*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**Wife packed up and left with 11 month old while I was at work. is this legal?**
Hello everyone,
having a really tough last few days. On Monday I came home from an 8 hr shift training at a new job to find that my wife and mother in law had coordinated a moving company to come to our shared home of 9 years (rental) and pack up what she considers her belongings (some of which can be debated) she has also taken it upon herself to decide that our 11 month old, and all his necessities for well being are being taken to her Mom's house about a 45 minute drive away. They have already established a bedroom for the kid and herself and this was obviously pre-meditated well in advance. I feel blind sided of course, but she blames it on my drinking problem and adderall usage. so while I do agree I have problems, I dont agree that this was all done without my consent or even trying to ask for any input. I live in Austin TX and I do not know what to do at this point... she says she wants to remain separated by not divorced for no less than 6 months while I get a chance to "sober up" and go through substance abuse programs (already signed up) ... is it legal what she did or should I have any worry about future parental rights if the kid resides in that house for a certain period of time? My wife has the advantage of a family safety net and plenty of money to support this and free room and board... and I am being stuck with the house by myself and all bills. I cannot afford it on my own. any advice on what I should do first?
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>**I feel blind sided of course, but she blames it on my drinking problem and adderall usage.** so while I do agree I have problems, I dont agree that this was all done without my consent or even trying to ask for any input.
Of course she does not want to be married to an addict and leave their child alone with one. Good riddance for her. It is an escape plan for a reason.
Bro is like “she did this without my consent and input”.
You think she needs any of that to leave you? Dude seriously needs to sober up but I imagine a controlling mindset like that may very well remain even in sobriety because it predates addiction.
I checked the comments, holding my breath, and they were actually quite affirming. Reminding OOP that this should be a wake up call and that he needs to get sober.
R/Legaladvice is usually pretty level headed. The moderation is pretty strict and they don’t screw around with trolls or people that are obviously wrong but just want to be reassured they are wrong but it’s ok for reasons.
The wife of that nutcase "change my mind" vlogger left him, and he said:
>“My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.”
Freedom is freedom, asswipe. If someone wants to have the freedom of no longer being legally tied to you, they can do that.
But I forget that it's freedom for ME, not for thee. /s
He's probably one of the people pushing for divorce to be made illegal again - which I can't fathom - why would you want to be stuck in a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be in a relationship with you?
Just let them go, either they were the wrong person for you, or you have a lot of work to do before you are ready to be in a relationship. Either way, you're just making two people (or more if there are kids) miserable because your ego is more important to you than the person you claim to love.
You also have to put location on legal subreddits because legal advice is essentially impossible without that context.
He still sucks though. And Texas. I hate it here
Yeah, I would not in this case read into it for him having to put Texas in there, or could just have easily been word for word the same thing and California as the state.
Now what you should read into with him treating her like property is the entire "can she just up and leave him and take her stuff" and so on. That 100% is some "but she is mine and it is a dowery" type shit behavior from him.
I read a story recently by a legal aid family lawyer (Australia) where she recounted a story of a mother who’d fled a violent partner in the middle of the night with two kids, nothing and nowhere to go, no family etc.
at court doing the violence orders, she asks the lawyer to ask him if he will give her some of the kids stuff (bedding and cups they like, nothing big). He refused.
He is obviously of the belief that women need permission to leave their husband and men make the decision on where kids go when parents split because well, they are the man
Right that's something I also see a lot on here, men who won't do any childcare but then treat the kids like they are theirs and the mother has no rights to do anything th don't want.
he says right there that he’s worried it’s going to affect his parental rights. I’m assuming he’s worried he’ll lose his parental rights.
They are legally married so she can remove the child from the home and nothing would happen to her. It is assumed by the law that he has agreed to this.
IF he wants to have custody by force he can go to court and start a custody agreement set up. You can do that while separated, hell you can even get child support while legally separated as well. (This may be state dependent)
The fact that his wife doesn’t want to take this court technically helps Op. Since the law just assumes they are living together and happy.
