Bringing ATF home to meet the wife
gawker
Older than dirt
My ATF is a sweetheart - she's now in her late 20's and still has the body of a teenager. She and I have been spending time together for about 6 years and while there's been plenty of ups and downs we generally still enjoy each other's company. She's been a heroin addict since she was 15 and has been in and out of rehab dozens of times. About 5 months ago she realized that the drugs were winning and if she was ever going to have a real life, she needed to get straight. She went to court, self reported her addiction and was sentenced to a secure treatment facility for 30 days. When that was completed she went to a half way house. She was getting 75 mg. of methadone when she started and last week got dropped down to 8 mg. - almost clean.
My wife and I have been married for 46 years. About 6 years ago she was diagnosed as having early onset Alzheimers Disease. She's being treated by the best memory disorders unit in America and her decline has been slowed through regular speech and language therapy, group counseling, socialization classes, etc.
A few days ago my ATF called, saying she was being thrown out of the 1/2 way house because random urinalysis showed illegal drug use. She said one of the other women had some Xanax and she took one in order to "relax". She was a hundred miles away so I sent her $100 for a hotel room. Instead she found a dealer and got high. The next day I went to pick her up. We first tried to get her in a sober house, but she needs to test clean to get in. We then tried rehab facilities and all that we called were full. No room at the inn. So, rather than spend money putting her up in a hotel, I brought her home to meet my wife. She's been here 2 days so far and has been as sick as a dog, puking off and on, not eating, and feeling awful. My wife welcomed her as a daughter of a friend of mine. I think it revived her maternal instincts and gave her purpose again. The ATF has been acting like a selfish spoiled brat. She has not joined us for meals or anything else.
She has a court appearance tomorrow for multiple traffic offenses and if she doesn't find a new program by the next day has agreed to go back to court.
There's been no physical contact while in the house and there won't be. I've found myself treating her like a spoiled child one minute and then "diagnosing" personality disorders the next. Time will tell if there's any future contact. She's terribly dependent right now and one has to question her ability to earn a living going forward. Strange bedfellows!
My wife and I have been married for 46 years. About 6 years ago she was diagnosed as having early onset Alzheimers Disease. She's being treated by the best memory disorders unit in America and her decline has been slowed through regular speech and language therapy, group counseling, socialization classes, etc.
A few days ago my ATF called, saying she was being thrown out of the 1/2 way house because random urinalysis showed illegal drug use. She said one of the other women had some Xanax and she took one in order to "relax". She was a hundred miles away so I sent her $100 for a hotel room. Instead she found a dealer and got high. The next day I went to pick her up. We first tried to get her in a sober house, but she needs to test clean to get in. We then tried rehab facilities and all that we called were full. No room at the inn. So, rather than spend money putting her up in a hotel, I brought her home to meet my wife. She's been here 2 days so far and has been as sick as a dog, puking off and on, not eating, and feeling awful. My wife welcomed her as a daughter of a friend of mine. I think it revived her maternal instincts and gave her purpose again. The ATF has been acting like a selfish spoiled brat. She has not joined us for meals or anything else.
She has a court appearance tomorrow for multiple traffic offenses and if she doesn't find a new program by the next day has agreed to go back to court.
There's been no physical contact while in the house and there won't be. I've found myself treating her like a spoiled child one minute and then "diagnosing" personality disorders the next. Time will tell if there's any future contact. She's terribly dependent right now and one has to question her ability to earn a living going forward. Strange bedfellows!
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Addiction is a terrible thing that makes people do terrible things.
I hope it works out well and that your ATF actually kicks her habit! That would be brilliant! But she doesn't seem to be trying too hard to do so!
Now I have no idea what you are going through with your wife. so I'm not judging you and I'm going to make a sincere effort to be kind in my comments. So before I launch in, let me make it clear that I am sorry for what you are going through.
With respect to your ATF, the reality is that you can either be the old guy who pays her for sex and romance or her savior/father figure, but not both. And you lost the moral authority to be the latter the first time you gave her money to take your penis in one of her orifices. To her, you are just another person who wants something from her, albeit a kinder and more generous version than she is probably accustomed to. But at the end of the day you have been using each other to get things that you need.
So with all that said, I think that expecting her to suddenly treat you and your wife like her long lost parents once she enters your home, or more generally to heed your life advice as she would a true father figure, are probably unrealistic expectations. And in fact, given her drug and other problems, I wouldn't expect her to respect much of anything else either, so I agree with others who said that you need to keep a careful eye on your valuables and personal belongings.
Good luck and I hope everything works out for the best.
Could it be that you find self worth in taking care of your ATF? I imagine in your life you don't have much room to do anything else. You will not win the war over the heroin addiction. She will succumb to its power and either you will be around to see your ATF die from it, or she will die in someone else's view. Your choice, but heroin is the worst addiction to choose.
