Divorce... Maybe

When James was less than a year old, I called 911 because Eli had overdosed on over-the-counter cough syrup.  It was something he read about on-line and seemed new and exciting. It was a terrifying day for me. Thankfully the kids didn’t see them roll him away on a stretcher. I put on a video in our bedroom and they remained clueless. I thank God for this every time I remember that day. He came home from the hospital that night and 2 days later did it again. Obviously this was a problem we would have to deal with. We have spent the last 10 years going to support groups, counseling, and rehab to help with this problem. I have also spent a lot of time in prayer.

In addition to overdosing on cough syrup, he looks at pornography to further his high. This hurts me even more deeply. As a woman and as a wife I have had my self-esteem shattered by this habit. He has been seeing a therapist that specializes in this kind of behavior for almost 2 years now. There has been some progress, but I still live a life riddled with lies and deception. There is a double life that he leads that keeps me second-guessing my intuition and sanity. Catching him in the act of using or finding clues that tell me has done it recently make my heart shut down and my mind reel.  I feel like a detective in my own house. I have spent many years working on my issues and trying to be the best wife I can be for him.  I have committed myself to reading God’s word every day and trying to make his addictions about something other than me.  And yet, they feel so personal. Every time. I often remind him that every time I catch him in a lie or high from substances, a little piece of my heart dies and closes off to what we could have as a couple. I long to trust him and share with him, but I feel guarded because of this behavior.

Recently he was caught shoplifting while getting his drug of choice at a Rite-Aid. He is now banned from all Rite-Aid stores and we are paying a fine of $300. I don’t really know that this behavior will ever end.  I know that he has struggled with depression all of the years we’ve been together and I have been supportive as much as I know how. His therapist has also added a severe mood disorder to his diagnosis. This means that I live with extremes all of the time. I am exhausted and heart-broken and I don’t know what else to do. When he lost his job 2 years ago, I had him stay at his parents' for 6 weeks while I let my heart mend. God has been so good to me. He softens my heart every time I feel betrayed and gives me a new love for my husband. It has been truly amazing.

At this point, however, I am not willing to wait for the softening of my heart. I am now 40 years old and starving for a marriage that feels real and honest. I want nothing more than to build a life with someone and share all of me. I don’t think this will ever happen for Eli and me. I still love him. I love him desperately. But I can’t live like this anymore. Please forgive me. Please know that I have tried everything to save this relationship. Please support me and support him and support our children. This road will not be easy. It is truly the last thing I want to do.

Linsey

Five Finger Discount

I had to ask the Starbucks girl for chocolate-covered graham crackers – they were behind the counter. She said an “old lady” steals them so the staff hide them. Ooh, that hurts. Did they talk about me that way? Back when I stole their CDs?

Starbucks was one of the main stops in Eli's little theft ring back in my kleptomaniac days. What do they expect? They display all their merchandise out in the open and the employees are frantically distracted making drinks. If you don't frequent Starbucks (first of all, why?) they feature about four CDs at a time in a little display in front of the register. These change throughout the year. I think there's a section of my massive CD collection that's almost exclusively Starbucks CDs, and not one of them was paid for. Probably a couple of year's worth.

I didn't steal like a drug-addict, to fund my habit. I stole for the thrill of it. CDs and DVDs, electronics, office supplies, jewelry, music equipment, sex toys, and of course, that cornerstone of my addictive behaviors, over-the-counter cough syrup. I guess in a sense, I did steal to fund my drug habit. I was just lucky enough (?) to be able to steal my actual drug. None of this stealing-and-hawking that Linsey's older brother had to do. (When she was a teenager, nothing my wife hid was safe. Her brother hawked all of her jewelry for PCP.)

A guy in my SAA group told me he had been a shoplifter as well, and he understood. He understood what happens in my brain when I steal. He said that studies had shown it was similar to a heroin rush, on a smaller scale. I don't know what “studies” he was referring to, I just know that I kept going back for more.

I kept track. I had a spreadsheet that summed the total estimated value of what I had stolen. When it reached $5,000 I stopped recording it. I stole from family and friends, schools, libraries, mom-and-pop joints, corporate giants, and every drug-store I could find. I delighted in getting around preventative measures. Cameras and alarm systems were just a challenge.

I don't know how I will make amends for all of this. I'm not trying to figure that out just yet. I'm just trying to root out the buried memories of all those offenses and make my fourth step as accurate as possible. I'm guessing I'll have to wade through some combination of written apologies and financial retributions. I don't know how I'll pay for these - it gives me a stomach ache.

A counselor once told me that stealing-as-an-addiction betrays buried anger. It does. I felt the world owed me. Cleptomaniacs and Shoplifters Anonymous asks “How much would you have to steal to finally feel satisfied or to make life fair?” Like any other addiction, there's never enough. Never.

