My name is Jay and I’m a grateful recovering addict. My wife, we’ll call her Mary, is not an addict. Yet somehow, she’s still my wife today.
I wasn’t beaten, I wasn’t abused and I grew up in boring middle-class household in the Midwest. I’ve got absolutely nothing to point to other than genetics (and bad choices) to blame for my addiction. I used to wish that I did. I wanted something I could point a finger at, something I could be *angry* at for making me the way that I am. I wanted something that would absolve me of responsibility for my actions. But what I learned the hard way is that it didn’t matter why. I have a disease that will be with me, in some capacity, for the rest of my life and the choice I had was whether or not I wanted to get better.
The details themselves are dirty, messy and not the purpose of this article. Just know that it got really bad for a while. Lost career, lost friends, lost family and almost lost my life. It was at the lowest point, when I woke up handcuffed to a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, that my wife finally had enough. I don’t blame her. It had been 5 years watching me build my life back up into something respectable and solid, only to drop a hand grenade at our doorstep and blow it all up again. She was definitely co-dependent, but it was time to carve the cancer out of her life that was me, so she left.
It was only by the grace of my Higher Power that I resolved to finally accept my addiction and surrender to the principles of a 12-step program. I got a therapist certified in addiction counseling and started working a program with a sponsor. I slowly learned to live one day at a time and after about a year, my estranged wife began to see a change in me through my actions, not just the lip-service words I’d always provided in the past. We decided to try marriage counseling and found someone through BetterHelp that could help us make sense of what had happened to us and whether or not there was a path forward. That was a few years ago and today I’m so grateful to say that I’m nearly 5 years clean and sober and just celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary.
Part of my disease tricks me into isolating. It wants me to be inside my own head where I can lie to myself, rationalize my decisions and keep score against everyone else for perceived wrongs. My head breeds resentments like bunnies and it’s not a good place to be. Having people to talk to that understand me and understand my wife has been vital to our growth and the resurrection of our marriage and trust. It’s progress not perfection and it’s a day at a time, but today I am grateful for what happened, what we went through and the people we’ve both become.