You continue to progress further and further into the Twilight Zone. I don't know who is worse, you or you so called ATF, wanting to fly closer and close to the flame and not stopping until dead. I think @rockstar666 gave a good prognosis.
series of posts about an organization i am building
www.tuscl.net/postread.php?PID=33731#com…
You shouldn't deal with people in Recovery or Rehabilitation, or Seeking Salvation. Even if someone is sleeping under bridges, if they have decided to stop using, they stop.
There will be physical withdrawals, and with heroin it is extreme. But once someone has gone thru it they can do it again. People who need to in a war can stay up for 72 hours without sleep. That is much more difficult than any chemical withdrawal.
Actually the more physical exercise the less likely someone is to use and the less drawn to mood alternates they will be. At the end of Marine Corps basic training, they have to move 100 miles in 24 hours with full field pack. I once rode the Davis Double Century. Other times people just do practical things, like with a shovel, like digging a huge hole to replace broken pipes, or agricultural and landscaping work.
If someone has made a decision that they are not going to drink or use, then they won't. There will be physical pains, but these are manageable. People can endure much worse.
But Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Salvation are part of the problem. People are drawn to these realms when they don't want to change how they think. They are based on a doctrine of Innate Moral Defect.
People who drink and use do so because they don't want to feel their own feelings. It is easier to believe the Innate Moral Defect doctrine, than to feel the pain of having been used and abused.
You have posted much about this ATF. I am sure that her substance habits all come out of her relationship with her mother.
I am building an organization, and we won't deal with anyone who still subscribes to Recovery, Rehabilitation, or Salvation. They have to convince us that they are done with chemicals, and also with Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Salvation, and that they want to live by mindfulness and social action. Otherwise they don't get past our front door transom.
This is not a moral judgment. It is simply that as long as people believe in Recovery, we know that they will not change. Even if they don't use, they still continue to think the same way.
Here is a group which opposes 12 step and Higher Power concepts of sobriety, and any sorts of buddy systems or support groups.
https://rational.org/index.php?id=1
But I know how it works. Locally we have government funded programs which put homeless people up in hotels and then into group homes because it is presumed that otherwise they can't get clean and sober. What this does is just feed that idea within the clients.
And then our County Mental Health system supports the concept of Recovery and meets with Born Again groups. It is sickening. And then we have Rick Warren's Celebrating Recovery in our Prison and Probations systems.
In the group I am building we don't do that. We won't deal with anyone until they have decided that they are done with chemicals, for life. We don't ask for any pledge or commitment, as that opens the door to relapse. We just don't deal with anyone until they can convince us that they have made a decision for themselves, independent of us.
You show me a case of child abuse, and I'll show you a matter which should be handled in court. You show me a case of disinheritance, and I'll show you a case which should be handled in court. You show me any situation of child scape goating, and it belongs in court. In fact, our people will be in court all the time, holding perpetrators accountable.
I was already involved in one case, a man who beat up the elderly Jesuit who had raped him and his younger brother 35 years ago at the ages of 7 and 4. Filling the court room and protesting out front and giving press conferences worked. The jury let him off. And that was the first time this Jesuit pedophile had ever had to appear in court.
You know that I also did a great deal to help put one Pentecostal Daughter Molester into San Quentin.
He was fondling his daughters, and then blaming it on the daughters. I only had to hear his pitch once and see the energy he had invested in black sheeping his eldest daughter, and then I got involved.
But in his church they all seem to be like that. Most of them seem to have children and siblings who are the designated scape goats. They abuse their children, and then blame it on the child.
Then they feel that they should be allowed access to tax payer funded properties, for their outreach ministries, so that they can dump their same shit onto other people's adult children.
I've tried telling them repeatedly that someone who has been treated with dignity and respect and who has been given the chance to develop and apply their abilities, is not likely to have a problem with drugs or alcohol.
But these church people don't listen. They like preying on addicts, because addicts are the people most likely to accept the more dangerous addiction which they are peddling.
In fact, besides having the designated family scapegoats, most of the people in this church have their own histories with alcohol, drugs, and spousal abuse, before they got Saved of course.
They never made any attempt to try and figure out why they did these things, they just know that now they have a newer and better addiction.
It stinks. Addictions and Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Salvation are what keep victims suffering and what lets perpetrators off the hook. It is why this country continues to sink and why injustices are not redressed and the population keeps on getting more and more crazy.
Your ATF is part of this.
SJG
Deep Purple, live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5IzV5G…
That's just plain fucked up Gawker. Bringing you side piece into the house with your sick wife? Your side piece who you admit has some serious issues and is going through severe withdrawal? What the fuck man... Jesus.
http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/re…
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Cannabis_depende…
I'm not going to pass judgment on how you handle your matters.
It's you life, and you damn well know how it will go down.
Thanks for telling us your story.
Interesting you say that. Congratulations for being clean all this time.
Alcohol, drugs, and Born Again Christianity are some of the most common ways of denying one's own pain instead of facing it. Using any of these things long term is extremely harmful to one's spiritual and emotional growth.
SJG