My Call Blocking Is On
I had a rough weekend. A very rough weekend, as a matter of fact, which is why it’s taken me all day to reach the point where I can think about it without grating my teeth.
See, my weekend consisted of spending hours on the phone listening to a friend who finally — finally — broke up with her drug addict boyfriend, three long years after she should’ve kicked him to the curb.
During that time, she’s been through the whole cycle of addiction with him. He’s moved from boozing it up on weekends and occasionally getting high (which she admits she knew about but didn’t think was “that” big of a deal) to boozing it up nightly. Then he started snorting drugs and switched from cocaine to meth because the latter was easier to come by, along with easier for him to afford without her notice.
But the rest of us who knew her noticed. We knew. It’s not hard to pick out a meth addict: they’re frightfully thin, and more often than not their teeth are rotting in their drug-ravaged faces. He’d told her that he simply had “bad teeth”, and she believed him. Then he began dropping weight from his already-lean frame and she believed him, too, when he said that his metabolism had always been high.
The rest of her friends knew better, but she cut us off one-by-one when we suggested she ought to dump him. We just didn’t understand, she’d say. Or, we didn’t like him so we were making up stories.
Like her friendships, her possessions also began disappearing. This time, though, she blamed herself rather than blaming the actual one at fault. She couldn’t find small things at first: a few CDs, a digital camera, her iPod. Things easy to misplace, which is what she’d assumed she’d done. She didn’t want to hear that her boyfriend might be selling off her things to support his habit. Not even when the sapphire cocktail ring her grandmother had left her somehow ‘disappeared’ from her jewelry box. No, she was going to stand by her man.
Earlier this month, she came home and realized that the PlayStation3 she’d given her teenage son was missing. He said her boyfriend claimed it was broken and had taken it in for repairs, but after three weeks “in the shop” the thing still wasn’t fixed. She demanded the number of the repair center and, of course, her boyfriend hemmed and hawed. Finally, he admitted he’d sold it for drug money.
By the time she’d called me, she’d started to do some self-education about dealing with drug addicts. The first thing she wanted to know was whether I’d take part in an intervention for him, a meeting at which people who know him would confront him with the effects of his drug use on not only himself but those around him.
The problem is, I don’t really know the man. I’ve met him less than a handful of times, and none of them have been particularly meaningful encounters. We’d nod when we ran into each other at the store if she was there, too, but otherwise would pretend not to see the other rather than having to make small talk. If I called her home and he answered, I’d talk with him long enough to identify myself and that’s about it. I didn’t know him at all, and I didn’t want to.
I don’t think my participation in such an encounter would help in the least bit except, perhaps, to provide my friend with emotional support. So that’s what I spent my weekend doing, even though at times it left me wanting to slam the phone down repeatedly to get her to stop making excuses for his behavior and listen to herself.
“Oh, he’s got such a stressful job,” she’d say. “He just started doing drugs as a way to relax, but now it’s taken him over. He says he’s going to look for other work so I just know it’ll all get better soon.”
Or…
“He’s not that bad about it, really. It’s just on the weekends, and maybe during the week if he’s out with the boys.”
After the eighth or ninth such phone call, I finally asked my friend if she had any idea what an “enabler” is. Oh, sure, she’d heard it, but she’s always figured that meant someone who actually bought the drugs for the person doing one. I tried explaining that it’s much more insidious in nature: that it involves making excuses for a person, sometimes outright lying for them, quite often because that person needs to be needed. Such a person, I explained, is usually in need of treatment themselves, too, if they’re going to help break the cycle.
She didn’t want to hear about that, either, and grew angry with me. Downright nasty, as a matter of fact, to the point where she once again launched into a diatribe about how I never liked her boyfriend in the first place and didn’t want her to be happy because it made me jealous.
I have to confess: I hung up on her. I’m just not the patient sort and, when it comes right down to it, I reached a point where I felt like listening to her rant one more minute would just be enabling her as an enabler, as odd as that sounds.
But I did do one thing for her, and I hope that eventually she’ll get over the anger she no doubt feels right now so she can see that I did it out of concern for her and for her son. I called her mother, who had no idea where her daughter had been living for these past three years, much less how to get in touch with her own child and her grandson. I gave my friend’s mother the contact info, and then I suggested she get over there fast.
Judging by the angry, hateful voice message my friend left on my cell phone late last night after her mother must’ve taken my advice and staged an intervention of her own, rescuing her grandson from a miserable situation that no child should have to live through. I listened to that message and decided to block future calls from my (former?) friend. I can’t see that listening to her would do either of us any good.
I’d like to feel good about it, but I can’t. But someday I really hope that I will, and that my friend will, too.
I’m so sorry for everybody. You did the right thing. Whether your friendship endures all this or not, you did the right thing.
If the friendship doesn’t survive, I am sorry. But yeah, you did the right thing.
My ex-wife ran in similar circles. I’m glad I’m not near that anymore.
Sounds like you took the only reasonable course of action. Feeling “good” about it and feeling “right” about it are two different things.
That ain’t ever gonna make you happy.
Good point, MWF. I do know I did the right thing for all concerned, but I’m confident right now my friend wishes she’d never met me. Then again, it’s not like having her mother find out what’s going on could make her life worse. It can’t possibly get worse than it’s been.