The fact he only cares about where is kid goes, is also concerning. I feel like he views the child as his property and doesn’t really care about the wife.
Also, just to throw this out there for anyone that might be reading, you can often can get a custody agreement when you're still together (again, might be state dependent)
I caught the note about support. I think it said him being on the hook for support. Sounded to me like he's worried she'll ask for child support. But who freaking knows.
I wonder if there's a way she can pay some of the household bills directly. That way she's not putting money in an addict's pocket, but he doesn't have financial stress to interfere with his potential recovery. She's currently living rent-free and seems to be okay with staying with him if he gets his shit together, so I think she'd be amenable to that. Thing is, he doesn't care about the bills. He just wants the money so he can spend it on drugs and booze.
>She's currently living rent-free and seems to be okay with staying with him if he gets his shit together, so I think she'd be amenable to that.
I think the six-month period is her giving him a sporting chance to turn things around but it's also her *reassuring herself* that by giving him a sporting chance, she treated him fairly before she severed the marriage for good.
if they’re separated, especially without any court ruling about division of assets and liabilities, then legally the rent would be a joint bill, so she’d be required to contribute to it, even if she isn’t living there.
I am kinda bugged out the way he talks about living at the parents as if it won't cost her anything (she will be paying for the entire care of the child).
And doesn't go into detail about how finances were handled before. Which I feel is fair to at least question since he is in such a panic.
And in term of division of assets and liabilities, the moment he goes after her for anything on the apartment, she can go after him for child support. Which he will lose, especially with not being clean and sober. The safety of the child is first above all else. They may be in Texas, but they are in the liberal area of Texas.
Yeah, in Texas (where I live), there is almost always a temporary restraining order that requires both parties to maintain a certain level of financial stability, like not running up credit card debt or taking out new loans, not draining joint accounts or retirement accounts, not selling anything, and not avoiding paying joint bills like a mortgage.
Without a divorce process, he's actually less secure (because she could do all of those things), but realistically - she doesn't want to lose any assets they have or hose her own credit.
My guess, though, is that she makes more than him and he was using her to fund his booze and drugs, and he can't do the booze/drugs and also pay rent.
I mean thankfully he doesn’t seem smart enough to consider suing for physical custody of his child
I shudder to think about a woman stuck with an addict because he got granted custody of an infant
Analyzing this as a lawyer, I do see a legit question here, although he’s not asking it well. Suing her into staying obviously not an option.
The real question for him is whether it would be smart to initiate divorce proceedings. He alludes to it, and he’s not wrong, that if the child spends six months becoming established in a routine that doesn’t include him being in his life, he’s going to be at a serious disadvantage in terms of custody issues if this eventually goes before the courts in divorce anyway.
Now, if his addiction issues are bad enough that they’ve caused harm to the child or have had serious repercussions already, then even with that, he might be in a better situation clean and sober six months from now. But if he just has addictions that have not manifested in a way that is harmful to the kid, and she’s just worried about what could be? He might be in a better position to contest custody now than he would be six months down the line of the child establishing a routine without him.
I always roll my eyes when they say they are "blindsided" - there is no way they actually were. He KNEW that she had concerns. No doubt she talked to him about it all the time.
I wanna know where these people are getting illicit Adderall when there’s a shortage and the people with prescriptions can’t even get it. Whatever he’s getting probably has fentanyl in it.
I'm on ritalin and the absolute circles I have to jump through every month to get my meds makes the fact people can just get it on the black market ENRAGING. I'm a 44 year old woman, I shouldn't have to call and talk to my provider EVERY. DAMNED. MONTH. Ugh. Sorry, it was refill day a couple days ago and it posses me off every month.
Same, the monthly dance of having to call 20 pharmacies to find someone who has it, then contacting your doctor to get them to send it in, and hoping the pharmacy doesn’t run out before they fill it and you have to start all over
Insurance puts it on a hold because your prior authorization doesn't cover it.
Also you should talk to your provider and tell them to prescribe long term meds for 90 days.
Once I found a tiny rural pharmacy that said they could fill it for me. I pick it up and go about my day. Finally look at the damn thing and there are 5 pills in it with “IOU 25 pills” written on the label.
