Methadone detox is really pretty kind, it seems. At least that's the way it looks at my house. There's been no throwing, no yelling, and minimal twitching. My husband is sad and weepy and miserable like he has a really bad flu. I kind of like him this way. Is that wrong?
I had a brief freakout yesterday. He'd spent some time with his mother, and I started to think they'd been using together. I had no real reason to think that they'd been using together other than that they sometimes use together, and he's detoxing, and they were hanging out. I did the whole projection thing and called friends to talk me sane and help me figure out what it was I was feeling.
Eventually, though, he came home, and he was still sad and sick and miserable. I was so glad to see him sick. Is that wrong?
I'm recognizing that methadone maintenance has given me a lot of peace over the last few months, and I'm afraid of facing life without it. Methadone is its own beast in many ways. My husband's world revolves around when and how he's going to get to the clinic when he's on the methadone program. It's his first priority financially, and it's his first priority in terms of how he lives his life. I like the idea of that being over. I don't like the idea of worrying about him using. I don't like the way it seems like methadone was a buffer for him, softening the edges of the real world. I don't like it that he needs a buffer. I don't like it that I want him to have a buffer.
Sometimes, sitting next to him, it kind of startles me how different our lives are. We live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, shit in the same toilet, eat the same food...but we face the world so differently. He runs from pain. I seem to chase it.
I don't know.
At the meeting last night a lady said the addict in her life, newly clean, seemed to want to be a house cat. He wants to lie around all day on the couch on a soft blanket. He wants everything to be warm and fuzzy and nice. It made me giggle in that way where I was afraid I was being inappropriate, like my head may split open or my eyes pop out or I might have to leave the room.
My husband is a house cat.