At least I know her son’s safe now, and he was my biggest concern. It’s one thing for an adult to screw up their own lives, but another thing for them to mess over their kid.
I know how you’re feeling. You want to be there for a friend but what is best for them is not what they want from you. You did the right thing.
Forget about it, Kate. You can lead a horse to water and all that. Your friend has to make a decision she’s putting off. Does she know meth users are dangerous, as in batshit crazy? What a way to raise a child. Best of luck, you did what you can.
I went through this with a now former friend repeatedly several times. I’m sorry to hear to hear that you’ve also had to deal with a nearly identical situation. It will become identical when he gets busted then miraculously finds God and then the closer to the end of his probation he gets the closer to his old self he will become again. Geesh. I really don’t miss that mess one bit.
Good for you! You did the right thing.
12 years ago, my cousin’s boyfriend broke her arm in a fight. I (law student that I was at the time) wanted to call the INS and get his illegal alien butt deported back to South Africa. “Don’t get involved” said my husband. “It was a fair fight” said my mother, who lives in the same town (while I’m 1200 miles away). Well, he hung around for another year or so and finally went home. Turns out (to my enabling family’s surprise), they both had horrific herion addictions. He died in a car wreck in South Africa not long after returning there; my cousin is just now free from addiction, weighs almost 100 pounds again, and is thinking about a career as an RMT.
What if I’d gotten him deported? Would his wealthy parents, upon his shocking return home, seen what was really going on and clapped him in rehab? If so, he might be alive now. Maybe, maybe not.
Would my stupid family have had to face up to my cousin’s pathetic state a lot earlier than they finally did? Would she have gotten her life back at 27 instead of 37? I don’t know.
In general I believe in letting people make their own mistakes in life. However, when it’s a matter of drugs, alcohol or physical abuse, stick your nose right in and be proud of yourself!
There is one and only one thing you can do for people who are either addicted to meth or are involved with the lifestyle and cycle surrounding it. Get the hell away from them, and don’t allow them back into your life until they’ve ditched the lifestyle, all of the “friends” they cling to that are a part of it, and most importantly, have gone through treatment successfully and can admit what they are.
Meth, unfortunately, is a major part of my day job. It destroys families, jobs, lives, and communities, and if you allow someone using meth to be a part of your life, they will suck you into it and drag you down with them. I have seen this happen so many times, so often, to people in my caseload, people in my community, friends, and even family, that I’ve lost count. There is no hope for a meth addict until and unless they choose to help themselves. None.
You can’t help your friend; from your own narrative of your weekend, it sounds to me like she doesn’t want your help a bit, she wants you to validate her own weltanschaung, her own little make-believe world in which a guy that uses meth, steals from his family, and probably beats on her in the bargain isn’t that bad a guy.
You’re doing exactly the right thing by keeping yourself and your family away from this person. She obviously still has a lot of difficulty in leaving this chapter of her life behind – if you allow her to, I assure you she’ll drag you into it as well and make your life a living hell. I don’t blame you a bit for cutting her off.
I’d have done the same thing, and have. It hurts, but it’s the only choice that preserves the things that are important.
You did the right thing for the child.
As for your (former) friend… let me tell you – after knowing a number of people who have tried interventions… they don’t work if the person who has the problem doesn’t want to change! Addicts are very crafty – they’ll go along with something until they can finally get back to their pet addiction when no one is looking.
Interventions are VERY painful for everyone involved. You would have ended up being the whipping boy because you aren’t related – thus an easy target for both of them. So, you absolutely did the right thing by staying out of it.
The people I know who have tried interventions say they would never do it again – ever. I think the people it works for, are those lucky enough to catch the addict at the right time – when they are ready for treatment.
It’s very very sad. *sigh*
Kudos on effectively saving the kid. Hopefully, he hasn’t been scarred from years of living with both his freak of a mother and her waste-of-flesh boyfriend.
Like you, I too have little to no patience for this kind of thing. Here in Ottawa, they actually had a program in which they gave crack addicts free crack pipes. See, the idea was twofold: prevent the spread of communicable diseases like HIV, and to get them coming into “authorities” who would attempt to get them “the help they deserved”. What happened, naturally, was that the number of crack addicts increased. They dumped the program a few months ago (to the typical hand wringing by the numb-nuts on the left). Frankly. to me, HIV is one of nature’s ways to cull crack addicts from the population. It’s a self-correcting situation, as far as I am concerned.
There are alot more people deserving of our help, compassion, and money than drug addicts.
SNITCH!!
Just kidding.
I think you saved the only person you could save – the child.
Well done. Your friend needed an intervention too.
If she comes back and you’re friends again – great. If not, just know that sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t make you popular but it’s still the right thing.
Nothing left to say here but absolutely good for you, Kate. The mother is the appropriate person to dig into the situation and do what she can to get it straightened out, or if that’s not possible to keep the kid away from it. Good for you for making that possible.
The mother is the appropriate person to dig into the situation and do what she can to get it straightened out, or if that’s not possible to keep the kid away from it.
As a mandatory reporter, I have a somewhat different take on that. Official notice of stuff like that is never pleasant for anybody, but most of the time it’s for the best.
Attending Al-anon would be a nice first step for your friend. Accepting Communion would probably help too. She is living in terrible squalor and I hope that she can soon reclaim the dignity she used to possess.