It has been over a year since I posted anything. This blog had always been about grief. Specifically, the grief related to the loss of my father. Grief is something that nearly every human will experience at some point and the vast majority of us will end up burying a parent. While it may not be the most pleasant thing to talk about, grief is an acceptable topic of conversation and something a lot of people find relatable. What plagued me throughout 2024 and the beginning of 2025 is less-acceptable to talk about: addiction.

There still seems to be this idea (although it is diminishing slightly) that addiction is something that trailer trash who cook meth in their backyard shed experience. While I think the fact that opiates changed the game on addiction is becoming more widely known, I think there is still a lot of harsh judgment toward addicts. That harsh judgment creates this fear of discussion and the idea that you have to hide the “unclean” parts of your story.

Addiction is definitely a weakness, but there is a lot to be said about what causes that weakness. I am not a doctor or a psychologist, but I know childhood trauma is part of it, along with insecurities. There is also something to be said about the inherent chemical properties that make a certain substance incredibly addictive. I don’t believe anyone sets out wanting to get addicted to anything, but between the substance and insecurities a lot of people lose control before they realize what happened. I want to talk about my weakness and fear that caused my life to spiral out of control to the point that I am now going to spend countless years trying to financially recover from less than 18 months of insanity.

I had mentioned in passing previously that my husband is an opiate addict. I knew he took Hydrocodone once in 2008 to get high at a Halloween party. He made an ass of himself, passed out pretty much as soon as I got to the party, and then proceeded to pee all over the bed we were supposed to sleep in that night. I told him at that time that I was ok with him using marijuana and nothing else. I naively believed he would respect that.

In 2021 my husband spiraled out of control. He received a promotion at work that meant he was getting two pay checks: a salary check and a draw check. He never told me about the draw check. He kept that for himself and was spending it on drugs. It didn’t take long before that wasn’t enough though and he started keeping both checks for himself and started opening new credit cards and maxing them out. Eventually, in November 2021 he came clean because I was starting to have a lot of questions about why he had to make so many large credit card payments when I knew he wasn’t using his credit cards to provide anything for the family.

He had blown through tens of thousands of dollars and I had to refinance our house to pay off our credit cards. I had run up mine because I was stuck supporting our family of six by myself and I just didn’t quite make enough to do that. Also, because we had taken a couple trips that year before I realized he was spiraling and not going to be able to financially contribute.

When he came clean, he was very apologetic and ashamed and promised he wouldn’t let it happen again. He insisted, however, that he did not need therapy or treatment and he wouldn’t start coming to church with us. He, in fact, did not make any behavioral changes to support long-term sobriety. I decided it was his journey and let him be the judge of what was needed.

The saving grace to that situation was that he was limited to what his dipshit friends from high school could get their hands on. So, while he hemorrhaged at least $20,000 on Morphine that I know of, we were able to get caught up after the refinance and go on with our lives. Perhaps cleaning everything up with that refinance made things too easy for him. There was no real suffering to the recovery when your wife has erased it all with a home refinance.

In November 2023 he relapsed. Apparently he met some dipshit at a Kansas City Chiefs football game who told him he should try kratom because it was like opiates, but it was legal. Even though it was (and still is) legal, my husband apparently knew it was a bad idea because he immediately began lying to me. He told me the charges to the vape shops were marijuana and that he had decided to start buying from the dispensary. I had asked him repeatedly to get his marijuana from the dispensary because at least there is some quality control there, unlike with whatever his dipshit high school friend can get a hold of. So, he knew what he was doing was wrong, hence why he chose to lie to me about it from the beginning.

At the time, I believed him, but by January 2024 he had spent $6,000 in one month. At the time I was making just under $7,000 per month. So, I called him out one night and told him we cannot live like this and I thought it would be best if we separated accounts and I would let him spend his money how he wanted and I would keep paying all the bills. He lost his shit at that suggestion and went off on me, “I didn’t work my ass off getting you through law school for you to cut me off and keep all your money for yourself!” What I should’ve said was, “I’m not keeping my money for myself, I’m paying all the bills and, given your documented behavior, this is what I have to do to ensure I can continue to provide for this family. If you can’t handle me wanting to provide for the family we don’t need to be married anymore.” I was so scared of getting divorced though, that I just said, “Ok, but you cannot spend this much. Can you please not spend more than the $2000 you make each month?”