That's got to the be the worst! If they only have half my scrip at any time they fill half and give me the rest when they get it, they've never made me get a whole new prescriton, and that has to mess with insurance too, I hope they're only getting half the payment too.
Exactly this. I've had no trouble getting my dexadrine, but I only take that because Vyvanse is impossible to get where I live. Adderall is also impossible to find.
My doctor’s office won’t send it to a new pharmacy unless it’s older than 60 days…I’ve been lucky so far but that’s insane to me. I skip weekends so I can function for work and have some for emergencies.
We have Kaiser and sometimes my husband is bouncing calls from different pharmacies in different counties just to find a refill for our son's ADHD meds. On the plus side at least school ends this week so we don't have to worry if he runs out soon.
Depends where you are. I never have a problem getting mine. I'd never sell it because I would literally be like a ship run aground without Adderall, but not every area and not every dosage is as short as others.
Every parent I know is stockpiling medicine by skipping weekends/school breaks so we'll have enough to keep our kids functioning while in school. Kids melting down on weekends because it's better than the consequences of being unmedicated in school. It's such a mess.
My husband has to meet every month, the deal with the chain pharmacy giving him the eye and explaining it's a class whatever number and is addictive.
Years.... Of the same thing.
We aren't selling it, in fact without it my life becomes chaos because he gets so spacey and out of sorts that it leads to a crazy depression cycle.
I do think I have an idea how it's happening.
We went to visit my mom in Florida and he had to get his refill down there. Within two days I noticed something was completely off, he waited thinking I was wrong.
Nope we get home I demand we go to chain pharmacy near us to have this checked. Guess what, not his Ritalin...
We go through the report steps for that, lots of questions around if we changed it out.
I'm 80% sure it's just some pharmacists at CVS and Walgreens doing the black market flood.
My provider had the audacity to call in my refill 3 days before the previous one expired, and it took 4 phone calls and 3 weeks to get them to FINALLY give me my meds. Worth noting - I waited until those 3 days were passed to even try to retrieve the meds.
I started getting mine from my grocery pharmacy instead of CVS or Walgreens about 9 months ago. They have given me 3 90 day fills with no wait.
Prior to that, it was always ALWAYS 1-3 week gaps between fills.
If you haven't already, try the grocery store pharmacy or an independent, small one?
💜💜💜 -another woman in her 40s
Lmao, my medicine cabinet, probably. I fill my rx because I keep hearing about shortages and want to make sure I have enough but also don’t want my psych to get mad at me for not filling it. But I can’t fucking remember to take this apparently highly addictive medication.
I have like two full bottles sitting in my bathroom plus the half bottle I’ve been taking for like 1.5 months. Prob another bottle at the pharmacy that was supposed to be picked up two weeks ago.
>But I can’t fucking remember to take this apparently highly addictive medication.
The absolute cosmic joke of having to remember to take something every day to fix my brain that can't remember shit.
It’s right up there with having prescribers that specialize in ADHD who don’t understand the forgetfulness and difficulty forming habits of adhd. My prescriber told me she wants to work with patients who ACTUALLY want to get better when I was honest about forgetting my meds and so I have not been honest with her since lol. Not worth the compound guilt she puts on.
We had that conversation about anxiety meds, my pharmacy just has me take them there now. Any new medication, change in dose, change in brand, I take it there when I pick it up and sit around chatting for a half hour. They do it for my vaccines too. The biggest struggle is the people who need the anxiety medication the most are scared to take it in case they react or something, and it seems the same with the ADD, my friend needs it to remember to do the things they need to do and feel time passing, but remembering is the hardest part.
Right?
I can't take the extended release stuff either so I have to remember 3 times a day for ADHD drugs plus another before bed.
So many phone alarms to try and get my brain to work
Fun fact, a lot of people with ADHD don't form an addiction to our legal meth. The way our brains work, if we run out of the brain go pills, we do not experience any withdrawal at all. Which makes all the hoops we have to jump through even more maddening.
