How to Cope With a Spouse's Cocaine Addiction

The use of cocaine provides the user with a sense of euphoria, well being, and increased energy. Cocaine is one of the most addictive of all illegal drugs. Relapse rates after formal addition treatment are sometimes as high as 100 percent. People that live with a spouse that has a cocaine addiction often report feeling like there are three people in the marriage; them self, their spouse, and the addiction.

Instructions

• 1

  Understand that you can not force your spouse to get help. Unless your spouse is ready to help himself, you have no control over the addiction.

• 2

  Focus on yourself. What you do have control over is your life and how you choose to live it. Often when you live with a spouse that has a cocaine addiction the entire focus of your life becomes him and the addiction. Switch the focus back to you by getting actively involved with friends, taking up new hobbies, and finding things to do with your time that give you pleasure.

• 3

  Realize that you basically have two choices when it comes to your addicted spouse: you can accept her the way she is or you can choose to leave her. You can not force her to face her addiction and stop using cocaine.

• 4

  Keep a journal. Writing down your thoughts, feelings and emotions as they relate to your spouse's addiction is the first step in changing the way that you think.

• 5

  Contact Co-Anon for help coping with your spouse's cocaine addition. Co-Anon is a support group for the families of cocaine addicts.

• 6

  Seek professional counseling for help dealing with the feelings that living with an addicted spouse has created. Living with a spouse with a cocaine addiction often causes feelings of obsession, anger, anxiety, denial and guilt. These feelings have to be changed before you can develop a sense of self worth.