He was able to stick to that for a couple months, but it turned out I couldn’t quite pay all the bills by myself. So, I was getting high balances on my credit cards again and we found out we owed the IRS over $50,000.00. In May 2025 I ended up asking my mother if she could loan us $100,000.00 so we could pay off credit cards and pay off the IRS. Paying her 4% interest was going to be a better deal than paying the credit card interest and even the interest on an IRS monthly payment. She was getting 4% on the money in a CD, so it wasn’t a huge hit to her either.

As soon as that money hit our account in June 2025 my husband spent over $9000 at vape shops. I called him out on it in the beginning of July, again believing it was marijuana and telling him he clearly had a problem. I begged him to go to therapy. He was apologetic and said he would get it under control. He didn’t though. He spent the month of July using his credit cards to pay for his kratom, thinking I wouldn’t notice that he was making $200 payments on his Apple Card three times per week. He would say, “I just thought the other payments hadn’t gone through, sorry.”

We took a whirlwind trip to New Jersey for a Laliga soccer game, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, the first weekend in August. At the time, I thought that was the only time I would ever be able to take my daughter to see her favorite soccer team: Barcelona. I was just going to take two of the kids, but it’s an 18 hour drive so my husband decided we should all go. We left on a Thursday, got to New Jersey late Friday night, left Saturday after the game, and ended up in Indianapolis, Indiana that Sunday night. My husband started going into withdrawals that night. He said he thought it was the gas station food and I accepted that at the time. The kids and I went out to eat and walked around downtown while he was puking almost constantly. I ended up driving home the next day because he was still throwing up. He convinced me to stop and Vapor World on our way home because he just needed a little marijuana so he could sleep. When we got there, my middle son said, “Oh, this is where Dad gets batteries for work.” I was so pissed at my husband. I told him I cannot believe you bring our kids here and make them sit in the car while you go in!

By the end of August 2025 I decided to separate my finances. I opened a separate bank account on a Friday, before my schedule pay day the next Tuesday. I was physically sick that whole weekend. I felt so terrible, like I was doing something wrong. I get pain in my hands anytime my husband and I fight and I felt that all weekend. My anxiety was almost crippling. I remember being in church, wondering if the homily was telling me I’d made a mistake. It was a long, miserable weekend. Then that Tuesday came and my husband realized I had set up a separate bank account. He was very mean to me about it. I told my husband I felt like I had no choice.

I reached out to a couple friends who told me there was no way it was marijuana that was his problem because the state we live in regulates how much you can spend in a month, you cannot buy it at vape shops, and you cannot use credit or debit cards to purchase it. One friend told me it was probably kratom because she had known people who got really messed up on that. I started to google kratom and, at the time, there was not much information out there about how dangerous it is. I could just find that it was not FDA regulated and that the side effects were not very well studied yet. It also didn’t seem like it was that expensive per bottle, so I wasn’t sure how he could be spending $300 at a time on it. In early September 2025, I started sobbing and basically asked him if he still wanted to be married and told him I couldn’t keep living like this. He made this big showing of throwing away his marijuana paraphernalia and claiming it wasn’t a problem. I told him he had spent over $70,000 since January. He said, “There’s no way,” and I immediately snapped back with, “Do you want me to pull up the bank statements?” I asked him what he was really buying because I knew you couldn’t get marijuana at Vapor World. His only response was, “Who told you that?” I asked him if it was kratom and he said, “sometimes.”

The next day, he texted me as I was driving three of our kids a couple of hours away for our daughter’s cross country meet. He said he realized he could really lose me and he wasn’t going to let that happen. I started monitoring his phone though and I could see he was still using his Apple Card and Apple Cash at vape shops. When I called him out on it, he said he couldn’t quit until football season was over, as if he would be a better fourth grade football coach if he could still get high. I gave him until the end of October 2025 and said if he hadn’t quit by then I would file for divorce and planned to have the divorce finalized by the end of the year. He somehow passed a UA at the end of October, even though he had not quit. He had cut back substantially, but had not quit.

