Thanks Dad...

Last night was the worst night I have had in years. I am just devastated and I truly have no idea what to do.

Yesterday was my husband's day off, the first one that I wasn't able to spend with him since he started his new job. It was my office holiday party and I had to go. An obligation. At about 1:30pm I started to get calls from my husband...I knew in one second that he had relapsed. I simply stopped answering my phone. He called 17 times. At about 5:00 pm I decided to check in and spoke with my adult son. While it was apparent my husband was drunk, I didn't leave the party and warned him to be gone from the house before I got home. I turned my phone off again and I missed a call of desperation from my son.

When I got home at 7:30pm my son was waiting for me in the lobby and told me how things had taken a terrible turn for the worst after my call. My husband assaulted my son repeatedly until my son fled. I was enraged and returned to our apartment with my son fully prepared for my own confrontation and I was going to phone the police and have him arrested. Lucky for him, he was passed out cold, an empty bottle of rum in the trash and evidence of the fight in the house all over the place. I decided there was no sense in waking him to start it all over again.

I sat with my son for hours apologizing for not answering his call, weeping and trying to put this all together. It must have been loud and I am so angry at my neighbors for not calling the police. My son needed help, this situation needed to be intervened and nobody stepped in to help. I made my son tea to calm him, he took a shower and things calmed for  a while. He used while having his shower I am sure because he changed. We proceeded to have several weepy conversations but I couldn't turn on him given what had happened. I, too, would have used if I were him. Heroin is a perfect anesthetic for pain. He must have been traumatized by this betrayal from his father.

Now I sit here, in the middle of the night, trying to figure out what to do with this. My husband relapsed, he made a sober choice to invited this "demon" back into our lives. He did some unforgivable things. I watched my son use to cope with his pain. This cycle must be arrested before anybody else gets hurt any further. What do I do? I hate my husband, I hate his alcoholism, I hate my son's addiction and I hate how helpless I feel. 7 weeks of progress down the tubes, tender trust shredded like paper, emotional wounds that may never heal, what do I do? What can I do? How do I cope?