(Tips) How to Deal with Your Husband’s Drug Addiction

Raising a family, especially kids, is already a challenging job for any wife. For the most part, it’s manageable, but being married to a drug addict husband at the same time is just tough.

Many wives across the world have found themselves at the crossroads of giving up. Well, you cannot really blame them, especially if the drug-related issue is new to them. Sometimes, it just gets too unbearable.

But as a wife, you’ve got to try everything you can to help and guide your husband to the right path. So, if you share the same sentiments and are confused about how to deal with your husband’s addiction, read this article. Below, we prepared some essential tips that you need to through it.

Part 1: What Is Drug Addiction

Before you jump to dealing with your husband’s addiction. It’s important that you understand what drug addiction really is. That way, you will have a better overview of what your husband is going through.

To put it simply, drug addiction is a disorder that affects the person’s nervous system. It makes someone abuse legal or illegal drugs despite awareness of the consequences. And for the most part, drug addicts have a hard time controlling their desire to get intoxicated as the drugs have already hacked their brain’s reward system, making them crave more.

Since it’s a disorder, there are interventions and rebab treatments that can be done to slowly get the person out of the addiction.

Drug addiction is not inherently bad or intentional. More often than not, it’s a result of mental health issues and other problems, which lead people to use drugs as an escape. It’s crucial that you understand this to minimize or even eliminate the stigma surrounding drug addiction.

So, be kinder and show more compassion. Avoid being judgmental especially when you first find out your husband is a drug addict.

Part 2: What Are The Effects of Your Husband’s Addiction

Apart from understanding drug addiction, you also need to observe of its effects are creeping into your marriage and family. That way, you can have a more informed decision on how you’d want to deal with your husband’s addiction.

• Compromised Finances – If your husband is using his contribution or the family’s fund to buy drugs, you would definitely struggle with budgeting.
• Verbal Abuses – Drug addicts tend to have outbursts of bad words directed toward you or any member of their family. This is especially true when it comes to arguments.
• Loss of Confidence – You or your children may feel ashamed of their father because of the drug-related issue.
• Mental/Emotional Health Issues – Being with an addict can be taxing and exhausting to your mental and emotional well-being.
• Violence – Some severe drug addicts tend to be physically violent against the people around them, including loved ones.
• Broken Trust – If a person is deep in drugs, they become more prone to lying and deception. Your trust in your husband may fade if he always lies about his drug use or whatnot.

All these effects can affect you, your husband, and the family as a whole. With these in mind, you really have to know how to deal with your husband’s addiction. Otherwise, you’d feel lost and live an unhealthy marriage along the way.

Part 3: How to Deal with Husband’s Addiction

Now that you have a clearer picture of what drug addiction is and how it affects the people around you. It’s time that you know how to deal with it. Below, we have tips on how to deal with your husband’s addiction. They can also be used to help a family member with addiction.

1. Avoid Enabling

First and foremost, you should not show tolerating behavior when supporting or dealing with your husband’s addiction. It would only enable your husband into doing drugs because you don’t take his intoxication seriously. Being in a relationship with an addict is tough for most of us because we tend to be bias in favor of our loved ones.

You can do this by not denying or minimizing your husband’s addiction. You shouldn’t also defend your husband (while under the influence of drugs) by rationalizing his actions. He has to be accountable. Apart from that, do not let your guard down. Always maintain your boundaries despite being a married couple.

2. Discuss the Issue Directly

When you find out your husband has been an addict for quite some time, you need to confront it head-on. Do not waste any more time. Take your husband to a private place in your home, and talk to him. Ask him what’s wrong and why he is doing drugs.

You have to do this in a friendly manner. Show him how concerned you are. You also need to turn off your judgmental tendencies. Listen to what he has to say and respond with concrete examples, like the effects of his intoxication on your marriage and the family.

