Hello everyone!

This is really the only place I feel comfortable sharing all this. I've been dating this amazing woman for almost a year now and through a lot of that time she has been using heroin. I've known from pretty early on in the relationship when she wasn't really addicted yet and it was just a once in a while treat. We have even used together (we smoked it) but only a small handful of times. Personally, I have never had an issue with addiction (at least, not physically) and I didn't really care for heroin all that much. The few times I have had trouble quitting any substance (usually weed or cigarettes) I'd even challenge myself to try and stop and usually managed to do it with almost no trouble at all.

This is not the first time I've been involved with an addict and some of my close friends and even relatives have had issues with addiction as well. A few years ago I was actually living with a meth addict. She didn't get as bad as she could have but she was heading down hill rather fast. We lived in a house my dad and his wife owned and eventually it did get to the point where I had to get her kicked out. After my experience with her I kind of decided never to date another addict. This woman lied to me, stole from me, destroyed parts of the house, slept around and even sold herself for drugs. Since then I've been tested for STD's and thankfully my results came back clean.

The situation with my current girlfriend is very different! I've known of her heroin use from rather early on but my experience with her (aside from the heroin) has been so amazingly positive! She has been absolutely wonderful to me in so many ways. She's really sweet, honest, intelligent, beautiful and has such a kind and generous personality. She gave me a home when I didn't have anything, fed me when I had no food and she's even given me the shirt off her back when I needed something to wear (although it didn't fit). I've never been so happy or comfortable with anyone else and even the circumstances that lead to us meeting seem like some kind of miracle.

So much for never dating another addict again! This kind of snuck up on us. Before her I didn't know a whole lot about heroin. What little I did know I either learned in grade school, my mom telling me about her sister's past heroin addiction, or from a close friend who is also an ex heroin addict. I can pretty much sum up my knowledge of heroin in two words "stay away!" I honestly never would have expected someone like my current girlfriend to even become a heroin addict. She's the opposite of your typical heroin addict. She had told me of her struggles with addiction before and yeah, that was a red flag but there were soo many things about her that made this relationship feel so right that I felt like it was ok to overlook this potential downside.

So far, everything I've read about heroin pretty much confirms what I was taught in grade school health class. In my experience with drugs in general, a lot of that grade school educatoion proved to just be propaganda but in rare cases it really is THAT bad. Heroin is one of those rare cases. There's a very real, serious reason why this stuff is so illegal. At first I thought my research would be less depressing so I was just casually doing it from my phone while we watched TV but the more I read, the more disturbed I got. This is not a drug you just quit. This is not a drug you should consider even a little bit safe. This is the kind of shit that destroys you horribly and then kills you. There's pretty much no way out of it without either suffering horribly or dying once you're hooked!

However, it's not the differences between my gf and other addicts I've known that bothers me. It's the similarities. She is sooo different from the previous addict I was involved with and all the differences are positive, but there are some similarities that I can't really wrap my head around. In the past few months I have learned more about the situation that made these similarities make a little more sense but still..

The way her family treats her is so eerily similar to the way the other woman's parents treated her. All my girlfriend's friends love her! Almost everyone who meets her seem to love her. Her family, however don't seem to even know her at all. She's kind of close with her brother now but even he seems to turn on her sometimes and both her brother and father have been absolutely nasty to her. I've seen and heard the things they've said. Her father is the worst!

The other woman I was involved with was also treated very strangely by her own family too. Her sister absolutely hated her, her mom didn't seem to care about her at all and her father... well, ok the man wasn't abusive but just the way he'd talk to her and the way he'd get upset if I so much as stood near her was pretty creepy. If he hasn't sexually abused her it would not surprise me at all if he at least fantasized about it. He also once admitted to me in confidence that he doesn't like her (which also doesn't make that much sense because he seemed to get extremely jealous of her boyfriends).

Both women have a history of abuse. My gf is psychologically and emotionally abused by her father (and that sometimes even turns into physical abuse) and had been sexually abused in the past (not by her father). The other woman was trying to get herself out of a seriously physically abusive marriage. My gf's father, the other woman's ex husband and her father were all financially abusive as well.

The way my gf's father treats her scares me! A few weeks ago, there was an incident. I wont go into to much detail but basically he was verbally abusing her so bad that she was going to kill herself. She wouldn't even answer the phone and I felt forced to call the cops. This continued on for a whole day. I actually spoke to her father on the phone and some of the things he said disturbed me so much that I had to leave work early and rush over there! I was scared to leave her for weeks. He told me he doesn't care about her. That she's a manipulative, selfish lair. That she's too selfish to kill herself and what happened the previous night was just a cry for attention. That he doesn't believe she'd ever kill herself and the suicide threat was just another way for her to manipulate me.

I might have only known her for about a year, but so far I have never known her to be like that. She's very honest. She's never been manipulative in any way and she's been generous almost to a fault! So far, everything her father has said to me personally about her has been proven false repeatedly! Her father's opinion of her is so extremely warped and negative that I am scared to leave them alone with each other. He actually tries to convince her that she's some nasty, horrible, disgusting lowlife who deserves to die on the streets.

