No one is immune to Addiction

There's something about the word ADDICTION. It sounds nasty, mean, dirty and wrong. It makes you think of homeless on the streets. Crack addicted babies and their mommas. One thing it doesn't make you think of is a middle class father of 2. My husband.

A little background, my husband was hurt at work in the summer of 2008. It was a bad injury requiring 3 surgeries, therapy and drugs. Heavy duty pain medication. OxyContin. I have never personally known anyone who takes oxycontin, however that medication carries the stigma of being highly addictive. And it is.

Fast-forward a year and a half, and the accident is still ruling out lives. At the beginning of November I found out that my husband was addicted to the pain medication that he was prescribed to help him cope with the pain. He had taken the whole prescription in 10 days, it was meant for 30. Now he was causing the rest of us pain as well. He sat me down and told me that he was going into withdrawls and needed to either find some Oxy off the street or find a methadone clinic. Off he went in search of a methadone clinic. He couldn't get into one that day and needed something. Stopped by the ER, they basically threw him out on the street and said deal with it. Finally he came home and called his Dr. He explained to them that he had taken his whole prescription and wanted to know what to do. They told him to go back to the ER and explain what was going on and make an appointment for Monday morning. So that's what we did. Long story short, the dr. changed the meds from OxyContin to Methadone. So far so good. At least that is what i thought until last night.

Last night as i sit on the couch checking out the bank account online I notice large ATM withdrawls. Even though these withdrawls had been anywhere from 1-3 months ago, i questioned him on them. He tried to tell me that he was paying bills with money orders. I KNOW for a fact that it was a lie. All of our bills except 1 are paid online thru automatic payment. So i questioned him again. Finally he told me, he was buying more Oxy on the streets. Street value for Oxy is normally $1 per milligram. Ouch! He was probably buying either 60 or 80 mgs. I don't know for sure. Either way, that's a lot of money coming out of an account every other day or so.

So last night he tells me all of this. I sit here dumbfounded and shell shocked. Don't know what to think or feel. I am angry that he let this happen. I am angry that i didn't see it happening. (in retrospect i did. I questioned him and he turned it around on me). I am angry that he put himself and his addiction before his family. If he has lied to me about this what else is out there that he has lied to me about? I now am questioning my trust in him. I am questioning his addiction history and wondering if something of this caliber is going to happen again. I feel betrayed, let down, and angry.

The only positive that i can find in this whole mess is that he is going to counseling. He has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Clinical Depression. I am hopeful that he will address these addiction problems with her and that I can once again trust him as the person that i once knew.