3. Encourage Him to Get Treated

After having a private heart-to-heart talk with your husband, you can slowly encourage him to get treatments and recover through interventions. The two of you can try visiting a local rehab facility or an office that caters to drug-related issues. Ask them about the inpatient and outpatient options that your husband can go for.

However, you can only introduce the idea of getting treatments to him if he’s willing to undergo the whole process. Otherwise, it might trigger him. With that, you don’t need to be aggressive to the extent that you’re forcing him.

4. Just Keep Your Support

If your husband is not yet ready to get treatment, just be a good support system as long as he’s not causing you any serious problems. But as mentioned, you don’t have to be enabling. Sometimes, we confuse supporting and enabling. They’re not the same.

Instead of rationalizing his drug abuse, you can try introducing other hobbies that could potentially reduce the frequency of use.

5. Take Care of Yourself

Despite the heaviness of the impact of drug addiction to your marriage, you have to try to keep yourself healthy mentally, physically, and emotionally. Show your husband that despite the problem, you can take care of yourself and not resort to doing drugs. Perhaps, this could encourage and inspire him to be sober.

6. Call for Help

In case your discussion and encouragement have done nothing to persuade your husband and his addiction has worsened, call for help. You can reach out to authorities or the court to order your husband to be taken to a facility where he can get the proper treatment. This may sound like you’re betraying your husband, but it’s the only way to help him get better.

Sometimes, love and support from you and your family members are not enough to keep him sober, That’s why professionals must also be involved in the process to ensure the rehab’s success.

And in the event that your husband goes berserk, hurting you, the children, or any family member, don’t hesitate to call the cops. Your safety and security should be your top priority as a wife/mother. If it’s dangerous, find a way for relatives or friends to know what’s going on and they can do the rest for you.

7. Check If He’s Still Using Drugs

If your husband has promised that he will no longer use drugs or if he’s just done with rehab, you may till have doubts. However, you can’t just accuse your husband of using drugs, right? You need proof. You may check your husband’s belongings to confirm, but that could put you at risk of getting caught.

One way to sneak and find out about your husband’s drug use and transactions is through his phone. But isn’t that more difficult? Not if you use a phone spy tool called mSpy.

It’s an app that you can install on your husband’s phone without him knowing. Yes! It can be hidden on the target Android or iPhone.

mSpy can give you all his phone data, especially text messages where all his transactions are recorded. You see, drug transactions now are just one text away. Not to mention, you’d also know if your husband has withdrawn or transferred a huge amount of money without your knowledge. Banks now send confirmation SMS to account holders.

Apart from that, mSpy also has other features that can help you find out whether or not your husband is still on drugs,

• Social Media Chats – Besides SMS, you can also read all his exchanges on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, and more. He could also have drug transactions there.
• GPS Location – mSpy can also pinpoint his location on the map whenever he goes somewhere secret. That way, you’d know if he’s near or in an area where drugs are rampant.
• Keywords and Browsing History – Find out if he’s been searching for other addictive drugs. Any mention of them will be detected and recorded by mSpy. This also goes to his searches on the internet.

Those features are only a taste of what mSpy can offer you. There’s a lot more that can reveal all your husband’s inappropriate activities.

8. Let Go of Him

Well, if you’ve come to a point where the effects of his addiction have put your well-being or your children’s in jeopardy, it may be time to let go. You can still love your husband from a distance, but if he chose drugs over you and your family, it’s no longer your fault. And there’s nothing more you can do about it.

The best thing you can do is give up and build up your life with your children again. You shouldn’t allow his addiction to consume your future and the hopes and dreams of your children. You may file a case in court for custody if need be.

Conclusion

Drug addiction is a monumental issue in society. It may be portrayed in movies and television as a black-and-white thing, but it’s far more complicated than that. To de with a husband’s addiction, the first step is to support him and find a way to help him get out of his misery.

But if things go out of hand, you may need to do drastic measures to keep yourself and your children secure. That’s your responsibility as a good wife and mother.

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