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Can we talk about me now? (Open bar thread #3,494)

Started by Juana, October 04, 2012, 04:31:11 PM

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Nephew Twiddleton

Im a student again. Now i just have to wait for the formality of the acceptance letter.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Eater of Clowns on October 24, 2012, 03:50:12 AM
Desperately wanting to be dead is a pretty poor excuse for murder.

I think that mostly very very angry people take that route. People who want not only to die, but to punish the world for their having lived.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Nephew Twiddleton

Hmm. Apparently i need ten credits instead of seven. :revise budget: :shakes fist at past twid:
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Internet Jesus on October 24, 2012, 04:37:22 AM
So this looks to be the thread to go to whe you're trying to be a human who isn't a flippant asshole.

Which is probably why I've never posted here, but I'm out of options for people to talk/vent to and if I don't get this out somewhere, I don't think I'll be able to function.  And I need to be able to function over the next several days. So a semi-anonymous forum is going to have to do for now.

When I got home from work tonight, my wife announced to me that she's checking herself into Rehab.  For the last 9 months or so, she's been heavily abusing OxyContin.  She's taken money from our joint funds, from our son, and even run up a fairly large bill with her dealer.

And I had no clue.  Completely oblivious.  I knew money was tight, but money has always been tight.  I knew she's been distant, but she's never been an affectionate person or particularly open, neither have I, so I didn't notice any difference.

I don't stand in judgement over her, I have my own issues and I've had my troubles hammered home enough times and in painful enough ways that in my mind the only real sin we're capable of as human beings is pride and not acknowledging the truth that is starting us in the face.  Our lives take us to strange places and the best we can do is deal with them.  So she's attempting to deal with them.  I accept that.

But that doesn't still my anxiety.  That doesn't make up for not seeing my own truth.

This is a good thing, mind, but it's a painful truth not a comfortable lie.  But how the fuck do I deal with it?  How do I maintain the facade to our son for the next couple of weeks?  Like most married men, all of my friends are either our friends (and therefore not someone I feel like I can reveal such an intimate secret without her OK) or drinking buddies, with whom I'd never share something so intimate and painful with.  How do I take care of myself and the boy without her?  I'm the shitty parent who works long hours at a job that's hours away so he can bankroll everything, not a caretaker.

It's a bit odd, but right this second I feel like I'm more at peace with her actions than I am with mine over the next however long.  Not really looking for anything.  Wanted to send out what's in my head out into the world.  So I can see it and maybe know how I feel.

Wow, that's some heavy shit to deal with, IJ. :(

I do have to say, it sounds like your wife is quite a lady, if after 9 months she was able to look at things clearly enough to recognize that she has a problem she can't control, and do something proactive about it. I have a feeling both of you will be OK.

If depression is the story she's telling, I'd say, stick with it. I agree with you that that's your wife's story to tell, and I respect you for respecting her privacy. Children do not need to know the gory details.

Don't stress about taking care of yourself and your son. If neither of you can cook, just buy a bunch of frozen dinners, and make sure you clean up after and do laundry at least twice while she's gone. You might want to find one person you can turn to for emotional support, if you can. Even if that means asking her permission to tell them the truth, or calling an old friend she doesn't know.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Congratulations Twid!

Hey, at least you can knock it out in one term! That's awesome.

I've known so many people who are literally one term from graduation but never finished, and I'm like,  :?

Glad you're doing it!
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Nephew Twiddleton

Thank nige! Glad im finishing it up too. Funny thing is- thats the exact amount of credits i would have gotten from classes i dropped back in 2010. :headdesk:
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Juana

I think one or two of my aunts did that.


I just slept almost fourteen hours almost straight, aside from Shoe Ears loudly coming home at about nine. That's the first time in a while that's happened without Pillz Here intervention.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Internet Jesus

Quote from: Man Green on October 24, 2012, 04:19:16 PM
Don't stress about taking care of yourself and your son. If neither of you can cook, just buy a bunch of frozen dinners, and make sure you clean up after and do laundry at least twice while she's gone. You might want to find one person you can turn to for emotional support, if you can. Even if that means asking her permission to tell them the truth, or calling an old friend she doesn't know.

That's probably the most useful advice I've received yet.  Thank you.

And Roger, I knew I was oblivious.  It's just a shock to have it driven home so directly.