So if you work in a Southern California drug store, and you've ever found three empty cough syrup boxes and the empty packaging for a Durex vibrating cock ring stashed behind the dog food, I'm sorry. Shame isn't a strong enough word. I was trying to get away from real life, to my “bubble”, pleasantly high and having sex with a computer. And I didn't want to leave a purchase trail that my wife could find.

I just need to make sure this habit stays in the past.

Falling and Not Falling

Day 68

Ashley fell off a horse last night and broke her arm. Actually, the horse stumbled and dumped her. (She made sure everybody knew this, from Grandma to the X-ray technician.) She takes weekly horseback riding lessons at a little stables. It's crammed between the freeway, some car dealerships, and the Santa Ana “River.” A little hay-lined hole in my asphalt-lined county.

At one point I kind of freaked out, realizing that the grown-up here was me, not my wife or my mom. I called our HMO and eventually got connected to the emergency room. The lady told me that I sounded pretty excited and anxious, and to be sure to drive carefully. I had to laugh. Calm down, me.

What mattered through all this was: I got to be her dad. I had the privilege of running out to her little crumpled body and putting my arm around her. I got to help her stand, wipe her eyes, and tell her that everything was gonna be OK. I got to sit next to her in the emergency room. We watched "Prince Caspian" without any sound on the little TV hanging from the ceiling. She made me cover her eyes when Susan shot the bad guys, because she couldn't stand to watch them fall off their horses. That's the kind of stuff you remember.

There is nothing in my life like hearing her call me “daddy.” Nothing. It's one of the first things on my gratitude list. Ashley's “daddy.”

When I was first getting high, I took both the kids into the pool in the middle of the night. It was freezing. James was only a few years old, and couldn't swim. They thought I was fun. I've driven them to school when I couldn't stand up straight. I've stolen DVD's with them sitting in my shopping cart. James once saw the pornography on my monitor. Mostly, I've been distracted while I made my evil plans.

I remember Ashley crying because her babysitter's daughter had been mean to her. Could she please never go back to that house? What she didn't know was that the only reason I took her there was to see that babysitter. She was the one who paid attention to me during the bad years. What if it had gone further? What if I'd slept with her? Then how much would Ashley pay for my selfishness?

In the pharmacy, I saw my drugs. The demons peaked over the wall. I heard their voices. They call it “euphoric recall.” The overwhelming warmth, the ecstasy in every nerve ending, the surrender. When I'm high I don't just forget my problems. My mind believes it's solved them all. I stop being anxious because nothing looks broken. But I “played the tape all the way through.” The lying and the loneliness, the knots in my stomach. Linsey, taking care of a broken child by herself. And Ashley, hurting and afraid.

I ignored the voices, like John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind.” Did they stop talking to me?

No, they did not.

They followed me around for a while. But that's OK. Because so did James – my bored little six-year old, tired of the emergency room. And I was sober, and I wasn't afraid.

On the way home I asked him how much he weighed. Sixty-four pounds, he said. He's proud to be over sixty pounds – this means he doesn't have to ride in a car seat. I asked him if he knew about the "chocolate bar law." I told him that he hasn't reached the eighty pound minimum for eating chocolate while riding in a car. If he didn't want to get a ticket, he'd better give me his candy bar. For some reason he wouldn't believe me, so no chocolate for me.

But I was thankful to be his dad.

Resentments

Back to day 13. This is a long one, folks.

Last night I was drowning in resentment. The timing was strange, or fortunate, I’m not sure which, since last night was the three-year anniversary of the Celebrate Recovery group I attend. Everything was great – the music, the food, and I couldn’t stop the tears as I listened to one person after another share their stories. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the whole 12-step thing is about, this would have been a good introduction. You won’t find it in a book or a video, or in one person’s experience, but in a room full of people who are all over the map. There’s 24-years-sober-guy, the girl who just lost her kids after a DUI, the guy who went back to the bottle after 25 years when his wife died of cancer. And what we all share is humility. We’ve come to the end of ourselves and asked for help in our brokenness. It’s beautiful.

And thank God everyone doesn’t have it all figured out. I can handle the success stories because they’re bookended by guys I know, guys I’ve cried with, who are still fighting through it. They hurt every day, and rely on God, friends and groups to survive. Every night they remember the Big Book’s advice to search for “selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear,” [p84] and immediately ask God to remove them. (How did “fear” get into this list? That’s a question for another post.)

One day at a time, one word at a time. Resentment. It haunts me and poisons me, it permeates my speech, my thoughts, my sleep. How many times have I sung about bringing my stuff to the “foot of the cross?” How many times have I done it?