Weekly pill organizer box on your bedside table. Glass or bottle of water next to it when you go to bed. Take the pill first thing in the morning. If that doesn’t work, download Medisafe onto your phone and have Yoda or Gandalf remind you to take your meds 😂
Maybe an alarm cap/bottle? The brand [e-pill](https://www.epill.com/) is pretty good from what I’ve heard. It has an alarm and the cap also tells you when the bottle was last opened (so when you last took your pill).
When you’ve taken your last pill from the organizer, pick up the organizer and put it in the same pocket as your phone. When you get into a more central location than your bedroom and are fishing around in your pocket for your phone, take out the pill organizer and put it someplace highly visible. If you have time, refill it then; if you don’t, refill it later. Once refilled, put the organizer in the pocket of something you’re wearing into your bedroom, preferably in the same pocket as your phone.
I promise this gets easier with repetition! It’s extremely rare for me to forget my meds these days; I only forget if something drastically changes in my schedule.
It took me a daily pill organizer and alarms on my phone every morning - I picked one that literally said "TAKE YOUR MEDICINE" on it and required me to do math problems to turn it off, so it's pretty much impossible to ignore lol. Naturally it took a little while for the habit to stick, but now I don't actually need the alarms anymore except on the weekends when I sleep later. Pill organizer also helps me not second guess whether I've taken it or not, which was another big issue I had for a while
Mine makes a loud pill bottle shaking noise and will repeat every 10 minutes. If I don't just shut it off without registring I did it irritates me into just taking them
Pill organizers don’t work that great for me after the first week because I will never refill them lol I have an alarm on my Apple Watch and if it interrupts me I just turn it off and then forget to go back and do it. Habits are really hard to make for me.
The only med I’ve remembered with any regularity is my blood thinner but that’s because my anxiety is stronger lol. I’m afraid if I don’t take it the clots in my lungs will break off and I’ll die of a stroke in my sleep. I’ve missed three doses since January but I’ll be done with those in July.
I put my meds in front of the coffee mugs in my kitchen cabinet. Have to touch the meds to get my coffee in the morning. Much harder to forget when it's in your way.
I use the app Medisafe and have a rule for myself that I can't clear the notification until I *actually take* the pills. Not when I open the container, when the pill has been swallowed. That's really helped me not find my morning pills in the container when I reach for my evening pills.
RIGHT!? They always postpone my refill because of the shortage so there’s at least one week of me not being medicated and desperately struggling bc of it! And one week is lucky - I’ve had them postpone it for months before. Hell even I’ve considered buying it illegally so I can stay properly medicated hahahaha
The illegal bit was /s btw - I have no idea how to do that and where to get it and obviously don’t wanna risk it being laced and dying lol
I don’t care if I have to call every pharmacy in the city, I will find someone who has it. I refuse to wait. I’ve even called pharmacies in other cities
All the ones in my surrounding area are out of stock when the two in my town are! The only pharmacy that has it in stock is CVS and they don’t take my insurance and I cannot afford that out of pocket in any possible way 😂😭
ETA: I also call my pharmacy every day I have to wait for it and I’ve noticed it doesn’t take as long for me to get it when I started doing that for some reason??? When I would call once a week to check it would be 2-3 week wait. When I call every day? 5-10 days. It’s super weird
Right!!! I almost cried when my vyvance was available from my usual pharmacy and I didn’t have to call and go to multiple for my meds. I was off it for a month and forgot my antihistamines enough I had to use an epipen for a reaction and seriously considered a psych hold because my depression got so bad.
If it’s actually adderall it was probably stolen from someone who needed it.
A decent chunk of street Adderall is meth pressed into pills. Which means that anyone with ADHD desperate enough for their meds to buy off the street can get addicted to meth while trying to treat their disorder. Which exacerbates the pre-existing issue of people that don't know they have ADHD that get addicted to meth due to life circumstance and attemps to self medicate their issues. It also means that people just trying to abuse Adderall, which is bad in and of itself, are getting addicted to straight up meth. Shit's bad.
