I have a partner of a couple of years who I am in love with. He told me at the beginning of our relationship that he "used" to have a drug problem. I have (perhaps naively and fortunately) not had much experience with drugs or drug addicts, neither myself or my friends and family over the years, so I do not understand substance addiction and its effects on relationships.
As the relationship has gone on there have been a few instances where he has binged on cocaine and a multitude of other drugs and ended up hospitalised. Same thing happened again last night. I feel completely naive to it all. I want to be able to process this and the psychological effect it is having on me and our relationship and understand what I can control and help with, and what is just enabling him. Please bear with me..
Please could you tell me if this is a common feeling when in a relationship with a drug addict:
- I had a constant feeling in my stomach and low level anxiety that he was not okay. It was nothing that he said or did to me (in fact, he was a very good boyfriend, good to be in a relationship with, consistent with contact, kind etc) but I always felt like something could happen to him any moment, or something unpredictable might happen, or he was unsafe or his health might take a turn. It was the equivalent of waking up in the night and feeling like someone you love is dead or has been hit by a car ALL the time. I ha a big instinct to coddle him and nurture him and I had never been like this before. This was even before the first binge when I had no evidence.
- Sometimes when I am with him I feel this feeling of constant low boil emotional instability coming off of him. It gives me real cognitive dissonance, because on the surface, all our interactions, meetings, even spending long periods of time together, he appears happy, content, in love. He never displayed emotional instability with me, but I'd feel it within him like an electric current. This causes me to jump into a full on "pleasing" mode to try and get it to go away, even though what I am dealing with or trying to solve is obviously intangible. Or I take on the responsibility to make him happy in that moment and it feels like a huge burden. I just keep wanting to do more and I can't. It feels like a giant hole.
- I can't find a pattern as to why he does it. Like I can't see what the triggers are, he can't articulate what it is. Conversations about it are hard to fathom, he's fatalistic drug taking.
- I feel helpless, like there is nothing I can say or do to help him or change anything. Like last night he binged on cocaine, alcohol and sleeping pills and is now in a terrible condition. I feel like I am just hanging round the edges. Telling him I love him, looking after him, going out of my way to make stuff better for him day to day, in the end makes no difference.
- I feel pressure to be a replacement for the addiction. Like if I am not around or I have to leave or have other commitments, or I don't spend as much time with him as he needs, I feel like he will binge on drugs.
^^ all this is unconscious, he never says anything, he is always very nice and lovely to me, I just FEEL it and react to it.
Does anyone have a similar experience? Am I being co-dependent?