Congrats to twid on going back to school.  I would love to do that for the rest of my life if I could figure out a way to do it that paid the bills. School is one of the few places I always felt like I knew what I was doing.
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS!

Mangrove

Quote from: Internet Jesus on October 24, 2012, 04:37:22 AM
So this looks to be the thread to go to whe you're trying to be a human who isn't a flippant asshole.

Which is probably why I've never posted here, but I'm out of options for people to talk/vent to and if I don't get this out somewhere, I don't think I'll be able to function.  And I need to be able to function over the next several days. So a semi-anonymous forum is going to have to do for now.

When I got home from work tonight, my wife announced to me that she's checking herself into Rehab.  For the last 9 months or so, she's been heavily abusing OxyContin.  She's taken money from our joint funds, from our son, and even run up a fairly large bill with her dealer.

And I had no clue.  Completely oblivious.  I knew money was tight, but money has always been tight.  I knew she's been distant, but she's never been an affectionate person or particularly open, neither have I, so I didn't notice any difference.

I don't stand in judgement over her, I have my own issues and I've had my troubles hammered home enough times and in painful enough ways that in my mind the only real sin we're capable of as human beings is pride and not acknowledging the truth that is starting us in the face.  Our lives take us to strange places and the best we can do is deal with them.  So she's attempting to deal with them.  I accept that.

But that doesn't still my anxiety.  That doesn't make up for not seeing my own truth.

This is a good thing, mind, but it's a painful truth not a comfortable lie.  But how the fuck do I deal with it?  How do I maintain the facade to our son for the next couple of weeks?  Like most married men, all of my friends are either our friends (and therefore not someone I feel like I can reveal such an intimate secret without her OK) or drinking buddies, with whom I'd never share something so intimate and painful with.  How do I take care of myself and the boy without her?  I'm the shitty parent who works long hours at a job that's hours away so he can bankroll everything, not a caretaker.

It's a bit odd, but right this second I feel like I'm more at peace with her actions than I am with mine over the next however long.  Not really looking for anything.  Wanted to send out what's in my head out into the world.  So I can see it and maybe know how I feel.

IJ - Sorry to hear about your troubles. I know where you are coming from because Mrs Mang & I have been navigating our way through our youngest son's addiction since about 2008. Well, 2008 is when we knew for sure it was heroin we had signs of things not being 'right in Denmark' before then.

My experience of this to date is that: when an addict goes into rehab of their own volition, that's a much more positive sign than if their rehab admittance is precipitated by some crisis. When our son was using very heavily, there were very deep and seemingly impenetrable layers of denial to get through. Every now and then an enormous crisis would blow up and that would send him into rehab. Getting arrested, Mrs Mang threatening to bludgeon him to death if he stole anything from her again etc. You get a momentary poke into their egos and they seek treatment. What I call 'crisis precipitated rehab' has not, IMHO been particularly effective in our situation. No doubt, this might work for other people, but it really didn't for us.

We managed to get our son into a Suboxone program that took state insurance. (Suboxone is an opiate blocker that produces instant withdrawal if the patient tries to use drugs but generally suppresses withdrawal symptoms if they don't.) The whole use of Suboxone in treatment programs is a rant for another day. Anyways, he got into a program and was clean from heroin because the Dr had him suitably dosed. Then our state shut that program down. He got into a different program but got kicked out of it owing to their 'zero tolerance' policy. He failed a drug test by having smoked weed. Even though he was being treated for heroin addiction they told him to leave.

Well, detoxing from Suboxone suddenly is every bit as bad as detoxing from heroin suddenly. Thus, much to our great chagrin and disgust, we turned a blind eye to our son buying Suboxone off the streets because  our choice was watching him suffer or run the risk of using heroin again. So we helped him out materially which included paying off dealers because the fuckers know where we live and have our phone numbers. Yay!

In April of this year our son, without any drama or crisis put himself, into a 5 day detox. He reasoned that Suboxone dependence is really not much better than heroin dependence and he decided to suck it up and endure the sickness. While he was in detox, the counselors there encouraged him to enter a treatment program that was a minimum of 6 weeks. This helped him out a great deal and he learned a lot of valuable tools to cope.

That your wife has, likewise, put herself into treatment is a silver lining. Not to be the bearer of bad news but simply to warn you of the HORRIBLE TROOF - there's a good chance that this will not be her last trip to rehab. I'm not saying that to be a dick, it's just something that I've seen way too much of over the years. Understand that they will fuck up. Accept that it's a distinct reality of addiction. It's not IF they fuck up, it's WHEN and when it happens, the trick is the skill, speed and grace with which the addict regains their focus and their commitment to sobriety.

