How did I get involved again?
Analie’s situation was horrendous. She’d broken up with her post-me boyfriend after some abuse in or around October of 2023. In the meantime she’d hooked up with some drug addicts, including some that were near death.
She’s lost her last three jobs due to addiction, the last one due to being drunk and high on the job. She’s spent most of the last two years unemployed. Going to work regularly and doing anything while she is there is impossible in her current addicted state.
She has no car. The last one was turned in due to requiring repairs she couldn’t afford. The shop took the salvage. She did not complete her DUI ignition interlock program, so she retains a restricted driver’s license and can’t drive without the interlock. Which means most cars, and has no money to do the installation.
She has nearly $0. I arranged for the sale of a lawnmower a week and a half ago and this is the $800 she is living on right now.
She’s a crack addict, and has spent over $250,000 on it in the last two years. She started doing low level dealing and ride-alongs to various locations to pay for her crack once the money ran out. Before that she had done OnlyFans porn to make money, but as you can see that’s history, no one is going to pay much money to watch that person in the picture do porn.
Her credit is wrecked. She has a half-completed bankruptcy which she never got done with, so about $60k in bad credit card debt from the crack sprees remains on it. She can’t get a loan or even open a bank account.
In addition to the crack, she drinks heavily. Ranting endlessly about whomever has power over her in any way. The rest of the world is to blame for the decisions she has made. Her mother, who lived with her at the time, was the one at fault for everything wrong with her life, even though this was the person enabling and supporting her in toto. In a certain way she was right – the enabler is always a strong contributor to the problem.
So I was unable to resist when Analie was on her last legs. I wanted to help her out of the hole she was in. My first step was to solve the constant problems with her mom. Analie was blotto all the time in the house, not wanting to deal with her mom. I tried to calm the situation down, but the addict can’t be calmed down.
Eventually her mom came to realize that the situation was awful and that she should leave. She has done so. That left me as Analie’s target, of course. I thought I could help her get into a rehab. I took some of her valuables to store at my place, packed up her mom’s stuff, since her mom didn’t want to come back. Offered to put her up at my place when she got out of inpatient.
Her mom only paid the rent through 8/31/24. So she’s homeless after that.
Addicts don’t appreciate anything at all, and Analie is no exception. But Analie got more and more demanding of control and I pushed back against her. I told her i’d never tolerate a repeat of a four hour torrent of abuse during one of her rants on the night of 28 July. She started not taking my calls and tried to use control on me. I wasn’t having any of it. I realized she was just looking for another enabler. Eventually I told her she wasn’t welcome with me. Then more control attempts accompanied of course by drug and alcohol abuse. Finally I sent the farewell note at the bottom of the post.
What is the truth about Addiction?
I tried desperately to find a way to avoid the truth, that there is no way to actually help an addict. The consensus opinion is that they have to drag themselves under their own power to recovery, whether in meetings, or a rehab, or whatever means they choose. You cannot help them or do it for them.
Any attempt to ‘make it easier’ short-circuits the process because making it easier is enablement. That will cause them to avoid any change, because it’s more comfortable to stay an addict, regardless of how bad it might look from the outside.
Change is hard. But they must do it to avoid death, because early death is the likely fate of every addict.
Losing every interpersonal relationship is also the fate of the addict. Analie is well on her way to this.
Only consequences – losing financial support, your home and people in your life, will provide the conditions to change. Analie needs this terribly. I have done the best I can by leaving her (and her very sick mother, who I pity) behind.
My Farewell Note
Analie:
I know you couldn’t care less what I say, your addiction is more important to you than anything else. But i’m going to say this for myself, since I am more important to me. I saw you mailed me, which provoked both the creation of my e-mail rule for you and this response, though I have not read your mail and will not be anytime soon, as described below.
Control is a huge issue for both addicts and codependents. You wish to control others to further your addiction and get the enabling you require, and because it’s the essence of your disorder. I like control because I want to solve problems for others because I think I know better how others should live. But it’s really for me, not for you. I’ve tried to control you recently and I apologize. I lack the ability to deal in a healthy fashion with your active addiction, despite my attempts at recovery. It’s just true that generally we can’t. Everyone except another addict will feel mostly like I do around an active addict. But I still apologize because I know my reaction was wrong.