Linsey, these are my resentments towards you today. Can I pour them out without prefacing each with my own apologies, my own failures? If I write them here, can I begin to heal? At next year’s celebration, will I be able to put my arms around you when others share about their healed marriages?

I resent the way you drift off to sleep after you’ve hurt me or we’ve argued. Since I am not a survivor of abuse, I do not know how to turn off my feelings of betrayal, anger, sadness, arousal, and most often loneliness. These feelings intensify and fill the darkness like the sound of your snoring. And then I am struck by that odd sense of indignity when someone doesn’t confront you or even avoid you, but rather simply ignores you. I hear: You’re not even worth the time it would take to argue.

I resent the way you responded when I gave you the flyer for a “sexual abuse survivor group.” That night seems like so long ago, when we attended our first Celebrate Recovery. I was broken and hurting, and nervous sick to walk into a church full of addicts, and yet was feeling some hope for our marriage. We had finally put the basic pieces together: I’m an addict and you’re a survivor, and we were going to do this together! Last night, Gerri shared about her first night at CR. She had come to see exactly what it was her fiance (my cousin Jack) did on Friday nights. She decided on that first night that she would be a part of this, every Friday, with Jack at her side. I waited four years for you to come with me. I hear: I’ll get better when I feel like it, but don’t you dare screw up again.

I resent what you said Thursday night after we made love. You had asked me earlier why I had been burying myself in hobbies, why I’d been unavailable. Because you’re dangerous, I said. Opening up my daily life to you costs me, and sometimes I can’t pay. I’m emotionally broke. Trust me, you said. Then, like normal people, we ate and talked, watched TV and went to bed. It wasn’t perfect or awful, just good. (“She didn't make me miserable, or anxious, or ill at ease. You know, it sounds boring, but it wasn't. It wasn't spectacular either. It was just good. But really good.” –Rob, High Fidelty) And when we finished, I let down my guard and felt joy. Those fucking orgasm hormones, they make me love you so deeply, and life turns OK – everything turns OK. And when I told you how I felt, you rolled away and said you wished it didn’t mean so much to me. You wished you didn’t have that much power over my feelings, that much responsibility.

You know, when I got married, the James Dobsons of the world had me convinced that if I just WAITED until I got married, we’d both feel that good. I gave up on that pretty fast. Then I read some other Christian book on marriage, and it said that it’s OK when the woman just finds joy in giving. She doesn’t need or even want "her turn" every time. So I learned, I accepted, that you won’t enjoy sex like I will, and we agreed to find meaning and legitimacy in the nights when I needed you like oxygen, and you let me breathe. But Thursday night, even that was too much. I heard: I can’t tolerate you feeling that happy.

I resent that your recovery is so different from mine. At CR last night, I heard all these women get up and share that they were in recovery for COSA (Codependents of Sex Addicts?), which more often than not means that they are abuse survivors. (I'll never forget when a counselor at Kaiser rehab said, "and we all know that the codependents are worse than us 'cause they do their shit sober.") Some took chips “for various lengths of recovery” which is an interesting variation on the AA phrase “for various lengths of sobriety.” What does it mean when a COSA person takes a 90-day chip? That she didn’t clam up and make her husband feel like a rapist for the last three months? And that’s what pisses me off. I have an addiction – “cunning, baffling, powerful.” [p58] I’ve spent years of my life getting up before sunrise to go to morning meetings of AA, SAA, NA, CR, rehab. I try, read and read and read, fight, surrender, write. There’s this line of people stretching back into the past that I’ve sat down with, one by one, and told that I’m helpless and sick, that I use drugs, look at pornography, steal things. I beg and beg, weeping on my knees in front of God, for release from the constant, maddening drive towards the substances that will put out the fires in my mind and body. They haunt me every single day. And I can do this without fail, for days and weeks and months, then blow it all in a moment of weakness when a handful of pills seems like a more responsible release than suicide, and I have to fucking start all the way back at zero. And tell everybody who loves me that I’m a failure. Again.

And maybe this is more of what was going on last night than I know. Because a couple of weeks ago, I compulsively swallowed a handful of medicine that I knew contained my “drug-of-choice”, and I told Heidi in our counseling session, like I promised I would. And that was it. It’s out. I didn’t hide it like so many times before, the times when I rationalized that I hadn’t gone to the store to buy (or steal) the real stuff, I hadn’t laundered money for some porn site, I hadn’t called that girl from the emotional affair. The last time I relapsed, I did the real thing (except contact that girl) and I laid in bed next to you multiple nights, high for hours, looking at porn on my phone. Yeah I know, it hurts to say it out loud. This time, if it even was a relapse, I took some pills that made me sleepy.

