I have been with my boyfriend since April last year. He’s wonderful, witty, humorous, and smart. We felt a bit weird about the big age gap but we never felt it as a barrier, he looks and acts youthful, I’ve seen people at their 30s, boring and seem distant. He’s nothing like that.
More about him, accurately more about his issues. He has Borderline personality overlapping with autism. He had big troubles with his mother and family because of his sexuality when he was studying for his LAST SEMESTER in university abroad. As a result, and partly because of his mother manipulating him and using her acquaintances who work in the embassy where he was studying, he got his visa frozen, he couldn’t renew his passport, and couldn’t do his final exams, and wad forced to go back home. Needless to say he doesn’t have a degree nor does he work. All of this was back in 2013. And he lives at his parents in a separate flat built for him (nice one indeed :)).
His family isn’t the best. Manipulative, dishonest, pretentious, and very, very unsupportive to him, getting to the point that he was begging them to support him in finding help and seeking a therapist. This continued for years until he finally found a suitable one after years of circulating between phycologists, medicines, and even Electroconvulsive Therapy.
When we were in the talking stage he mentioned he used drugs before when he was studying. I didn’t mind it as it was over a decade ago, Although drugs are big no-no for me. Apart from this he uses cannabis oil mixed with his vape juice as it helps him relax and sleep (he has sleeping issues too). Last June he texted me around midnight saying he was high. He explained that he used cough syrup to get high. Needless to say I was devastated and horrified by it. I didn’t know about it, and he didn’t tell me that he is using anything currently.
Next month (July) my dad got a brain stroke and was half paralysed. This was a traumatising thing to me to see my dad in this situation. It was difficult to deal with him and even more when he is hospitalised, had to endure humiliating directed at me and just shitty behaviour from him. I had to cut him off after this COMPLETELY. Throughout BF was supportive to me and took care of me, he even convinced me to try seeing a therapist (the same one he goes to) and it was helpful.
Takeaway from this incident is that he again assured me that this is even stronger reason for him to stop abusing DXM as he doesn’t want to hurt me the way my dad did. And that I am more important that getting high.
Fast forwards December 2024, he told me, again, that he is high. Horrified again. Then January 2025, high again.
By the third time I was seriously questioning the whole relationship, we had hours of conversation trying to figure out and understand what is it that made him abuse DXM. Turns out it gives a similar experience to dissociation, but in a controlled and (somehow) safe environment. He dissociated especially after hard/bad experiences and interactions. Every time it happened a was wondering how different is he from what my dad did. And if I cut off my dad from my life why should I endure my BF abusing cough syrup? Not once, not twice, but 3 TIMES.
Yesterday I called him, and he was acting weird, talking a bit incoherent and mispronouncing words, chopped sentences and thoughts. I told him that he sounds like princess Margaret after her stroke (from The Crown lol). In reality he reminded me of my dad after his stroke…
I had to listen to him being high for 17 minutes, never wished he was head more than in those 17 minutes. I was driving home, and had to keep calm and not freak out or hang up on him fearing he would freak out and panic while being high. It was horrible going through it and triggered me and reminded me of the whole dad thing.
Therefore here I am, kind of indifferent about it, mainly because it happens many times before and I can’t afford going through the talk of it again. I can’t unsee the similarity from what my dad did, although he is not as horrible as my dad, he is not in denial about it. And most importantly, HE IS WILLING TO GET HELP.
I don’t know what to do now. I haven’t been a good boyfriend either because I was talking to others without letting him know (he is okay with it as long as I tell him about it). I feel like it happened too many times and I just let it happen without anything changing about it. I get why he does it but it’s still substance abuse at the end. I am seriously thinking about breaking up with him regardless of how much I love him. But I don’t see much future to this progressing to anything. Even career-wise, he tries stuff but constantly fails. Not to mention some health issues he is having every now and then. So, how should I deal with him?
TLDR; My boyfriend is abusing DXM and I don’t know how to deal with it anymore.