In Love with an Addict and Am Having a Hard Time Making a Healthy Decision for Myself ...

by Ivy
(United States)

My brother at the young age of 15 got addicted to heroin and other sorts of opiates and hallucinogens.

Two years later he got help and became clean, throughout his addiction my boyfriend was very supportive and loving, but my boyfriend had a problem of his own which I came to find on my own.

He is addicted to pain pills - any kinds he can get his hands on. I did not find this out until quite a bit later, I found out he was taking them at school, at home, and stealing from his parents prescription bottles.

I talked to him several times and for a while there he had me going thinking he had given it up. Sure, he isn't to the point where he will spend money on a pill but he recently had a surgery and I was shown a text message he sent to his best friend about how he was planning to stash away all his pain meds that were given to him for his surgery and take a bunch to get high.

I believe he is an addict, even though he isn't doing it everyday, he does it any time he can get his hands on it. And he sits there and lies through his teeth and makes so many excuses ...

He has a new obsession with shrooms, and while those may not seem as bad as pain pills, they are, they are just as destructive and dangerous. I have shared my thoughts and concerns and worries, and have had many crying conversations with him, but he always selectively forgets or disregards the biggest points I am trying to get across (and makes excuses) ... and will even go as far as saying I'm telling him he can't have fun because I don't like drugs.

Dealing with my brother as long as I did, I know how addicts think, I know all about the lies, excuses, and guilt trips. Unfortunately it is much harder when you are romantically involved with someone and that sort of connection gets in the way of me making a healthy decision for myself, because really all I want to do is help him, and I'm realizing I can't.

I need to start helping myself. I really want to stay with him but it is all becoming too much. I need some good hard advice and honesty about what to do in a situation like this ...