Feeling your control attempts and using my responsive control destroys my hard-won serenity and makes my life worse. This is why I have blocked you from texting and calling me and I don’t want to see you or speak to you again until you are ready to end your addiction, if that ever happens. I also don’t want to see anyone related to you, due to the fact that so many of your friends and relatives are unrecovered fellow addicts or unrecovered codependents that I cannot associate with for my own serenity’s sake. Therefore, I won’t be meeting with you or anyone related to you in any way, anytime in the near future – perhaps ever.
Don’t come near my house or near me – or send anyone. Your stuff isn’t at my house now anyway. It’s in storage, no point in keeping it here after yesterday.
You can sell my hand truck and whatever tools I left. I consider them lost since I want nothing to do with you as you are.
I’ll derive your list of items from what you’ve sent, once I read it. I probably won’t be reading your e-mail for several weeks. I’ll ship the items to an address you supply using a method of my choice in a time frame of my choice, at my own expense since I want nothing to do with you at ths time, or your family and friends.
You can expect the boxes to show up in 4-8 weeks from receipt of the address. Your control attempts won’t be permitted to damage my serenity – I will manage my own life in my own time frame. I’ve taken your e-mails and I will be archiving them automatically and will read them when I believe I have regained my serenity and can handle this task. Try not to include anything extraneous, it will simply slow down the process.
Once I regain my serenity, I will again be able to read your e-mail messages in real time and I will do so – it may be a while though. I probably won’t be turning texts and phone calls on again until you make clear you are ready for recovery, so who knows when that will happen.
I love myself. However, I do love you also – just less than I love myself. Thinking Nirvana song here – “love myself better than you”. I may see you, or speak to you again someday, but I cannot predict when that day might be, both because I need time to regain my serenity and you need to at least be ready to recover and shed your attempts at control before that would ever happen. You are not even close, i’m afraid, and neither is your mom, who is also sick with the same illness I have. Both of you have no capability but to use others for your own purposes at this time. I do wish you both luck in the journey to recovery, and hope you both find healing someday.
You don’t need to rush sending me an address – i’m not going to be even reading your messages anytime soon, and you can wait until you are assured of a permanent location for your stuff. I hope your whole moving process goes well for you, since it will be over most likely by the time I even see a message from you again. I hope a miracle happens for you soon. Now I need to check out from your situation, use my detachment with love – and I will.
-K
Does this all hurt?
Of course it does. I really did want to help her, but it’s not possible right now. She’s mired in the depths of addiction and still working with the local crack distributors. It’s unsafe to be around her and that will apply wherever she might go.
I told her that I would like to be in her life if she ever left addiction behind, and I meant it. But that is not today. She has to sink much further, it seems, to want to recover. So I will be sad for a while, but I will get better, send off my boxes hopefully. She may not find a place to land that is stable with this addiction problem. Who is going to tolerate this? She is _so_ not ready to go into a rehab. It will be utterly useless in her current mental state.
2 Responses
Wow. So very well written. I fear the fine words will be lost on her IF she would actually read them. I wouldn’t or couldn’t in the depths of my addiction. You have really captured the essence of the co-dependence and show a great example of strength to save yourself and your serenity.
You also nailed the rehabilitation program part. We have to be willing to go or it does not take. However, any little crack of willingness is enough to have hope. I know many who did not want to go to rehab, but once isolated from the toxic inputs, they gain enough sense to begin a desire to recover. Some just bide their time for a place to live. For those who find the willingness, there is hope.
Exposure to another addict / alcoholic is critical. They can plant into the mind of the another sufferer the true nature of the disease. Once this happens, they will never be able to use or drink the same. This is why rehabs, halfway houses, and meetings. Seem to help.
This is a great story to use as a tool to help us see the damage which happens on the “other side.”
There is a meeting that combines both sides of the disease into one meeting event with speakers from both side. I would love to introduce you as a speaker.
Thanks Tom for the kind words and the reassurance. I’d be glad to be a speaker!