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The original was posted on /r/relationship_advice by /u/Fit_Morning_3768 on 2023-10-07 17:37:29.

Throwaway account. My toddler had a surgery this week which is known to be incredibly painful. On top of rotating Tylenol and Motrin every three hours, the surgeon prescribed liquid oxycodone to be given on an as-needed basis. Last night, I came down from putting one of our kids to bed to discover him acting suspicious with the bag containing the medication. I realized he had taken approximately 1/4 or more of the medication, and after a lot of lying and attempted manipulation, he finally admitted to it. I feel as if I have lost all respect for him, and I don’t know how our relationship or my view of him can be salvaged.

A little background…my husband and I have been together 15 years, married for 7. We have been through a lot together, including a lot of random drug use and pretty nasty and severe heroine addition that spanned about 5-6 years. With the help of suboxone, we got clean. I was able to completely get off suboxone in 2016 and he got off it around 2018. We used to smoke cigarettes but both quit in 2019, with him taking the lead on that one. We both work full time with great jobs, and I was really proud of our turnaround. We welcomed our first child in 2020 and our second child a little under two years later.

Having children has been the greatest blessing in my life. I am so proud to be their mother, and watching them grow fulfills me in a way substances never could. I have zero desire to go back down the path my life took when I was younger. My husband, on the other hand, still seems to struggle with substances. He seemed to trade suboxone for alcohol, and has been drinking nearly daily ever since. He never gets wasted, but he drinks 3-6 beer nearly every night after work, with a day off here and there. He also smokes weed every night and recently picked up nicotine again in the form of those gas station vapes.

My husband has some unresolved childhood trauma that he desperately needs therapy for. He also struggles with anxiety and occasional depression. He recently agreed to see a doctor, who decided he had ADHD and needed to be on adderal. While I do think my husband may have ADHD, I was so anxious about him taking adderal because of our history of substance abuse problems. I voiced these concerns to my husband, but he went ahead with it anyway. Of course, he did not take it as prescribed and began doubling and tripling or more of his medication.

This brings us to now. Like I said, our toddler had surgery this week. It is a painful surgery and we have only needed to give him the oxycodone twice so far. It is my understanding that the pain peaks in a day or two. I came downstairs from putting our youngest to bed to see my husband walking into the garage with the bag containing the medication. I walked in behind him and he had guilt written all over his face. He said he was just looking at it and some other nonsense I cannot remember. I snatched the medication from him and ran upstairs and locked our bedroom door. I examined the medication and saw how much had been in the bottle when we got it. After subtracting how much I had given my son, I realized that my over a quarter of the original amount was gone. I was devastated. It’s not just the fact of him using the medication, it’s the hard-to-swallow fact that he took the medication from our helpless toddler, potentially preventing him from receiving pain management. I am disgusted, disappointed, and heartbroken.

To make matters worse, he attempted to gaslight and manipulate his was out of it by saying he was taking it to the garage to examine it to make sure I wasn’t taking any. After I told him I saw how much was missing, he tried to blame it on my very square mother, who would absolutely never. This back and forth went on at least thirty minutes before he finally admitted to taking some the night before. So I’m guessing he was planning on going back for even more.

I don’t know how we recover from this. I can’t even look at him. I feel so much disgust and anger that he would be so selfish and put himself before our child that way. He’s such a great dad in so many ways, but this almost feels like it cancels out every good thing about him. I have always felt like he is my best friend and my true soulmate and this betrayal to our son is crushing me.

It was very cathartic to type all that out. My question to all of you is how do we move forward? Do I outline steps of things he needs to do to fix himself? I have been begging for him to get true treatment for years to no avail. Do I leave him and break up our generally happy family? We are so great most of the time. I don’t want to do that, but I also don’t know how to fix this. Do I tell him he needs to figure out to fix it? Any advice is appreciated.