RN husband addicted to opiates

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Although I am not the RN in the family, my husband is, I am very concerned about him and thought maybe one of you can give me some advice. He just graduated a year and a half ago and over this time period, has developed a problem with opiates. He started out with a valid prescription for vicodin and muscle relaxersand I am now finding hypodermic needles hidden in various parts of the house. His behavior is frustrating and we have two children. I believe this stuff is coming from the hospital and he has been suspended twice for mishandling patient medications. Actually, I know that is where it is coming from, because of the codes on the things I have found. He denies he has a problem and refuses to get help. His drug tests come back as positive for opiates, but he has that prescripton to fall back on. Do I report an anonymous problem to HR or let the chips fall where they may? And how can he possibly be getting away with it? I am very worried about him, as is our children and his parents. We don't want him to go to far someday. Please advise, as you are the ones who would know how to best handle this situation. Thank you.

Specializes in ER,ICU,L+D,OR.

You are concerned for yourself

You are concerned for your children , rightfully so also

I think interventions make very good TV material for those that like that stuff, I'm not one of those.

For your children's safety, leave him

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Specializes in Impaired Nurse Advocate, CRNA, ER,.
You are concerned for yourself

You are concerned for your children , rightfully so also

I think interventions make very good TV material for those that like that stuff, I'm not one of those.

For your children's safety, leave him

Interventions save lives and families. Chemical dependence is a treatable disease. Time to move from the dark ages and into the 21st century.

Jack

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Specializes in ER,ICU,L+D,OR.

Yes it is treatable, however interventions are very dramatic. Literature shows them as not very effective.

Leaving with the children. If that does not wake him up, then nothing will. Has nothing to do with the dark ages. Practical experience from being 46 years old.

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I have thought of an intervention before. And I certainly am concerned with the patient care side of things. But there is so much more background than I am able to post here. But to make the story even more complicated, he was pre-med when he was just out of high school. I mean this guy was and still is pretty intelligent. And he can make himself, in a sober state, come off as the most professional person around. But long story short, he flunked out of school at 18 due to a drug problem, spent some time in rehab and came out not 100% cured, but not what you would consider a problem either. He has always drank more than I liked, but the current problem is new. He has always been able to hold down a job and like I said, no one but his family knows what is going on. I am pretty sure he either is not getting high at work or not getting to the point of oblivion that he gets to when at home. In fact, I know he is not doing it that way at work. I mean, at home he can't stay awake for longer than ten minutes at a time. I believe it's called "being on the nod". The co workers would definitely notice if he was asleep, I'm sure. So this is something he has battled for along time and I thought he was okay, but here it is twenty years later and it has reared it's ugly head again. I know some say to leave him. And he is not currently living in the house, but he is my husband, I do love him because he is my best friend and I do see it as a disease. If this marriage ends, it will be because he chose a lifestyle that I do not want for myself or my children. I do not feel an intervention is the wrong thing to do at all. I just know how he feels about counselors or therapist and as he has said before, "I can talk that crap all day". He is very good at knowing what people want to hear. An intervention will only work if he is ready to accept help and I think we might be close.

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Specializes in Rehab, Infection, LTC.

i offer you every single ounce of strength, love and hope i have, joker. i will pray for your family daily for strength.

i was as bad as your husband. so there is hope! but in the meantime, you have got to take care of yourself and the children.

addicts will tell you anything they think you want to hear. dont believe a word out of his mouth until he has been in treatment for a while. i used to make all these plans of how i was going to quit and make all these promises that i would quit and then as soon as i was away from my family/friends, i was high again.

you love him and want to help him but you cant love him well. no matter how hard you try, it will only bring you heartache.

i really suggest you get in an alanon group to surround yourself with people that are going thru the same things and ones who have been to hell and back.

we dont just hurt ourselves as addicts, we hurt everyone around us.

even my dog was affected with my using! can you believe that? my poor little dog, he didnt know which mommy was going to be with him from minute to minute. the mean, crazy one that yelled at him and tried to hurt him or the one that loved him with all her heart. i hurt even my little precious baby. he doesnt leave my side today but 5 years ago he was afraid i would kill him.

i dont like to tell that truth. i dont know why but it's easier for me to tell you how i hurt my family, the love of my life...my husband, how i made my first husband suffer in terrible pain while i filled his morphine bottles with saline so i could get high than it is to tell you that i hurt my little dog.

i tell you this to show you that our addiction hurts everyone and everything around us and it doesnt stop. ever. it gets worse and worse until we dont care if we live or die or if our loved ones live or die. the only thing we care about is getting high.

thats why it's so important for you to take care of you right now. he's beyond being able to care for you or provide for the family.

i see myself in your posts about your husband. i see myself passing out at work. i see myself passing out at home and burning everything we owned with cigarettes. i see me with vials and syringes hidden everywhere. i see me with unit dose packs of pills hidden everywhere i could hide them. i see me not caring anymore about anything and just going to work to get high.

i was your husband, joker.

there is no other answer for him right now. he needs treatment. and until he's ready to go, he has nothing left he can give you because he is trapped in his own hell of getting high and he doesnt know how to stop. he wants to stop, he hates himself, but he cant stop. he has the ever progressing disease of addiction and this is what it does to a normally intellectual human.

you have my heart tonight.

