I Am an Addiction Survivor, but I Am Not an Addict

I Am an Addiction Survivor, but I Am Not an Addict

Addiction is a disease. You hear this phrase all of the time. I have no qualms about this phrase, of course, it’s a disease. It ransacks your body, takes what was once yours, and turns it into something barely recognizable to you or your family. Addiction is a painful, impossible, back-breaking kind of disease. But those afflicted with this disease are not the only ones who feel like “survivors.”

I met my husband when I was eighteen years old. We have this beautiful type of love that knows no bounds; he takes me into his arms in the kitchen and dances me around, he spends weeks in the hospital with me to support me as I go through hell dealing with my own health burdens, and every few months he falls back into his old habits. He doesn’t do the crazy stuff, his job is far too important for that, but he gets by on what he can handle: CBD laced with crank, weed, and probably the most terrifying of them all: cough syrup, the kids call it "lean." The latter has been our battle for the past year. If you don’t know the side effects I'll give you an example: by the end of his really bad addiction stage, he was hearing news reporters in his head. This drug sends you into mental psychosis, a slow and painful swirl into the oblivion of not being able to control your own mind, your own actions. He began to feel symptoms of manic depression, swinging between the most monstrous highs and stomach hurling lows. Please, do not misconstrue my story as one of a perpetual drug battle, it’s not. My husband has more self-will than he can really understand. He knows how to come off of drugs, and he can do it well, but it never stays gone for long.

But this is not his story, this is mine. This is the story of those not feeling the high. Those who remember the heart-shattering conversations with someone who is too far in the clouds to remember your pain. My husband and I have been on this vicious merry-go-round for years. It goes like this. One day I come home to him high. (Remember what I said about our breathtaking love? That love allows me to notice even the slightest difference in his personality, and after all of these years, I know his mannerisms when he is not in this world anymore.) The feelings vary depending on how old I am, when I was 19 and 20 it was a sinking feeling of “Why am I not enough to keep you happy?” After a few more years it turned into, “Why do you keep leading me into believing you? Why do I trust you again and again?” That is just the first reaction, what comes after is much worse. I won’t dwell on the girl who believed everything would be white fences, happy careers, and a dog playing in the backyard. She is gone, and this story is not about her. This story is about the human being left after that young girl is gone, what she has become, what I have become.

I do my best to forgive his trespasses. Addiction is a disease. But I have a disease too. It is terminal, I won’t live through it, I will leave this world because my body won’t sustain the life I love so much. I fight for my life. And because he can go months without these drugs, I know he can fight for his too. It’s a choice. So I have become someone who resents his tendencies. It is not me, it is not who I am, but I want him to hurt like I do. I want him to snap out of the high, come back down to the ground, and feel the world shatter around him like I do every time I’m naive enough to believe we are in the clear. I have never been a vengeful, vindictive person. My soul aches when I don’t forgive him, I hate myself for turning cold, but it is happening without my consent.

Our most recent run-in with the brick wall that is his addiction was fairly recent. I came home, and he was coming down from two bottles of cough syrup. To put this into perspective, we have only been married a few months. Before our marriage, he told me not to marry him if he fell to his addiction again. He didn’t, and we got married. You can see why this particular instance of regression pained me more than the others; we had staked our marriage on his being clean. I was torn into pieces that day. However, unlike before, my pieces were not sad, they were dejected and sullen, an ominous cloud which covered everything in our relationship, a mingling of apathy, “I’m not enough,” and “How dare you.” It was only after I lost my feelings of self-pity that I realized I was blaming him for something that was not his own.

His mother has bipolar depression and so do his siblings. Naivety had once again allowed me to overlook vital information in our relationship. I started watching him more closely and tracking his behaviors. After reading multiple medical journals, I decided that my loving husband had "hypomanic bipolar disorder." More specifically, it was a dual-diagnosis; bipolar paired with his self-medicating nature.

I had also diagnosed myself. A self-pitying girl in her mid-twenties who wanted someone to blame for the hand she had been dealt in life. It wasn’t even my life. I was mad at a man who could not help his condition, I was mad at my end of the bargain, I was mad that he was trying to alleviate the clamor in his head. I was mad at my inability to control the situation. Worst of all, I was mad that I had a disease I couldn't stop, one that would take me away from him, and I was mad that his disease seemed so much easier than mine. I was wrong.

Despite my anger and apathy, this does not become a story of self-pity; after realizing that this was a true condition, that my husband needed help, I was on a mission to rectify what I had already broken. I figured out that CBD oil (one that does not contain THC) had been used in multiple clinical trials and had actually succeeded in regulating the serotonin imbalances associated with bipolar. Within the week I saw a change in my husband. He was a new man, one who felt he could change and prove to me that he could be the man I married. I saw a change in my husband, one that did not require psychotropic drugs and hospitals. I suppose this is tinged with a certain irony, I grew up in hospitals myself, but I did not trust them this time. Not with him. He didn't need to be drugged, he needed to be healed.

I am not an addict, but I am an addiction survivor, I have crawled through those caverns and caves, I have come out on the other side. I have also realized that my cave is of no comparison to the Marianas Trench out of which my husband was trying to climb. My story is one of realization and learning, pain and fear, sacrifice and awe. My story is that of someone who feels the pain of addictions symptoms, but not the cut of its knife. I am eternally grateful for my experience and to my husband. Before this point, I simply told people to “get over it,” that they “did this to themselves.” That is not always the case. As an addiction survivor, I hope to make people understand. Not every story will be like mine, but every story will have a similar goal: to break free of the burden.

I suppose if you made it this far, you are wondering why I am writing this, what's the point? My point is to hopefully inspire those that feel the same way I did: alone, scared, rejected, and looked over. I want to inspire them to look closer, to stop focusing on themselves. If your relationship is toxic, leave. But if what you have is beautiful and irreplaceable and this is the black dot on your white canvas, please don't let it stay there. Stop staring at that dot, stop yelling at it, telling it to get off of your perfect canvas. Pick up your brush and paint over it, take action. Stop doing the same thing over and over again whilst expecting a new result.

All my love and respect for your struggle,

Renee'