I turned down a promotion to equity partner in October 2025 because I just knew I was going to have to file for divorce and I felt like having a set salary and tax withholdings was safer while I figured out how to do things on my own. While most of the equity partners have never gone a month without a paycheck, one of them told me he once had to go six months without getting paid while they sorted out a billing issue. I knew there was no way I could handle that when I would be the only one providing for five kids. I cried when I told my managing partner I couldn’t accept. He was very kind to me, told me he understood and thought I was making the right decision. He said he understood opiates were a difficult addiction, he knew I had a hard road ahead of me, and he would help me any way he could.

In November and December, my husband was intentionally overdrawing our bank account because he knew I would move money from my account to fix it, since my name was still on the account. I ended up closing the joint account, but had to go back the next day and pay more money because he had made another credit card payment, even though I had told him I was closing it that day. We had a huge fight on Christmas Eve about how he couldn’t believe I was still accusing him of using, but his Apple Card shows he spent over $300 at a vape shop that day.

Things were not great financially, the money my mother loaned us had been depleted before we could pay the IRS. My husband sold our boat, but it wasn’t enough to cover all of what we owed the IRS. My credit cards had balances again because my husband was not contributing and was forcing me to make his credit card payments. My daughter got invited to a soccer camp in Barcelona, Spain and I decided she deserved that opportunity and I was going to make it happen for her. Our financial problems were not her fault and I didn’t want her to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We couldn’t afford to take everyone, but I had booked flights and accommodations for her, my husband, and myself to go.

In January 2025, I told a couple of my friends I was going to keep my head down until after Barcelona because I had worked too hard to make that trip happen for our daughter and I was not going to let it get messed up. After that, though, I was going to file for divorce. I even told these friends to hold me accountable and make sure I didn’t chicken out. Throughout all of this I would tell these same friends, “I just cannot lose any time with my children. I know even as bad off as he is, he will get every other weekend and the thought of not having access to my children for any length of time makes me physically sick.” I kept telling myself that was why I was staying. I told myself over and over again I didn’t love him anymore. He did go to marriage retreat with me at our church in October 2025 and promised he would start coming to mass with us, which he did a few times. I was hopeful then, but he was not ready to actually quit.

Around October 2025, I think it finally hit me that my worst fear of losing time with my kids was not that big of a threat. My husband could not afford housing in the town where we live that would fit all five of our children. He also could not afford a vehicle that would fit all of our children. So, his weekends would have to be at my in-laws’ house and I would be the one doing the transportation. It also finally hit me that if our children were not a priority to him now, they wouldn’t magically become a priority once we got divorced. He didn’t love them enough to prioritize them over getting high, he wasn’t going to prioritize them after divorce. Seems solid, right? Except it wasn’t.

Even with that realization that his visits would most likely be every other weekend with his parents supervising and knowing he mostly likely would only show up to the first couple visits before saying he was sick or didn’t have enough money that weekend or whatever, I was scared to pull the trigger. When I thought about his future after me, my heart would just break. I knew if his business partners found out we got divorced, at least one of them would know exactly why I would end things. If he got ousted from his company he would lose his truck. We all know how hard it is to find a job without a vehicle when you live somewhere with less-than-ideal public transportation. I just knew that without me he would be rotting in a trap house within six months. I didn’t want that for him and I especially didn’t want that for my kids. I didn’t want him to be just a sentence in the rest of their lives. “Why isn’t your dad here at your high school graduation?” “Oh, he’s an addict, we don’t ever see him.” Or, “Why is your Sunday School teacher walking you down the aisle at your wedding?” My daughter had definitely started clinging to the men who taught her Sunday school class. They are wonderful men, but it broke my heart that she felt more comfortable talking to them than her father.

By January 2025, however, I had refinanced the house for $310,000 when it had only appraised for $320,000. I knew the people at the bank and explained that my husband had relapsed and I had a lot to clean up. They were very kind, but I could not take any more chances. So, I had made up my mind: Barcelona was the last hurrah.

The weekend before we left for Barcelona, my daughter and I had to be away on a church retreat. My husband had started sharing his phone location with me at that point and I could see that he left our daughter (age 1) with our sons (ages 6 and 10), while he was gone about an hour to a vape shop. When I got home and confronted him about it, he said he just needed some gummies to sleep. I asked him if he had checked what was legal in Spain. Before I could even get out, “Because I will not be trying to bail you out of jail,” he said, “I’m not taking anything. I’m using this trip to detox off of everything.” While he spent over $300 the morning we left, he did ultimately follow through with that.

