First off this will be a long post with many grammar and punctuation errors. Please forgive me for that as I’m not college educated. So grammar police please try and understand.
This story goes back 25 years or more. My ex wife and mother of our only child a daughter was once a very successful broker in the financial system in the Midwest region at a time when men dominated the field her making a substantial salary, ten times that of mine in a blue collar union job at our home in California. We have owned and lived in some beautiful homes from Northern Virginia to California. We were living the American dream traveling abroad visits to Disneyworld staying at the nicest resorts. All the while she tried to portray me to her colleagues as someone who had substantial wealth in the wine industry because we live in a very prominent northern ca region. I should have seen the writing on the wall at this point but I chose to ignore it. At this point in time we had a young daughter and my only goal was to help foster her into the great women she is today.
Then I started noticing changes in my wife’s behavior small at first then became more noticeable. She was addicted to opiates, whatever or however she could get her hands on them from doctor shopping to whatever other means of cheating the system to get more drugs. At this point I had had enough and as much as I didn’t want to we went through divorce proceedings. That was close to 25 years ago. I have always kept in communication with her and have allowed her to live with me when she fell into dire straits. She has been to numerous rehab facilities from private upscale in Napa Valley to the worst of the worst in San Francisco. Nothing has changed.
My daughter who now has given me two precious granddaughters has not spoken to her since they were born. And wants nothing to do with her. This breaks my heart.
The ex wife has fallen into the hands of social services through outreach from being in homeless centers. Social services is a joke their personal seems to change every month and a new physiologist assigned. Then the cycle continues new physiological drugs administered. It’s a cycle that never stops. Due to HIPPA rules myself or my daughter can give no input through the health system to give any input on her past. The system is truly broken.
So as of today her new physiologist has her on Suboxone and she is once again living at my home. So am I too naive to believe somehow I can break this cycle should I just cut all ties and wait for the coroner to call with the bad news. I’ve tried to hold on thinking I can bring her back to once again have a relationship with my daughter.
Am I asking too much? Should I just let go? Thanks for any prayers or advice.
Opiates are the hardest to get off of. William Burroughs said something to the effect that opiates change a persons DNA. Do what you will bc I was the same way with my mom. She was a hardcore IV addict from the time I was four till she died when I was 50. It was only during the last ten years of her life that I finally cut strings bc I just couldn’t take the insanity anymore.
To speed up the process, my advise is to let her fall almost as low as she can go bc the more you and others help her, the longer she’s gonna be on drugs. You guys are making it easy for her. An addict truly has to hit the absolute rock bottom when the addiction is at the level of your ex-wife. Yes, she could overdose and die in the process but something has to happen either way. Right now, you’re keeping her in limbo and she’s doing the same to you. Limbo goes nowhere. A decision has to be made to cut her off and leave her to her own devises and at that point one of three things will happen:
A) she overdoses and dies B) she just keeps on doing drugs with no end in sight C) her life finally reaches a point where she can’t take it anymore and genuinely wants to quit.