Life with an Addict

the pain pills

I live with a stranger. The once happy, fun, guy that I chose to spend my life with is now someone I don't recognize.
Our life is now a cycle that never goes beyond the circle of sleeping for days on end, to the days of laughing and singing to the days where no one can do anything to please him. The days of laughter being the days when he has enough pain pills to snort. The days of sleep and crankiness being the time when he runs out and his body cries for the next fix.

In one of his cranky moods he threatened to leave me and I called his bluff. Having no where to stay he decided to sign himself in to rehab and I felt like this was the ray of hope I'd been waiting for. However, after two days he signed himself out and I know that the cycle has begun again. He tries harder to hide it from me, but I still find the garbage laying around from where he had his last snort. One day he'll crush a pill and it will cause him to take his last breath. I see him dying in front of me and I'm helpless.

I want to go out into the street and beg everyone I meet not to fall into the same trap he did. Mothers, brothers, fathers, sisters....middle class, high class, lower class....It creeps up on you. The doctor prescribes oxycondone for pain and slowly you need more. You double the dose or triple it and still it's not enough. Suddenly you're crushing them so you can snort them and get a quicker high. You see others with the same problem and can't understand why they would ruin their life like that. You're blind to what they're doing to you. I don't want anyone else to suffer the way he has, or the way I have. I just want to stop this terrible disease from consuming so many people.