On the other hand, she's said some pretty nasty things to me about him too and to make matters even more scarily disturbing, I have yet to find a single lie in anything she's said. He is every bit as horrible as she's said. Admittedly she does have a tendency to be overly dramatic and blow things out of proportion sometimes but with this, she really hasn't. Even worse, she has a rather scary amount of solid evidence to support everything she says. For a number of reasons I can't go into detail but there's quite a lot of documented evidence that this has been a pattern with him for a very long time. I have even witnessed some of the abuse myself both on the phone and in person.

Anyways, what it seems to me that all addicts I've ever known have been through some sort of abuse. It seems to be what drives them towards whatever drug they get hooked on and the drug they get hooked on seems to say something about them. Like how my gf says heroin helps her cope with the way her father treats her even though it's also what's kept her under his thumb for such a long time too. It numbs her down and takes the pain away, just like any opiate. Meth made sense with the other woman too. She claimed it helped her keep up with her OCD, keep her at a decent weight and she had two kids to take care of (whom if I'm not mistaken are still in her parent's care) but it's also the reason for her poor health and explained a lot of bizarre behavior. My friend whose an ex heroin addict was physically abused by his parents pretty severely from what he's told me. My aunt.. well honestly, I know very little of her history. I know her aunt sexually abused her and I know she's been physically abused kind of a lot but not too sure on the details. Another really close friend is an ex meth addict and she's got endless horror stories of pretty much all kinds.

With my current gf, she really isn't nearly as bad as she could be and honestly, I feel like if not for my own presence in her life she would have sunk like a stone into a drug-induced nightmare that she probably would have died from eventually. Because of me her brother seems more willing to trust her and listen to her. Her father backs off when I'm around (probably out of embarassment because of the way he treats her on a fairly regular basis). I remind her not to take the things her dad says seriously, that she's not some horribly disgusting lowlife "drug addict of the worst degree" as he put it.

Over the past month or so I've been reminded of things my mom had told me WAY back when I was like 7 years old about her experience with my aunt. How she's warned me that I might someday experience something like this. She told me that my aunt had said a lot of horrible hurtful things to her and that if something like this happens to me, not to take these it too personally because it's the drug talking and not the person. Admittedly yeah, my gf has said a number of hurtful things to me and although it did hurt, I just had to remind myself that it wasn't really her speaking. In fact, I've confronted her about it before and when she gets like that, she doesn't even remember it.

If she were anyone else I would have left her. I can't honestly picture myself putting up with this kind of thing from any of my previous partners, but I make the exception for her. She deserves the benefit of the doubt and deserves for at least one person she's really close with to show her unconditional love and support. This woman has been so wonderful to me and on pretty much a daily basis she gives me a reason to smile and feel good about life. She really doesn't deserve for anyone to turn their back on her the way her family does and I have yet to get a clear answer as to why they behave this way. I've just been given hints here and there. Her father claims that SOMETHING happened 15 years ago that put them against each other but he wont tell me what it was. I've talked to her about it and the only thing she can even think of that would explain this would be her mother's death (about 15 years ago). Her mother was the original target for his abusive behavior. Like I mentioned earlier, my girlfriend has access to a rather scary amount of evidence of this.

At first her brother was kind of nasty towards her too. He kept on telling her that their father's abuse must just be in her head and that he must have a reason to talk to her the way he does but when I really started getting more involved with this he was able to see that this wasn't just all in her head. That she's not over exaggerating anything and he really is as bad as she says. Again, thanks to just my presence there he's "changed his tune" with her and has been a lot more supportive and understanding. He seems much more reasonable and sensible.

Pretty much everyone who knows me personally knows how infrequent my substance use is. I really don't do drugs very often and even when I was using a lot, it still isn't anywhere close to how frequently some of my friends used. I have a lot of friends who could confirm that I usually have a pretty clear and sensible head on my shoulders. I've lived a pretty sheltered life too and never been abused in any way (as far as I can remember). I'm here seeking support for myself, advice on how to deal with this situation and to share my experience. I haven't dated all that much and this is the first serious relationship I've ever been in. With my meth-addicted ex roommate there really wasn't any attachment, we just happened to live together and things progressed from there.

Thankfully, my girlfriend is finally going to rehab. We've been struggling with this for months now and I've been trying to help her quit for weeks but I've known pretty early on that I can't really help that much. She wants to quit but she can't do it on her own and needs more professional help. Although I am glad she's finally getting professional help, I'm more concerned that it's not going to completely fix the problem. She's still coming back to her father who is kind of what drove her to the heroin to begin with. There's other factors that make this difficult and just because she gets over the heroin doesn't mean the problems that caused her addiction in the first place are gone. I've talked to her about this, asked her to get psychological help and find a therapist. Not a Psychiatrist, an actual therapist! She already sees a psychiatrist who has her hooked on a number of prescription drugs that she really clearly doesn't need. He's not helping her, in fact these drugs seem to make her worse. Her ADD medication GIVES her ADD for example. She's admitted to me that she actually doesn't even have ADD.

If I could manage it, I'd be willing to rent a condo or something just so she'd have an actual, safe place to stay but I'm in kind of a bad living situation myself. I really don't have money for anything but I just started a new job and hopefully that will be enough to get me back on my own two feet again.

Inevitably, someone on here is going to look into the reason why I'm here and not her. It's been a few years but I used to have pretty severe depression. Struggled with it for years and I'm still seeing a therapist myself, though not as frequently these days. I've learned to deal with my own depression and social anxiety.