In my life I have been around several people who have either abused alcohol or drugs. In all of those cases only two have turned their life around. I have always been the sort to want to help and do all I can for these people, but I have learned some very hard lessons in doing this. Now that I am older with a family my perspective has changed and although I would love to help them the reality is you cannot help someone who does not want to be helped and you need to protecting your family is a much bigger issue.
My husband and I have made the mistake of letting an addict into our home. Now to our defense we didn't realize that this was an issue because no one had really said anything. We had known that some of these things were in the past, but were given the impression that this part of life was over for this addict.
When the addict arrived at our home the first week or so were pretty normal. He looked for work and was pretty set on what he was going to do. He had big plans or so he told us. Then things started to change slightly. At first it was as if I was just overreacting, but as things grew so did my suspicions.
Coming from a background where my last relationship ended because of an addict I was pretty in tune with the signs, but it had been a while and of course being the soft person that I can sometimes be I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. This is where trusting my instincts could have saved us months of heartache.
Soon things started disappearing, the addicts' behavior was erratic to say the least, and he was sneaking around a lot. His eyes were blood shot and he claimed he only had 1 beer with dinner. My husband who prides himself on building his liquor cabinet mainly for show or guests at times started noticing that the bottles were disappearing or were extremely low. Our vending stock for snacks and sodas was depleting faster than we could put them into our machines, and our addicts' speech was often slurred or rambling with no real point to it. You would think these were enough signs right. We just didn't have the proof of our instincts and felt compelled to believe in him.
Soon it became clear that the addict had issues with alcohol and most likely drugs. He was stealing to get the money to pay for this habit after he cleaned out the liquor cabinet and replaced most of the bottles with water or soda. My husband took the remaining valuables and moved them to our closet where he placed a lock on the door. He gave our addict some rules and restrictions and asked that he abide by. One rule was there was to be no more drinking in our home. If he wanted to stay in our home he would abide by these rules. Like many addicts it only lasted a few days and the behaviors increased.
Now the behavior had moved to more open visibility. He was smoking in our house and drinking openly from the time he woke up until he left for work. He claimed drinking was his way of gathering his thoughts for the day. My husband offered him some rehabs and other solutions which he claimed he would look into. These were only said to appease us as he really had no intention of changing his behavior.
It wasn't until my husband walked in on him drinking that he decided enough was enough. He told him to gather a few things and leave. He would let him come back in the morning to get the rest of his stuff, but he had to leave. The guest was visibly upset but did as my husband asked and gathered a few things and left. My husband on his way out the door already to pick me up from a friends' house left after the addict to bring me home.
On the way home my husband explained the situation to me and I agreed that this was the right course of action to protect our kids from any further issues with this addict. I was relieved that the situation was coming to and end and our family would again be protected from these horrible situations. When we arrived home my husband went downstairs to start cleaning things up and I took the kids to bed.
My husbands scream was so loud I could hear it all the way up to my son's room in the top level of the house. I ran downstairs to see what was going on. My husband was yelling and screaming and throwing things in the basement. That is when I saw that our addict had broken into our home and was hiding under the bed in the basement. That is when my instincts took over and I was no longer the nice guy giving him the benefit of the doubt.
2 hours later and a lot of yelling he left. He didn't have much in hand and it was raining outside. I was exhausted from the issues and was just torn up from everything that had occurred. My husband turned on our house alarm and went to bed.
The night was long as our addict returned 3 hours later and rang the doorbell and knocked on the door all night long. My husband would get him to stop for a while and then it would start all over again. It was one of those things where you could call the cops, but you wanted to just handle it yourself.
The next day we cleaned and packed his stuff up for him. My nephew arrived to help take him to another place where he could sleep and we could have our home back. The things we found while cleaning were horrifying and it became clear that we should have listened to our instincts in the beginning. We found stolen goods from his job, drug paraphernalia, alcohol bottles in the wall, cigarette buts in the crawl space, and we found he had taken bathroom breaks in the basement.
I was grateful he was gone and our home was ours again. Our instincts told us from the beginning to step in but we ignored them. Too many of us do this and our instincts are such a vital part. Pride made us ignore it, but experience should have taught us to listen. I know the lesson I learned and sharing this story hopefully can help others realize that if the signs are there and your instincts are screaming for you to stop then don't ignore those feelings. Embrace your instincts and protect your family.
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