Author: Ironic
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 1:35 pm
| stephent wrote: |
| To be honest, it really sounds like your husband does not want to get clean. Suboxone is a "tool" or "aide", it will not do the work for you. Your husband can be doing all sorts of things with the pill. Keep in mind, they take quite some time to dissolve. You are correct in assuming that meetings can be used to find connections. Just like anything else, the will has to be there. People are court ordered to meetings (which is wrong IMO, but that is off topic). I do not attend meetings anymore, but I found good and bad people. I will say that they were very helpful in the beginning. They seem to keep people honest. If your husband choses to make more negative connections at a meeting it is nobody’s fault but his own. When you go to meetings you can tell who is serious and who is not. Furthermore, you are allowed to go to NA meetings while high, but you cannot talk at them. This is explained at the start of each and every single NA meeting all over the world. Like I said, I did not end up sticking with the 12 steps, but I gave it a very honest try. 90 meetings in 90 days (actually more than that), two different sponsors and trying the steps.
"Any suggestions would be appreciated. I don’t know how to help him anymore." Simply put, stop enabling him if you are and make him face consequences. To be blunt, you really need to start preparing your next move for you and your kids. What are you going to do if he keeps using? Enabling is just as bad as using. Maybe think about an intervention? Possibly put something in writing with consequences and keep it simple. Like "You must attend this many meetings" or "this consequences". Or "You must go to a rehabilitation center to get assessed and you must sign releases for me to read/talk to the social worker" (To make sure he is honest). The chemically dependent can only quit if they really really want to. It takes a very strong desire. Nobody but the person themselves can make the steps needed to stop. Sometimes people can be pushed towards that decision when they start facing consequences. Denial is very strong in many chemically dependent people. The duration that a person remains in denial varies. I was able to get over mine pretty quickly, however, I had been trying to quit on my own off and on (with various rates of success and failure) for at least two years. This was with no suboxone and no help, still keeping it a "secret" (not a very good one). It was only once I went away to a rehabilitation center, got on Suboxone, LISTENED TO WHAT OTHERS SAID (this is key) and as time went on figured out what would and would not work for me that I had any real success. I am a week or two away from a year. I say all this with no intention of malice or insult. I was a social worker for many years and worked in Child Protective Services. I have worked with lots of families in your situation. Keep in mind that CPS workers do not care what color you are, what religion you are, how much money you have, if you are gay or straight or where you live. The last thing you want is something happening that causes them to get involved. At the end of the day, you need to do what is best for you and your children. If you husband is serious, he will put the work in. If he isn’t willing to do that…. Keep in mind that your husband is very likely not seeing things very clearly. However, that is not an excuse. I think it sounds as if he needs to be evaluated for a rehabilitation center. Taking some time off from "the real world" and getting his priorities straight may be the best thing for him. Things do not become clear automatically for most of us. It wasn’t until I had three months "clean" that I was able to look back and thing "WTF was I doing/thinking?" This is also around the time when I realized that it is a heck of alot easier and better for me to not use. |
+1 on most of this post, except for the meetings thing. NA’s official position is that people on maintenance drugs are not "clean," so I do not think it is right to try and make meetings a condition of anyone’s recovery.
Actually, you shouldn’t be forcing recovery on him. He is a grown man. You seem to have provided multiple ways and means of support, and he is rejecting them. I agree that you need to do what is best for your family. If he isn’t ready to stop, and is too selfish to stop for his family (I do not believe in 100% powerlessness, if that were true, none of us here would be off dope. It is also SUPER selfish for him to have you pay for Suboxone when he wastes it), then maybe he needs to go out on his own until he is ready to stop.
This is a study rating 48 methods of treatment. #1 was "brief intervention" consisting of a doctor sitting down with the addicted person and explaining the harm he is doing and will continue to do to him/herself until they stop.
AA rated #38..
