Finding the helpers when you love an addict
When you suspect that someone you care about has a substance problem, your first response might be to talk to a friend. But you have to be careful who you trust with your concerns. Fred Rogers’s mother tells us to look for the helpers in every situation, but partners of addicts learn early that not everyone who loves you can help.
Addiction is a highly, highly stigmatized disease. People tend to have strong feelings about both the disease and the people who suffer from it. Sometimes this is due to personal experience, like growing up with a parent who had a problem. Sometimes it’s because of how substance abusers are stereotyped in media, and sometimes — often — it’s a misunderstanding of the disease itself, beginning with the fact that it’s a disease, not a thing people do by choice.
The point is that once you tell someone you think your partner/sibling/child/other loved one might have a problem, prepare for that person’s perception of your loved one to change forever. Even if your beloved addict goes into treatment, people have a hard way of unlearning what they have learned.
I tried to hide my husband Charlie’s drinking problem from my family for many reasons. Shame and guilt, sure, but also because my mother is a self-described adult child of two alcoholics. She has strong feelings about drinking, whether casually or in excess, and while she and my dad tried to raise me and my sisters with healthy, respectful attitudes towards alcohol, we could always tell she didn’t like it when we turned eighteen and were allowed to have a beer at home.
The other reason is that my mom an Olympic champion at holding a grudge. I’m nearing forty years old but if I mention my boyfriend from the eleventh grade, the amount of pissing and moaning from my mom rivals that of a Baby Wets Herself doll. I let go of that heartbreak decades ago, but forgiveness is just not something my mom does.
My sisters, Ann (older) and Beth (younger) know this too, and so the three of us for many years have worked together to preserve some portions of our lives free from our mom’s judgment. I flatter myself that among the three of us, I did the best job at threading the needle between letting her know just enough that she felt like she had all the information she needed, without hounding Ann and Beth for details behind my back. Beth erred on the side of telling Mom too much, and Ann told her so little that she became paranoid about what Ann’s life was really like here in New York.
Ann and I were very close for a number of years. She moved from Chicago to New York after I did, and I deeply valued that I had somehow earned her trust after a childhood of us barely getting along. So I told Mom over and over again that I wasn’t going to be in the middle of their relationship. When Mom wanted to know how Ann was handling her latest breakup, her financial difficulties or her depression, I made it clear that I wasn’t going to tell her. She was going to have to go to the source, or live not knowing.
This means I didn’t let on to my mom, and certainly not my dad, when barely two months after Ann married Chris, she told me she wasn’t sure they were going to make it. In my reading, Ann and Chris were only really happy together for about six months; things went south when they got engaged and started constantly bickering, sometimes bringing Ann to tears in public. Both of them brought a good amount of personal debt to their partnership, and then they planned an expensive wedding, which did little to relieve pressure.
Years passed, and things never really got better for their marriage. Ann and Chris had a couple of kids. They moved to Boston where they could afford a bigger apartment, but that didn’t help so they came back to New York within a year. For a while, Ann had the kids by herself in New York while Chris worked in Boston. It was incredibly stressful for Ann, but Charlie and I were happy to pitch in with child care as much as we could. Eventually Chris got a job in New York and moved back.
It was a little less than a year later that my parents were visiting from Chicago, and offered to watch the children while Ann and Chris went out for a date night. Less than an hour later, though, Mom and Dad were relieved of babysitting when Ann stormed through the door sobbing and Chris trailed after her by about ten minutes. The secret — that their marriage was something other than a perfect fairy tale — was out.
My dad, predictably, said nothing, while my mom made it all about herself. She called Charlie and I from the hotel that night asking, why didn’t you tell me things were so bad? And, where did I go wrong as a mother? And, what if they get divorced? And, what will this do to the kids? And so on.
Fast forward a few months, to the holidays. Ann, Chris, Charlie and I went out to dinner, fulfilling a tradition of the four of us celebrating Christmas without the pressure of parents and kids. Charlie was drunk by the time we arrived at the bar for pre-dinner drinks, despite my pleading with him to hold off on drinking before we left the house. I couldn’t tell he was drunk until we were in the cab, at which point I decided it was too late to call the whole evening off.
