to want to end their addiction. It sounds that your DH does not want to. So you should do what protects your children and you. And any ultimatum must be 100% stuck to, if you say you leave if he takes drugs once more, no change of mind, no backing down.

Incidentally, my view is that if you believe that the lives of black people matter, taking illegal drugs is contrary to this, as those most likely to be killed, injured or arrested for drug offences or as the result of the trade (as opposed to taking drugs) remain young black men.

OP made it clear that cocaine/drug use was a relationship deal breaker.

Her DH decided to start doing drugs again.

OP has children and enough to on her plate. Dealing with a lying drug addict on top of work, children, home, herself is too big an ask imo. And beware the family finances; I'd secure at least half and look to legally distance myself as soon as possible. so you're not funding his addiction.

I'd tell him to go.

OP this is worse than you know. He is not a very occasional user who has slipped up because of stress. He uses often and he planned this, he basically waited til you went to bed then organised the drop off (which won't be by the dealer for those who think that, taxi drivers, delivery drivers etc do drug drop offs). He has absolutely done this before and his problem is way worse than you want to believe or are saying here (but I think you know that).

It's incredibly difficult being in a relationship with someone who has an addiction (he definitely does from his behaviour whether you believe it or not). You love them, you know they can live a 'normal' life, they're a good husband and father etc. But overshadowing all that is the desperate need for drugs/alcohol or whatever.

You cannot control this, you can't change it, and you can't cure it, the only person who can do that is him.

So you need to decide what you want to do. Ultimatums won't work. Your choice is stick with him, addictions and all, or end it because it's a deal breaker for you. But remember, this is not just about the two of you, there are children in the mix. You have to decide what's right for them, a drug using Dad living with them, or to be protected from the eventual effects of his drug use. Just because they don't see it doesn't mean it won't affect them.

I have been where you are and lived that life for years. It was the worst thing I've ever experienced and I wish I'd got out much sooner. I wanted to believe it would be ok in the end. But hope and self delusion doesn't change anything.

My advice is end it and mean it. What he does next is up to him.
Support is available to you from drug support charities, and the likes of Women's Aid. This sort of thing is far more common than people realise. My experience really opened my eyes to what goes on behind the closed doors of seemingly nice families. Don't be one of those.

You poor darling Imarriedanaddict.
You must be in such shock.
Posters haven't minced their words in their replies to you.
Do you have family or friends locally who can support you.
Financially are you ok at the moment ?
Someone advised you to transfer money out of any joint account and open a bank account that only you have access to. Wise advice
What amount of money would a cocaine addict spend a week ?
You have two little ones to care for.
It's not going to be easy.
Your life has now changed. But you can do it.
Keep posting here, the support and insights given by other Mumsnetters is invaluable.