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Specializes in Impaired Nurse Advocate, CRNA, ER,.
Yes it is treatable, however interventions are very dramatic. Literature shows them as not very effective.

Leaving with the children. If that does not wake him up, then nothing will. Has nothing to do with the dark ages. Practical experience from being 46 years old.

Can you provide this literature? I'd love to read it. Practical experience said the earth was flat, that disease was caused by demon possession, and that man would never fly. "Taking the children" to "wake him up" would classify as an intervention and one that is very dramatic as well.

While the intended purpose of an intervention is to get the addict to enter treatment, the true value of the intervention comes in preparing the family, friends, and colleagues for the intervention. They learn how their response to the addict has enabled the addict to continue to use. They learn about the disease process, how to take better care of themselves. One of the myths still floating around is the addict has to hit "bottom". The intervention creates a bottom sonner, before the disease can continue to progress. This increases the success rate of treatment and makes long term recovery more likely.

Jack

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Specializes in Impaired Nurse Advocate, CRNA, ER,.
I have thought of an intervention before. And I certainly am concerned with the patient care side of things. But there is so much more background than I am able to post here. But to make the story even more complicated, he was pre-med when he was just out of high school. I mean this guy was and still is pretty intelligent. And he can make himself, in a sober state, come off as the most professional person around. But long story short, he flunked out of school at 18 due to a drug problem, spent some time in rehab and came out not 100% cured, but not what you would consider a problem either. He has always drank more than I liked, but the current problem is new. He has always been able to hold down a job and like I said, no one but his family knows what is going on. I am pretty sure he either is not getting high at work or not getting to the point of oblivion that he gets to when at home. In fact, I know he is not doing it that way at work. I mean, at home he can't stay awake for longer than ten minutes at a time. I believe it's called "being on the nod". The co workers would definitely notice if he was asleep, I'm sure. So this is something he has battled for along time and I thought he was okay, but here it is twenty years later and it has reared it's ugly head again. I know some say to leave him. And he is not currently living in the house, but he is my husband, I do love him because he is my best friend and I do see it as a disease. If this marriage ends, it will be because he chose a lifestyle that I do not want for myself or my children. I do not feel an intervention is the wrong thing to do at all. I just know how he feels about counselors or therapist and as he has said before, "I can talk that crap all day". He is very good at knowing what people want to hear. An intervention will only work if he is ready to accept help and I think we might be close.

THERE IS HOPE!

Don't give up. You should receive the contact information for the Peer Assistance Network for Nurses by email.

Jack

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For southernbeegirl, it is so odd to hear you say some of those things because he also has burned so many things around this house with cigarettes and we have NEVER smoked in our house before. We just always had a rule about that because of the kids. But I would get up in the morning after having a bad night with him and find the leather couch with burn marks on it, even the sheets on the bed were burned up. (I didn't notice because I was so furious with his behavior, I slept elsewhere) The up roaming the house all night long was just exhausting, I felt like I wasn't safe in my own home anymore. But I said this earlier, I will be going to my first alanon meeting Wednesday night. So, I am hoping there is still hope for him and I will encourage him to come clean with his employer. If not, I will intervene. It may not save my marriage but hopefully it will save my childrens father. What saved you?

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Specializes in Rehab, Infection, LTC.
For southernbeegirl, it is so odd to hear you say some of those things because he also has burned so many things around this house with cigarettes and we have NEVER smoked in our house before. We just always had a rule about that because of the kids. But I would get up in the morning after having a bad night with him and find the leather couch with burn marks on it, even the sheets on the bed were burned up. (I didn't notice because I was so furious with his behavior, I slept elsewhere) The up roaming the house all night long was just exhausting, I felt like I wasn't safe in my own home anymore. But I said this earlier, I will be going to my first alanon meeting Wednesday night. So, I am hoping there is still hope for him and I will encourage him to come clean with his employer. If not, I will intervene. It may not save my marriage but hopefully it will save my childrens father. What saved you?

