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Heroin Recovery: Should you cut off contact with friends that still use?

Thanks for all the replies. I've gained a lot of insight to the situation and I agree with most everyone. I know simply cutting off contact isn't the cure-all, but it certainly seems to help and shows a commitment to change.

Last night I caught her hanging out in her car with a couple addicts at 4am on a Tuesday, acting all guilty, nervous and telling stories that didn't make sense. Couldn't explain what she'd been doing for the past 5-6 hours. Told me she was waiting on a dope addict to come buy a single sub off of her at 4am on a school night, when she has a 10 yr old son at home.

She's my ex. We're really close; and I love her and her son so much, but I can't take the decietfulness and manipulation. I've already been through it with her several times, where she insists she's clean and lies through her teeth even when she's caught red-handed. Then she hits me up 6 months later telling me she's 2 weeks clean and doing so great... I try to be supportive and believe in her, even when she's making smoke and telling me there's no fire... It's enough to drive a person crazy with all the gaslighting and denial. Blaming me and her parents for stressing her out and making her want to get high. Like she's holding herself hostage. Just wants me to shut the fuck up and accept whatever she does or doesn't do. Guess I just need to fall back and mind my own business.
 
I even bought us both music festival tickets, trying to give her hope for the future and something to look forward to. She was so excited, but then I see her a couple days later and she looks dope sick.. Blaming it on sub withdrawal. Just quit the sub program after a couple months. Son said she had been nodding off on him. She's driving a bunch of addicts around all the time for money, apparently. Then I catch her staying up all night running around with addicts, pupils all fucked, fidgeting, telling me lies. It's like there's nothing I can do. She just wants me to trust her and accept all that bullshit as truth; but I can't.
 
In this case, yes it sounds like she is still actively involved in the using scene and would be a lot better off without her "friends." However, that is something she has to decide for herself. There are few things more painful than watching a loved one harm themselves like this, precisely because there is only so much you can do to help them. It's really a shame, because often it takes some unfortunate event happening to them to wake them up to the seriousness of what they're doing and the necessity of chancing their priorities.

How are you coping, and maintaining healthy boundaries with her?
 
She's been abusing dope and adderral so long, that she has a heart murmur and needs heart surgery. Her resting heart rate is 120bpm. She has also spent over 6 years in prison/jail and has about 20 years suspended over her head. You'd think that'd be enough to scare her straight, but she loves to make excuses and rationalize taking steps in the wrong direction.

For me, I am not really coping with it well. I am an over-thinking, co-dependent alcoholic who has suffered through my sister's suicide and my Mom's lung cancer over the past 3 years... all at the same time that I had a tumultuous relationship with her. I feel like I project my feelings about my sister onto her, as they were friends, and I feel like I could've saved her.

As much as I want to be a part of her life, I feel like we trigger each other and I can't have contact with her. Every time we try to be just friends, we end up doing family type stuff with the kids; and I feel like a part -time boyfriend.Then we end up fucking and fightin; make up to break up. I just don't know how to be her friend, but not worry about her when she's exhibiting familiar addict behavior. She says she feels the need to lie to me, cause I'll just freak out over innocent stuff; like hanging out with addicts all the time.

I feel like maybe I'm the biggest threat to her sobriety, because of our tight bond and the drama that ensues when I get the feeling she's back to her old ways.
 
If the friends are not poisoning you with the constant influence of picking up I don't see a reason to cut them off. Like a previous poster had said, if you want your fix you will just find a way to contact those people again and a dope dealer isn't going to not sell you dope lol... If they are really close like family then keep yourself distant from the drug and thrive on the support that they do offer outside of it. If they are not offering support in that way and are trying to influence you to do the drug then cutting them off is the necessary thing to do if you are serious about getting away from a drug and it's temptations. It is a tough question and it is really situational even though the obvious answers sounds like cutting them all off.
 
Sadly yes. As long as they are on your contacts, another use is just around the corner.
 
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