Reply #16: All good posts.

[enough]

Salinen, I agree with everything that has been said.

Most important: you need to take care of yourself. This is a very very hard place to be in. Not only do you have to worry about her suffering, but you have to live your life essentially alone because she is so disconnected. Counseling for you is good idea if you can find someone who connects with you.

Answering your second post, no, you are NOT "the key to all this." This is something coming from deep within her, and the pot is helping her to avoid the pain of dealing with it.

It sounds to me that her situation is serious enough that you really can't do that much for her. At one time in my life I was getting into a serious problem with alcohol. My husband finally had to just let me know that it was making our home life intolerable for him. He explained how it was for him, how it made him feel, and that he couldn't go on with this kind of life. It was not a threat. He was just speaking the truth very sincerely.

That was not an instant miracle cure for me, but it did help me to realize that alcohol was not going to be a viable solution to the things that were driving me crazy. That in turn made me see that I had to deal directly with the pain I was trying to avoid. The turn-around began with the fact that he was not willing to let my addiction ruin his life.

That was 20 years ago. We've been married for 33 years now.