I Quit. Why Can't He?

(Denver, CO)

I met my boyfriend through mutual friends a year ago. When we first started dating, we were both addicted to heroin. I was a new user, but he was a past user who had been shooting up & over dosed.

He was clean for a few years, but started using again. He & I only ever smoked it as I was too afraid to become dependent on it through a needle, & he was scared of another over dose.

After a few months, the dependency became too much for me & I quit. I admitted myself into a three month rehab program & I completed it. While I was in my program, he kept telling me he was quitting also.

But when I got out, he was still using. We moved in shortly after I got out & he continued to use. I made it another two months before I relapsed. I was so angry with him for not respecting the fact that I wanted to get my life on track & exposing me to it again.

We started fighting a lot & before I knew it, he had turned to the needle again. He blamed me saying I used to take his pain away & he just wanted to feel numb.

We talked about it, & he agreed to stop shooting up & go back to smoking. But I continued to find spoons & needles around the house. When I confronted him about it a second time, he told me I couldn't judge him because I was a "junkie" too.

I have since then quit using again and am 2 & a half months clean, & I do not plan on relapsing a second time. But he is still shooting up. It makes me so sad. I tell him all the time that I want him to stop & he keeps promising me he will. (He missed his veins in both arms & caused himself to have abscesses. He says he will stop when his arms are healed.)

Most days I wake up & he is tying off in the kitchen. I go to work & When I get back, he is doing his thing again & I have to see it several more times through the night.

I hate that he does it, & I used to be very open about the way I felt, but he would tell me to shut up & scream in my face, calling me names & threatening to move out or get a hotel for the night.

Some times he even locks himself in the bathroom. He's never hit me, but one time I emptied out his prepared syringes & filled them with Cherry Coke & he tackled me. But that's the only time he has been violent.

He continues to tell me he hates himself for messing his arms up & that he wants to quit. But sometimes when he gets angry he screams that he will never quit. I guess I really just want to know if he really wants to stop, or not.

I want to help him & be supportive. I want to be able to make whatever pain made him start go away. But he won't let me in. I have made the decision that if he hasn't quit shooting by the end of the year, I'll have to kick him out of my apartment, but I don't want it to come to that. I love him.

I just don't know what else I can do to help him. & I don't know how I should deal with it so that I am as supportive as possible. I think I have been going about it wrong.

Please share your stories & give me & suggestions. Thanks for reading.