He proceeded to get more and more drunk, until he had food hanging out of his mouth and can’t string full thoughts or sentences together. He couldn’t even walk to the restroom. This was far from the first night out when I was humiliated by his drunken display, or when he broke a promise to me about drinking. I was angry. I felt betrayed, abandoned, pathetic for believing that we were still capable of having enjoyable evenings.
At some point, I remembered a scene from the 1992 Cameron Crowe movie, Singles, when Bridget Fonda is yet again being ignored by her grunge rock boyfriend, Matt Dillon. She has a revelation: I don’t have to be here anymore. Sitting at the table across from Charlie, with steak hanging out of his mouth while he tried to order still another drink, I thought, I don’t have to be here anymore.
Saying nothing, I grabbed my coat and bag, pushed back from the table and walked out of the restaurant. A cab happened to be outside. I got in and directed it towards home.
I texted my sister and Chris right away, apologizing for having left so suddenly, but saying that I had reached the end of my rope with Charlie and needed to leave. I told her I’d Venmo her our portion of the bill. She and Chris wrote back saying they understood, it was ok, I have their support. After all, I had been telling both of them, and Ann in particular, about Charlie’s drinking since that night over a year prior, when I sensed that this was more than just a tough time. I thought I could trust them, they were good listeners, and had known and loved Charlie for many years.
The hours wore on and eventually Charlie came home, drunk and furious. We argued, achieving nothing. He passed out in a rage in the hallway.
The next morning I woke up to a text from Chris saying that both he and Ann had had it with Charlie’s drinking. This issue had been going on for a year or more, and they didn’t want to expose the kids to it; Chris had grown up with a pair of drunken uncles and didn’t want the same thing for his own children. Therefore, while I was still welcome to come over to their apartment for Christmas, like we planned, Charlie was no longer invited. They didn’t want to see him or have him interact with the kids. I texted back saying I understood, and was really sorry it had gotten to this point. But, I added, I didn’t want to leave Charlie alone for Christmas, so I guess we won’t be together this year.
I was heartbroken.
Mom and Dad already had plans to go visit Beth and her husband and kids out in Oregon, but of course they had expectations that their New York-based children and grandchildren would be celebrating Christmas as a unit. At some point, Ann decided they ought to know this wouldn’t be happening, and why. She told our parents everything, about Charlie’s drinking the night I left them in the restaurant, and other incidents that I had confided to her. The secret was out.
Both Charlie and I were livid. I am not easily angered, but Charlie has always struggled with his temper and lost it, telling Mom and Dad what he really thought about Chris as a husband and a father. He told them about the multiple times Chris had made Ann cry with a passive-aggressive comment about her spending habits or her friends he found annoying, when he would leave her alone to deal with a temper tantrum from their kids, or how little Chris did around the house. More secrets were out.
It was here that Ann and Chris decided they didn’t want Charlie around the kids anymore. In fact, they weren’t sure they ever wanted to see him again.
We partners of addicts have to be careful who we talk to about our problems. I didn’t tell Ann about the problems I was having with Charlie because I wanted her to hate him, and yet that’s what happened. I was looking for someone to listen, but as someone who loved me and cared about me, she couldn’t do that, at least not objectively, in the way that I needed. And Chris had his own background with alcoholism which gave him a rather stubborn view.
I wish now that I had never told my sister anything. I wish that I had instead run headfirst into an Al-Anon meeting or a therapist’s office, and let my family believe for as long as possible that my marriage was fine and Charlie was fine. My family can’t unhear the things they have now heard about my husband, and for as long as I’m committed to staying with him, I have to choose between them and him. My only hope is that they will one day choose forgiveness, love and understanding, as I have done.
I’m not saying you should suffer in silence. But choose who you tell. Be honest with yourself about which of your friends are understanding about addiction, and have capacity for forgiveness. If your gut tells you that they might not be able to be sincerely supportive, look elsewhere, like an Al-Anon Family Group or a professional therapist. It’s not easy to be honest about who your friends really are, but it’s a thing you will have to face sooner or later.
Remember, look for the helpers. They may not be people you know now, but they’re out there.
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