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I still remember the moment I met Jake: a handsome, strong, middle-class Jake.
It was like the scene in a romantic comedy where the protagonist meets the man you know she’s going to marry.
He was charming, funny, and had an incredible energy that drew me in; at the same time he was normal enough to not seem like a player or a narcissist.
I wouldn’t be exaggerating when I said he was the man of my dreams.
Our relationship moved quickly; In retrospect, suspiciously fast. But at that moment I didn’t feel like he was rushing me; Instead, it was exciting.
For the first time since I separated from the father of my two children, ages seven and ten, I felt like I had met someone with whom I could share my life. with.
But this is not a romantic comedy. It’s a horror story.
I didn’t know it when I moved across the country for him, and I certainly didn’t know it when I married him, but Jake was a drug addict.
I still remember the moment I met Jake: a handsome, strong, middle-class Jake. It was like the scene in a romantic comedy when the protagonist meets the man you know she is going to marry, but my story was not a romantic comedy. It was a horror movie. (Photo posed by model)
And I was addicted to the worst kind of drug, the drug that turns normal men like the one I had married into jealous, depraved, paranoid monsters: methamphetamine.
I know you have an image of a typical meth user in your head: that emaciated, convulsing, pockmarked zombie shuffling onto a bus, screaming at the other passengers.
But my Jake wasn’t like that.
Yes, he was a bit of a party animal and did cocaine on the weekends, as many young Australians do, but it wasn’t like he was a drug addict when I met him.
But now I realize that the man I fell in love with had secrets; He was a functioning addict, as they are known, and it was only a matter of time before he fell apart.
Before continuing, I will take you to the moment when the first cracks emerged.
I am a hairdresser and have always worked self-employed. I am independent by nature. So when Jake told me he wanted to start over on the other side of the country, the idea of leaving everything behind to embark on an adventure in a new city excited me.
I packed up my life in Melbourne and we moved to Darwin together.
Looking back, his spontaneous decision to move interstate should have been a red flag. What was he running from? How could he drop everything so easily and walk away? Of course, at the time I thought it was all terribly romantic.
I was sure that we were about to build a future full of love, adventure and happiness.
Shortly after our arrival in Darwin, Jake’s secret – his drug addiction, which he had initially hidden well – began to come to light.
It started with messages from his old friends, people back home who had distanced themselves from him, saying they were trying to warn me.
They told me he used drugs. At first I wasn’t too fazed: a lot of people like to party. Then came the devastating blow. No, he’s using ice..
He had started smoking methamphetamine after cocaine just wasn’t a turn-on enough for him. It was so terrible that I didn’t want to believe it.
I faced Jake. ‘Have you ever used ice?’ Incredibly, he did not deny it; I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. But he assured me that he was clean (“clean?” isn’t that a word only addicts use?) and insisted that all of that was a thing of the past.
The truth hit me like an avalanche just a few weeks later. Jake’s drug use was not a thing of the past; It was about to consume his entire life… and mine..
It all started with messages from his former friends, people in his country who had distanced themselves from him and said they wanted to let me know (photograph of the model).
The downward spiral
After that initial confrontation, I tried to forget everything. After all, he said it was over.
But then I began to notice alarming changes in his behavior. He would lose his temper over nothing and accuse me of things that made no sense, like talking to people I had never met or spending time in places I had never visited.
The most worrying thing of all is that he would disappear for hours and not answer his phone.
I thought it was the stress of moving, that he needed time to adjust, but I know better now. Me confronting him had stressed him out, only accelerating his use of ice.
Things got worse. I later discovered that Jake’s drug use was neither sporadic nor a response to stress. It was regular, dangerous and increasing.
And it wasn’t just meth that I had been warned about. He drank excessively, both at home and in pubs and clubs. And he was a problem player.
Ice, drinking and gambling: the three most destructive addictions, all wrapped up in a man I thought was my future and safe haven.
In my desperation, I reached out to those same old friends who had first raised the alarm. I was told that Jake had been using heavily before we met and that his downward spiral was in motion during our whirlwind courtship and marriage.