Our son got clean in April and stayed clean of everything until about the mid/end of September. Right now, my wife & I are helping him work his way through this blip. He weaned himself off heroin and is weaning himself off of Suboxone. The only way this has been possible has been through a LOT of honest communication. This is so crucial. No matter how frustrated you feel, always work to keep an open, judgement free channel of communication open - even when you feel like punching a baby. If you can achieve this then it makes you much more able to deal with future 'blips'. We keep telling our son that we will always do our best to help him get & stay clean but only on condition of being totally truthful and transparent with us. The moment he pulls any kind of Junky bullshit, then the deal is off and he'll have to fix his own mess.

As for your son, it's probably not a bad thing that he thinks his mom is getting help with depression. Because she has sought treatment voluntarily and without undue fuss, it's best for now to respective her privacy and keep it on a need to know basis. There's nothing to be gained in spreading this information far & wide.

From my own experience, with our son, Mrs Mang & I went through a period of denial and kept the mess on the DL with family & friends. Because our son was being deeply un-cooperative I said "Screw it! I'm not letting his addiction be the thing that identifies me or our marriage." I wasn't willing to give him 'respectful privacy' to his addiction while he was lying, stealing and selling our shit to drug dealers and pawn merchants. So, I spoke openly to people about it which was actually very liberating. I also learned a great deal because so many people I spoke to had addiction stories in their family. One of my wife's good friends is suffering greatly because her husband epically relapsed into alcohol and pills and she refuses to talk about it. Give your wife the benefit of a cover story but find some ways to vent your own concerns. Pretending it isn't happening and maintaining a pretense will just drive you nuts.

Hope this is helpful to you in some way. I'll be happy to talk to anyone dealing with this shit.

Best of luck,

Mangrove

What makes it so? Making it so is what makes it so.

Q. G. Pennyworth

Apparently Amazon posted a synopsis for the husband's book without telling him first, or running the description by him, or the about the author...  :kingmeh:

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on October 24, 2012, 06:22:35 PM
Apparently Amazon posted a synopsis for the husband's book without telling him first, or running the description by him, or the about the author...  :kingmeh:

The synopsis I'm not surprised by, but how could they even get an "about the author" without running it by him? That's weird. What did they do, have someone web-stalk him?

Speaking of which, HC is deep in the web-stalking territory. He tries to play it off like he just guessed my middle name that I haven't used in twelve years, and happened to find obscure posts I made on Usenet in 2006 by accident. :lol: I would probably find it less charming if I wasn't sleeping with him.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Q. G. Pennyworth

Quote from: Man Green on October 24, 2012, 07:28:07 PM
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on October 24, 2012, 06:22:35 PM
Apparently Amazon posted a synopsis for the husband's book without telling him first, or running the description by him, or the about the author...  :kingmeh:

The synopsis I'm not surprised by, but how could they even get an "about the author" without running it by him? That's weird. What did they do, have someone web-stalk him?

Speaking of which, HC is deep in the web-stalking territory. He tries to play it off like he just guessed my middle name that I haven't used in twelve years, and happened to find obscure posts I made on Usenet in 2006 by accident. :lol: I would probably find it less charming if I wasn't sleeping with him.

He just called them up, apparently the page is not supposed to be live yet and they're trying to fix it. Which, you know, is really effective after the link's already been posted to a forum with thousands of members.

Nephew Twiddleton

Results are in. Villager has barretts esophagus. Irreversible precancerous condition that can be managed with diet and medicine. Risk of cancer increased but occurence of cancer is rare.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on October 24, 2012, 08:55:40 PM
Results are in. Villager has barretts esophagus. Irreversible precancerous condition that can be managed with diet and medicine. Risk of cancer increased but occurence of cancer is rare.

What's that mean in terms of day-to-day life (other than the cancer risk)?  Is she stuck with some painful condition or something?
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on October 24, 2012, 08:55:40 PM
Results are in. Villager has barretts esophagus. Irreversible precancerous condition that can be managed with diet and medicine. Risk of cancer increased but occurence of cancer is rare.

I'm glad that it's manageable and that cancer occurrence is rare! That sounds like good news!
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."