I need help with my wife, anything is appriciated.

My wife was using opiates, she wasn't living at our house due to the fact that I was going out of town for work. When I came home she wasn't here. It took her a week to realize that she did want to be with me. So I went and got her. We went to get her help and she is now on Subs. but she is still having bad withdrawals.  Our house was broken into, (I believe it was by someone she used to hang out with) and all of our meds where stolen. She has been off of the Subs for a couple days now and her WDs are very bad.  I am worried that she is not letting me in to help her. . . She knows that I will always be here for her to try to help with anything that I can, but I just feel that she isn't letting herself get past what happened.  I have stopped going out of town so that I can be with her, and have started working from home a lot because she doesn't want me leaving her here alone.  I just want her to know that I am here for her and I do not know how to express that to her in a way that she truely understands it.  If anyone can help me with anything that could help me supporting her in any way or that might have suggestions for how I can help her through the WDs to just make it easier for her to cope. I just want mine and my wife's relationship back to how it was. I know that it can be it will just take time and work on both of our parts. Again if anyone has anything please feel free to post every little bit helps.

[dominosarah]

Hi and welcome to the forum.  Your wife is going to be sick for awhile.  What dose was she on?  Make sure she is drinking plenty of fluids.  They have popsicles with pedialyte in them, get some of those too.  Warm baths will help the aches and pains.  Have her get up and move around as much as you can.  Sleep may be an issue along with energy, this is very common.  

Now for the other stuff.....I would really recommend some type of counseling, recovery care.  Addiction doesnt stop once the drugs are stopped as the mental game kicks in.   Recovery care is very important as we learn the tools we need to stay clean.  We bury alot of demons while we are using and we need to deal with them head on.  As for you, i would educate yourself on addiction.  The last thing you want to do is enable her.  Alanon is a wonderful group.  They also have addiction counselors if you choose.  Your marriage can be put back together but the addiction part needs to be dealt with first and foremost.  Others who are in your situation will be on at some point also so keep checking back.  I am sara, a recovering addict/alcoholic.  Please keep us posted on how she is doing.

[Tmb3rWlf]

She told me that she was doing Roxys and that she didn't use it a lot. But I am not sure how much it was, and for the Subs she is taking 2 8mgs a day, but that is what the doctor said to do. I have been looking a lot online to try to see if there is anything that I can do to help. . . I have offered to make her a bath, but she said that when she was first detoxing a couple years ago from H that that didn't help. She has been sleeping a lot though, so I try to let her sleep, seems that if she is sleeping she doesn't have to deal with the WDs. She gets up every now and again and eats a little, but she mostly either sleeps in our bed or out here on the couch while we are watching tv. She has been telling me that she wants to go to a meeting, but she gets anxious and doesn't want to stay (previous experiences). And I have been looking for Alanon Meetings for us, she said that might be better to start with than just going straight into a meeting, so we can be together through it.  Thank you for the advise on the pedialyte popsicles I will try and get some, and I will continue suggesting the bath and she may try it just to see if it does help. Thank you again Sara and I will try to stay up with updates. My name is Brian btw.

[ImDONENoMore]

Hi tmb and welcome from me too.

Your wife is incredibly lucky to have you.  And I know this must be awful for you to watch, but right now, she's sick (physically) and she's going to need your help but also your distance for a few days.  It's a tough spot to be in but trust your instincts for right now and step in when you think she needs you, but step back when she needs to be left alone too.  I rememer my husband was so wonderful to me when I first quit, but there were times when I just wanted to be left alone, especially those first few weeks.  I needed to know he was just a room or so away, but I also needed my space.

After she's gotten through the physical side, as sara stated, she'll need to find some kind of aftercare plan.  Wait until you think she's physically feeling a little better, and stronger, and talk to her about that.  And if she's anything like I was, she'll be irritable for a while too so don't take it personally okay?  It's the drug leaving her system and it's going to make her moody, and maybe even a little angry too.  Thank goodness my husband understand where my emotions were coming from because quite frankly, this behavior even surprised me, well the anger did anyway.  But it passed with time and therapy and I'm sure it will for her too.

Oh and I just wanted to mention, going back to "who you both used to be" won't actually happen.  You can build an even stronger relationship after this, but it will be different.  At least it was in my case.  In fact, it was quite a while before my husband really trusted me again, and I understood that and had to do everything I could to earn that trust back and I knew I had a lot of fences to mend.  And I finally have earned back his trust, but it took a lot of time to get here.  And we're closer now than we've ever been.

