‘Help me, I’m dying’, I heard a voice shout. Sitting at my home office at 2am, six months pregnant and working an overnight admin job, I swung around and looked into the darkness of the staircase. That is when I saw him – my partner Rich hurtling down the stairs. He told me he could not breathe, then collapsed on the floor calling my name. As I looked at him in horror, he started to crawl toward me.
‘I’m having a heart attack’, he screamed, ‘you need to call an ambulance!’ Panicked, I shouted back: ‘What have you taken?’ Then he said the word that, before long, I would become sick of hearing: ‘Cocaine’.
That was over 18 months ago – when my world came crashing down. I had met Rich a few years earlier, when I was in my late 20s and he was a little younger. He mentioned previously struggling with drugs but swore he had conquered his addiction. This concerned me as I had my son Joel, who was six at the time, but I believed him. Rich was kind, sweet, funny – we had a good time together and he was great with my son.
As our relationship developed, I thought he might have a problem with alcohol. The drinking was only really at the weekend – which may seem normal to some. But at 5pm on Friday, Rich started drinking and by midnight, he was so wasted that the rest of the weekend would be a write-off. However, it was something he acknowledged, and we tried to work through it together. The cocaine use, however, was different.
An overdose when he was younger almost killed him. He was hospitalised and, with the help of the nurses and doctors on call, he survived. He told me he swore he would never touch cocaine again after coming face to face with his mortality. But I did not know it was all happening again until Rich came tumbling down the stairs. I finally realised he had been doing drugs behind my back the entire time.
I dialled 111, and when they asked how much cocaine he had taken, Rich admitted to taking about a gram – which, for anyone who does not know, would be considered excessive for a two-day rave, never mind alone in your bedroom. The call handler said they believed this was enough drugs to constitute an overdose. While I was working, heavily pregnant and trying to keep afloat with all our bills, my partner was snorting a gram of cocaine in our bedroom. I was livid.
I woke up my son and told him ‘daddy was having a panic attack’, so we needed to take him to hospital. As we got dressed, all I could think about was how we were creating a core memory that one day might manifest as trauma when they realise that their daddy was a drug addict. The hospital was a 20-minute drive away, and there we sat for seven hours waiting to be seen and for him to be tested. I felt annoyed and irritated – I was pregnant and pissed off. Rich did not notice or say anything about how it was all affecting me – he was high as a kite and was focusing on stopping the heart attack he thought he was having.
We rightfully got referred to social services, and while standing in the hospital, I held my pregnant belly, just wondering how I got here. I rang his mum from the hospital and sent him to her house for a month. I could not bear to see him. It would have been longer, but his family got norovirus and wanted to isolate, so he came back. I was annoyed – I did not feel like I had enough time to process. But we made it a regular thing to do drug tests – he even got in touch with the local drug services and started therapy, which he has been in and out of ever since.
There have been relapses though – too many to count. I am exhausted. I lost my job and my grandmother last year, and I struggle with epilepsy. I have never experienced anything like this, and it feels so lonely. Rich and I have been together almost four years now, and even though we have discussed getting married, I do not want to contractually link myself to someone with an active alcohol and drug addiction.
Some of my friends often tell me to leave him, but it is not that simple. I see him as a man with a disease, a good dad, and a kind person. But that disease manifests itself in incredibly selfish ways. I am angry at him for lying to me about who he was, but I am with him and we now have a baby together. I am in therapy now, I work out as often as I can, I try to prioritise myself, and I am trying to find people who understand the situation I am in.
I want others to know that if you are a person living with someone in recovery or active addiction, you are not alone, you did nothing wrong, you could never have stopped it, you do not deserve it, and you are enough. Stay or leave because of love and a drive for a better future, not out of obligation. Only you really know if it is worth it or not.