Since I began recovery two markers have gradually moved up a scale which charts my progress. At the bottom of this scale is my addict, at the top is the perfect creation God intended. One marker represents my behavior. It has moved up! I am getting better, I am accepting the strength of my higher power. But higher up the scale is a marker for my standards, my definition of sobriety. It continues to be a few steps beyond my behavior. I had months and months of sobriety in those earlier years that didn’t contain a week of sobriety by the standards I hold today. Through much work and agonizing, I’ve gradually expanded my “inner circle” of behaviors that I choose to abstain from. I’ve come to see that many things that seemed harmless, or maybe just wasteful, have repeatedly led me back to “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.” [p30] (In other areas, I’ve relaxed, and grown to accept imperfections and weaknesses.) Today, I choose honesty, disclosure, vulnerability. As an addict, I cannot wait until the world falls apart to declare a new sobriety date. I took a step, a small step, back into substance abuse, and even though I didn’t give into other addictive behaviors, I must start over. I’ll write it in my Big Book, below the other crossed out dates, like my first sponsor told me. September 15, 2008.

Starting Over

Day 1 (again)
I'm starting over. Again. Don't feel like writing much but I should at least document it.

I used last night after we got home from the airport. That's the addict, always trying to squeeze one more in before I really get sober. And just for clarity, "using" for me usually means a combination of porn and drugs. The drugs are over-the-counter and prescriptions, both used in "recreational" quantities (as opposed to prescribed quantities.) I've never really been involved with "street" drugs, thank God. From what I've seen, getting off of meth is wicked hard. On the other hand, when I got hauled to the ER in an ambulance several years ago, my blood tested positive for heroin, and all I'd done was abuse a medicine that anyone can buy at Wal-Greens.

This seems like a good time to reprint my "Goodbye Letter" to my addictions. It was required writing in a two-week rehab at my HMO. I've been through it twice.

Dear Drugs & Alcohol,

I read in my 12 & 12 last night that even when things are good, we as alcoholics still drink to reach for even greater dreams. [p71] The word “dream” caught my eye. Everything you gave me was a dream. I felt sorry for myself because my marriage was awful and I turned to you for help. At first you just numbed me, covering up the anger, the arousal, and the adrenaline, allowing me to go to sleep. That’s all I ever intended, but you seduced me further. I look back now and see that you were part of a lie that told me I could fill in the void. Alcohol, you took away my inhibitions, and stopped me from feeling guilty. You made me feel OK when I covered over my loneliness by turning to other women for affection and porn for sex. Drugs, then you made it all seem real by filling my head with hallucinations and giving me the feeling of being connected, of being cared for. And of course it was all a dream. This dream was so convincing that I chased you for years. When I looked at what I was doing because of you I was disgusted, and I hated that loser. Now I’m learning to hate you, because you chained me there, stoned in front of the computer screen, slowly destroying my marriage and my life.

Here’s what I have to say to you: I don’t need you anymore. I don’t want you anymore. You’re not welcome in my life. Stay the fuck away from me. Your dream is my nightmare and I’ve decided to wake up to real life. The first thing you should know is that I’m learning to love myself, and I don’t need a woman to make me complete. I don’t care if the world takes my wife away, I’ll never turn to you again. You can forget the other tricks you used too: telling me I’m not good enough for my job, my kids, whatever. I don’t believe it anymore. Having said that, I hope it pisses you off that when I chose to leave you behind, I was able to begin learning how to be a husband, and my marriage is coming back. I’ve felt the worst things you’ve had to throw at me in the last months, and I’m still here. There is so much left that I have to do, and so much more that I am capable of. I have a great life ahead of me, full of new experiences and people who love me just the way I am. And you won’t be a part of it.

God let it be true this time.

Still High

Hey! It's me. Thanks for reading the first couple lines of my blog. I'll get right to the point.

I'm still high.

So this might not be my best writing. But I had an idea just now that requires me to introduce myself NOW (not later) and I want to run with it. My name's Eli, and I'm a drug addict. Well, kind of. The original "I'm Eli and I'm an alcoholic" kind of snow-balled on me; I think the latest is "I'm Eli, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and I struggle with drugs, alcohol, and sexual addiction." Anyways, please don't leave. Don't close this window. I need you. You are going to help me stay sober.

I'm trying to type as quietly as I can, which is a little hard because my left hand is still shaking. I don't want Linsey (the wife) to wake up completely, because then I might get caught. She might notice that my words come in short bursts, and I have trouble with some of the consonants. Or maybe the dry-mouth will give me away. Or the strange marionette-like way that I walk when I've "used." More on that later. For now, the main thing I want to share with you is the bizarre mixture of elation and dread that I feel. I want to invite you into my life. I'm gonna spill it all. For real.