Good luck to you - and keep posting/reading as the forum can provide a great deal of support and information for what you're going through, not just your wife but for you too.  And it will help. :) (alanon also a great idea)

[Jaybay]

I'm concerned that you say your wife is sleeping her way through withdrawal.  Is she actually sleeping or just staying horizontal?  See, insomnia is one of the worst symptoms of withdrawal.  Nobody, and I mean NOBODY sleeps through withdrawal unless there is some other mind-altering chemical on board and even then only an hour or two at the most.  Then there's the restless leg business.  People in opiate withdrawal literally squirm like a worm on a hook for days or longer depending on the substance abused, the dose and length of time they used.

Your wife was also much more than a casual user of roxicodone if her doctor put her on 16 mgs of Sub daily.  I watched my husband try to detox three times from only 2 mgs of Sub.  He was a complete and total disaster.  He persevered through the third attempt but nearly killed himself overdosing on prescribed comfort meds (clonidine, muscle relaxer, valium and seraquel) and mass quantities of alcohol on top of it.  Even with all that, sleep beyond two or three hours at a time didn't return for weeks.  Then there was the psychological part of detox that completely slammed him for well over a month.  There were lots of tears, despair and extreme depression - all common with detox but it seems to be a whole lot worse with Sub withdrawal.

I caution you about wanting to return to the relationship you had before you knew about your wife's addiction.  I thought the same thing as well before my husband went into rehab and we both started aftercare.  There were fractures in our relationship well before addiction and alcoholism reared their ugly heads.  We couldn't move forward until we dealt with those issues.  BOTH of us had to change our behavior for his recovery to be successful.

Every addict has some kind of emotional pain they try to medicate away with drugs, usually without consciously realizing that's why they use.  All they know is that they feel "happy" when they use.  Sure, it seems great in the early days but eventually there aren't enough drugs in the world to keep that pain at bay.  Without working on those underlying issues, relapse is pretty much guaranteed.  Detox is only the first step in recovery.  Staying sober and learning to deal with life and anxiety without self-medicating is a whole lot more difficult and most people need help to learn new coping skills.

I hope you'll consider attending a few Al-Anon meetings so you can get educated about the truth of addiction and get some support for yourself through this journey.  I see how much you want to help your wife and the best thing you can do for both of you is to at least try Al-Anon.  If you aren't ready to take that step yet, make an appointment to visit a rehab facility and talk to a licensed chemical dependency counselor (LCDC).  That sure was an eye-opening experience for me!

I'm pretty sure your wife isn't opening up to you right now because she's flooded with shame and guilt about her addiction and what it's done to both of you.  Emotions are overwhelming in early detox and recovery.  Try not to press her right now.  She has to deal with it in her own mind first and at the moment her brain is very sick and she's probably not ready to confront those demons just now.  

[dominosarah]

How are things going?

[Tmb3rWlf]

They are going, I guess as best as to be expected.  I spoke with my brother-in-law and he said that when she detoxed last time she slept a lot during the day, but not much at night.  Which is what she is doing, so I guess that that is normal for her.  I offer to run her a bath every couple days when she brings it up, but she just says that she gets anxious when she is in the tub and she has always been like that.  I ask "What about a shower?" and sometimes it works and sometimes she tells me she doesn't want to feel the water on her.  I was checking her phone to make sure that she was not staying in contact with the people that she was, but she has begun stating that she is not doing anything wrong right now and that if we want to move forward that I have to start trusting her again. . . It is very hard.  I do trust her, but I am not sure if I trust the situations that she might get into. . .  I have been trying to read up on different WD sites, but have not found out much as to what she is going through.  She has the twitches, cramps, and she says her head hurts a lot, but not many of the other things that I have read.  I find her getting mad at me a lot, and over little things, and I try to just remember what everyone has said.  I just worry that at times she is lying to me about stuff and I am not sure if it is me thinking from reason or me thinking from being hurt that concludes this. . . I try to be here for her when she needs me and try to give her space when she needs that, but it is just so hard, because her needs flip so quickly. . .  She accuses me of things, like going through her purse and still going through her phone, or the drawers and stuff like that.  I don't look through the drawers as often as I did at first, but I don't go through her purse.  She tells me that she has nothing to hide, yet she keeps accusing me of "snooping" and being from a military background it just causes suspicion in my mind, which is replaced with doubt and mistrust.  I HATE IT! ! !  I know that the trust will come back, it just scares me of what we will have to endure until it does.  I try to keep her as stress free as I can and I know that she knows that I am always here for her, it is just very hard trying to be someones rock when even my foundation has been shaken.  I know that I have to be strong for her right now and I am trying my best, but at times I feel like I am trapped in quick sand trying to hold her up out of it and only finding myself sinking deeper and deeper.  I want to be the husband that she needs me to be, but I am used to taking problems head on and confronting them to solve them.  I have come to find out that that is not a good tactic in this situation and I have a very lost and sometimes hopeless feeling about not knowing what I need to do.  It hurts not knowing how to help my wife get through this fight.  I will try to post more later and thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being here with thoughts and suggestions, it means a lot to someone who would have been lost without them.