How could I have missed it? I must have been blinded by love, or he must have been an extremely skilled liar.
Meanwhile, his erratic behavior, mood swings, and paranoia, all products of the hell the ice was causing in his mind, continued to worsen.
He started accusing me of cheating on him. His terrible accusations pierced me like a knife to the heart because I was the one who was being betrayed.
He accused me in front of others, even on Facebook. It was humiliating.
His obsession with me being with other men (and it was always several men) was crazy. He was coming up with scenarios that weren’t even remotely plausible.
I now suspect that his mind was poisoned by pornography, which ice addicts consume for hours while under the influence of the stimulant drug.
At this point, my phone was no longer my personal property; he was always looking for it and I was too scared to face him.
His paranoia in interrogating me about my imaginary affairs was so intense that nothing I said or did could calm him.
Despite all the warning signs, I convinced myself it was temporary. That maybe, if she loved Jake enough, she could help him.
But I was surprisingly naive. I didn’t understand ice addiction, nor did I understand how it consumed us both. Jake wasn’t just struggling with drugs: his mind was deteriorating before my eyes and I was powerless to stop it.
Now firmly convinced that she was cheating on him with every man she saw, she would disappear for days at a time without explanation (I suspect she was having “revenge affairs”) while she smoked ice and spent what little money she had left. game machines.
The specific details of his drug use (who he would buy them from, where he would consume them) were a mystery to me at first.
But through my own detective work I discovered that he was doing drugs with people he met at parties (that I clearly wasn’t invited to) and through other shady connections.
Some nights he did it alone, at our house. He thought I wouldn’t notice.
I was still trying to help him, but every conversation ended in a fight. He accused me of trying to control him and his paranoia was coming back.
After a confrontation in which I burst into tears, he swore up and down that he would quit, but nothing changed.
I even thought about doing an intervention or getting his family involved, but by then I was too exhausted to keep trying.
Homeless and alone
There came a time when I knew I had to leave. It wasn’t just the drugs, but the constant threat of violence that occurs when ice poisons a relationship.
He never physically hit me, but the constant threat, the fear of what he might do next, became too much for me.
The final straw was one night when he lashed out in front of our children during a visit. His paranoia was off the charts. I knew I couldn’t put my kids through that.
So I left, packed a suitcase with what little I could and caught a plane back to Melbourne.
I had no plan, no money, and no safety net. I left everything behind: my car, my furniture, the life I had built with Jake.
I was homeless, couch surfing between Airbnbs and staying with my brother until I could figure things out.
It was humiliating, especially since my brother had to worry about his own family. I felt like a burden to him, but I had no choice.
The reality of addiction
Addiction is a beast. It turns people into someone you don’t recognize, someone they don’t even recognize. But the hardest part for me was realizing that I couldn’t save Jake.
No amount of love, support or patience would get me to stop using drugs. Jake needed professional help and wasn’t prepared to seek it.
If I could share one piece of advice with anyone going through this, it would be this: you can’t change someone who isn’t ready to change themselves.
No matter how much you love them or how hard you try, addiction is bigger than any of us. It’s something that requires professional support, not just a partner trying to hold everything together.
Seeing me cry every night and locking my bedroom door because I was so afraid of him wasn’t enough to shame Jake into changing his ways.
And that’s what addicts have: they have no shame. You can embarrass and embarrass them to death and it’s still useless.
Leaving Jake was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. But it was also the most important.
I had to save myself. He could no longer be dragged down by his addiction, by the constant accusations, paranoia, manipulation and threat of violence.
It’s easy to get lost in that toxicity and start questioning your own sanity. I had to constantly remind myself that I wasn’t the problem, but his addiction was.
Getting my life back
In some ways, I am in a better place today.
I have a job I love, my own house and, most importantly, peace of mind. Sometimes I think about Jake, hoping he gets the help he needs.
But I know I made the right decision, for me and my children. It’s heartbreaking to see someone you love fall into addiction, but I deserved a life free from the chaos of ice..
As for Jake, what happens to him now is up to him.
As he told Ali Daher