We were in Barcelona for 12 days. The first five days he was incredibly sick. He had lots of stomach issues and could barely stand to be out of bed. After those five days though, it was like a fog had lifted. He was a totally different person. He was very apologetic. He didn’t make any excuses or try to down play any of it. We both cried. He told me over and over he could not believe he did this. He said he knew he could never make it up to me, but he would spend the rest of his life trying. He told me he was glad my father wasn’t around to see him mess up again. The rest of the trip was really great. We went out to eat together and had so many great conversations. It felt like I finally had my husband back. I told him I had planned to file for divorce when we got back. He was really shocked and hurt by that. He acknowledged that I had previously said that, but he said if he never let himself believe that was a possibility. He just couldn’t believe that he would ever let himself lose his family like that.

Looking back on it, should I have left him in 2021 when he first lied to me so easily and spiraled out of control? Probably, but then I wouldn’t have my fifth child. Should I have left him in 2024 when I knew he was spiraling and destroying us financially? Probably, but then I wouldn’t be expecting our sixth child. I have always believed that everything happens for a reason. If nothing else, my husband has given me the most wonderful children and I love them all exactly as they are, knowing they would not be the people they are without him. It’s not just the children either, I do love him. He is my best friend. We have grown up together and been through so much together. He did work really hard to support our children and me while I got through college and law school. He would work incredibly long days while I was in law school and still handle bed time when he got home so I could study or go to bed early so I could get up and study before the kids had to be up for daycare. He is a wonderful person. Addiction is only a part of his story.

I have thought a lot about Saint Monica throughout this process. Looking back on it, in 2024 I was pretty self-absorbed. I was only thinking about myself and my kids. I was only praying that we would be ok and make the right choices. I wasn’t praying for my husband. I wasn’t praying that he would get better. I was so angry with him that I didn’t want to pray for him. Since February, I have finally been able to pray for him to stay clean. We did a pilgrimage recently wherein we were granted an indulgence and I offered mine for my husband. It has taken a while, but I have finally got to the point that I can look past myself and pray for him. Saint Monica was married to an addict and her son was also an addict for a time. Her son, Saint Augustine, who is one of the greatest doctors of the Church. Her husband ultimately converted also. I don’t think any of my children will grow up to be a doctor of the Church, or have an Order named after them, but I am trying to remain hopeful that through prayer my husband will be able to fully recover from this addiction. The financial struggles are not insignificant, but I know they will work themselves out. It will be much easier to get out of debt than it would be to try to help my children through losing their father.

Yesterday was the feast day of Saint Rose of Lima, my confirmation saint. I saw a quote from her on Instagram that really got me thinking about all of this. “The gift of grace increases as the struggle increases.” 2023 was a hard year for me because my father died and amid the grief I had to run a business and maintain a healthy pregnancy. 2024 was a hard year because my husband was spiraling out of control and I had a newborn who wouldn’t sleep. 2025 didn’t start out much better. I think we all try to look for a reason things are hard. We want there to be a purpose to the suffering. For Rose of Lima, she offered up her suffering for the natives in Peru that they would find faith in God. I’m not sure what will come of the sufferings of the past few years, but I am hopeful it will strengthen the faith of my children and lead my husband to the church. He still refuses therapy or treatment, but I’m hoping he can find faith to help him stay sober this time.

I know these are things people don’t like to talk about or hear about, but the reality is my husband is far from the only person who has spiraled out of control in addiction. He’s also not the only one who has struggled with kratom, which is not regulated at all and is widely available. There are vape shops pretty much every city block where we live. At least with alcohol there are certain times of day you cannot purchase it, there are certain places that cannot sell it, and there are reliable ways to test for its use. With kratom there is no regulation at all and it does not appear there are widely available reliable testing options yet.

Addiction isn’t just something that only hits bad people or broken people. My husband has some childhood trauma, but things were going fine in his life, great really. We were solid financially, our children were all healthy, and we were about to welcome another baby girl. It was just one bad choice that spiraled out of control on him. He wanted to quit, but he couldn’t. The substance alters your brain to the point that you fear the detox more than anything. Kratom isn’t the only substance that can do that. That’s just the one that impacts our story at the moment.