Tin Foil Hat.

I wrote a little about the tin foil hat recently, and it made me realize how much I talk about my husband's outward manifestations of his addiction as metaphorical tin foil hats. I find the comparison to be endlessly helpful.

One of the things I've struggled hardest against in coming to accept my present situation and my husband's disease is that I always want really, really badly to understand what he is doing and why he is doing it. When he relapses, I go over and over in my head, "What caused it? What happened? Why? Why? Why?" And especially earlier on in this adventure, I'd ask him..."What were you thinking? Why don't you just stop doing that? It doesn't work, so you could just stop acting like that..."

And those of you who have been with me from my earliest baby steps in bloggery surely remember my constant research and reporting on heroin. Heroin causes boils! Heroin kills your brain! Heroin gives you hemorrhoids! I spent so much time researching and trying to figure out what was happening to my husband, trying to understand how all the little symptoms of things that had been going wrong with him stemmed from this one source. I was obsessed.

It's partly my nerdy nature, I guess. If I ever have a problem, I start reading what the experts say about the problem. I believe strongly in the power of words, in the power of finding the meaning behind the events...so often in my life, it's helped me make sense of my world when it was turning upside down. And it has helped me in understanding my husband's addiction, too, in a lot of ways. Connecting with other people, writing about what has been happening to me here, learning more about my own spirituality and working on my own recovery has helped me to grow in spite of what is going on with him.

But I just haven't found yet what I've been looking for...that answer to WHY. Why does he act like that? Why can't he just stop?

So lately, when I find myself going to that place where my mind is running circles around his nonsensical behavior, I imagine that I'm married to a schizophrenic man. I love him very much, and I have decided to stay with him. I come home and find him wearing a tin foil hat. I don't like the tin foil hat, but I understand that it's just a manifestation of his disease, and maybe I gently remind him that there is medication that can help him slow down his spiraling.

So when my husband throws a can of soup, neglects to take care of himself, sits around and makes a pigsty of our home...it's all tin foil hats. There's no need to try to understand. It's not understandable.

Hope Vs. Desperation.

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave everything behind they have ever believed in can hope to escape."

-William S. Burroughs

Sometimes, especially now that I am a Zen Master Blackbelt Detachment Warrior Of The Order Of Nar-Anon, I feel like I'm watching a race when I watch my husband struggling with his recovery. Yesterday, recovery was leading relapse by a nose...who knows what we'll see today.

I watch him wanting to get better but battling such a well of despair, fear, depression, guilt. It sometimes seems like he doesn't think he deserves to have the wonderful life that is waiting for him on the other side of his sickness. Sometimes, I'm so afraid for him.

One thing I never understand about him, and about addicts in general, is the need constantly to be perched on the edge of some precipice. Instead of taking care of problems before they become too huge to be manageable, my husband pushes and pushes and pushes up against walls and deadlines and boundaries until there has to be conflict. He has waited 3 weeks, for instance, to begin the process of reconciling with his family member who employs him. At this point, he is very close to being unable to work, which will mean he won't have money for methadone. I understand that he hasn't felt well while his dose has been adjusting, but I don't understand why the promise of feeling so much worse when his methadone runs out hasn't been enough to get him out of his stagnancy and on the phone.

It's always like that with him...always, he creates situations where he is on the verge of a crisis...so much of what he faces is so perfectly within his purview of control. I can't understand not taking care of stuff before it spirals completely out of control.

Which is why I have to focus on me, not him. I have to reign myself in, often, before I let my thoughts get carried away in trying to understand his thoughts. If I'd married a schizophrenic, would I constantly try to understand why he wanted to wear a tin foil hat? Nope. So why am I constantly trying to understand my husband's addictive behavior? It's outside of reason, in the land of tin foil hats.