God saved me joker. It was all God. looking back on it now, i can see how he put me everywhere i had been to get me to that bathroom the afternoon of April 23. 2004.

He used people, that i call my angels, to do my intervention.

i was sitting on that toilet, trying to pee and freaking out because i knew this was it. somehow i knew in my gut this was my last chance. i dont know how i knew it but i did. i knew that i was making a choice to literally live or die in that second. the very instant my mind realized that, God started literally yelling in my head "tellhertellhertellhertellhertellher" until i wanted to scream at Him to shut up! He yelled at me over and over until I could take it no more. at that instant, she turned to me and said "do you want to tell me something wendy?" and i almost screamed "im a drug addict!!"

it was at that second that i took the biggest leap of faith i had ever taken in my life. i completely let go of me and gave myself over to God at that moment because i knew if i didnt I was going to die.

i knew it so strongly as i'm sitting here today. He was giving me my last chance. my choice was to live or to die.

i finally, after 22 years chose to live.

omg im so crying right now, lol. im such a dork!

brb

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Specializes in Rehab, Infection, LTC.

i was where your husband is today. i looked in the mirror every day and said "i hate you" and i begged God to kill me because i couldnt stop. it was the first thing i thought of in the morning and the last thing i thought of at night. i was consumed and obsessed and nothing else mattered in my life. nothing. noone. just my drug, thats all i cared about.

i wanted to stop so bad but i couldnt. i didnt think i was strong enough to do it.

once you get to that point, for me anyway, i didnt get that high anymore. it took sooooo much to get me high. i took drugs just to keep myself from going into withdrawal. my life was consumed with making sure i had enough.

i worked overtime daily, worked any shift they needed me kjust so i could get my drugs.

i went to work every night and all i wanted was my drugs before i could function. just let me at that med cart...thats all i cared about.

i sat up day and night just passing out as i sat here and all the while smoking obsessively too.

addicts cant do ANYTHING within reason. not smoking, not eating, not sex, not anything..especially not drugs and alcohol.

i sat here and passed out constantly waking up when i felt the burn on my leg or God woke me up, i dont know who or what woke me up. i had burned everything we owned.

i still have a couple blankets i burned...just so i wont forget. every burn means something to me now, but i dont know how to explain that. i think it humbles me and takes me back there when i think im beating my addiction.

it never leaves...its always in the back of your head just waiting to pounce! just waiting on you to get tired or frustrated or in pain and it jumps out and says "hey remember me! i can make you feel better!!"

it wants to kill me and its a constant battle with my disease to live but by dammit i'm living now! i have the tools i need to be qble to tell it to go back to the hell it came from!

i didnt know how to do that before. and us addicts, we are so strong willed and such victim/martyrs that we cant/ wont aske for help. oh yeah...we ask for it...but we dont mean it. we just want to tell you guys what you want to hear.

in active addiction, like your husband, if we are talking....we are lying. dont doubt that for a second.

i feel like God has used me tonight to tell you something you needed to hear. i dont know what it was but it wasnt me typing, it was God.

you stay strong. you have to protect yourself until he is ready to get clean. you have to let him fall.

if we never experience our consequences...like losing a job, going to jail, losing our license we worked so hard for...if we never get to experience that...we have no reason to get clean. let him fall joker...let him fall.

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Specializes in Rehab, Infection, LTC.

and to the person that said interventions dont work...

you are wrong. they work. my intervention saved my life.

i had been so scared to tell my secret...that i was an addict and needed help desperately.

i knew my family wouldnt/couldnt stop me....but my intervention did.

it gave me those much needed consequences that i'd needed for so long.

i had to face it. keep using and die....or get clean, face my consequences and the mess i'd made of my life and learn to live.

not learn to live again but learn to live period. i have been an active qddict since i was 14 but i had my first overdose at 2 belive it or not.

i had never lived in my life.

but im living now!!!!!!!!!!!! nothing can stop me now and i've got my wings and i fly everywhere!!!!!

had it not been for that intervention and my angels...i think...no, i know...i'd be dead and buried today.

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Specializes in Neuro ICU, Geriatric Rehab.

Wow, it is so strange to read words like that of southernbeegirl. It all sounds so familiar- it was me too. I was addicted with my now ex-husband and together we burned up stuff all over multiple houses/apts. I have often marveled that we didn't wake up in a huge firey blaze, and I am so grateful for my son and myself that we didn't. I mean carpets, chairs, pillows, sheets- everything. Because I was hooked with my spouse it took my dad taking my son away and losing my job to wake me up. Before that I just felt sorry for myself. Good luck joker, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, but I have been in your hubby's and everytime I read stories like these it reminds me why I fought the good fight.

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