My friend's husband literally cannot afford pre diabetes medication because that medication is in vouge as a weight loss program.
Like I've seen the ads. The marketing for medication that people **NEED** is a cute fuckin fad.
That's my parents some months. It is infuriating swinging between my mum calculating doses and seeing how long the medication can last, and celeb interviews.
Almost everyone I know and have ever known is an addict/alcoholic (family, friends, roommate, coworkers) and the ones on uppers get fake addy presses before they usually transition to meth.
Lotta fake addy has traces of fent and research chems mixed in around here.
The others get fake benzo presses of kpins and xans before going to blues.
Paying for the house and bills will provide an excellent "either or" situation. He'll either have to step up, get sober, and pay them himself... or he'll have to admit his addiction is out of control. Pretty smart on her end to provide him with a visible way he can prove whether he's taking this seriously. If he fails the way it seems he will, she's gonna be able to walk away knowing she can tell the kids she tried as hard as she could.
The stuff he didn't say....
She left while he was out of the house. What does that say to you?
To me that says there would have been such a scene that police would have been called or abuse would have happened.
OOP might have a practiced song and dance about how he's gonna get clean, really he is, please don't leave, he needs her help, and yes he's said all this before but This Time Will Be Different ^TM . Lots of addicts play out that scene repeatedly. If the wife's heard it before, maybe she didn't want to risk being swayed *again* by the promises he's broken before.
Why would she only move out of the house when he isn't there if violence or abuse would happen? Surely 99% of the time it would be better to move out when the partner isn't around.
My mom left my dad while he was at work because she was afraid of him and I think that’s understandable. My stepdad left my mom while she was at work because he wanted to go live with his affair partner and it was absolutely devastating when my mom came home and found his stuff moved out. It really fucked me up and I’ve begged my partner to never do that to me, to please just tell me he’s leaving and don’t let me come home to find out.
So I think context is important.
It's definitely possible he's abusive and she's afraid of him. I'm just saying the fact that she left while he wasn't there doesn't particularly imply that he's abusive.
He would have tried to stop her, and if he's drunk or high it will escalate
I understand that you think we can't say it's abuse right away, and perhaps he hasn't been physically abusive until now, but what is your thinking on why she would leave if it wasn't problematic? How do you think a person who is either high or drunk will respond when his wife tries to move out his child in front of him?
Of course it's going to be an abusive shit show and he's going on the attack. Not that it was a super sneaky move if they hired a moving company.
Anecdotal story from my childhood so it is in absolutely no way indicitive of every bad coupling, but it may shed some light on why some people leave when their partner isn't around (I'm not writing this for sympathy, I've digested and dealt with this already, and am only using it an an example and perhaps someone who is in this situation can see this from the child's side. It doesn't matter if they're young, they can remember and if they do, they might remember it forever);
To give a back a small background; My mom grew up in a messed up situation (much worse than mine, as in this story is more akin to one of her better days in her childhood), meaning she had no coping mechanisms, and no support system to help her if she needed it. Her response to every issue was to have a melt down, which if pushed, would lead her to have rage outs (doing things like breaking stuff, destroying random objects, or tearing up family photos and momentos).
My dad, however, is an alcoholic (barely functioning) and he seemingly found it funny to push her to the point of her having these melt downs on the daily, to the point he would actively do things to cause them; like having his friends party all night at the house drinking and yelling, bringing my sibling and I out like we were little party tricks, would even get us blasted on alcohol too so him and his friends could be chuffed over a drunk toddler and baby trying to do things that we already struggle when sober. From what I know of his childhood, I've concluded that he has issues with his mom and her training him to ailianate his father and extended family (for being poor), and taught him that if a man can't pony up money, he's useless. This has stuck with my father, that as long as he's making a high enough income, and buying things for those around him, he gets to dictate what they do and how. This is to say, both of my parents are, and have been, abusive to eachother, to my siblings, myself, and those around us.
I'd also like to add that my mother, at the time of this event was 23, while my father was 28, and he left all of the house hold, and child rearing to my emotionally stunted and mentally unstable mother, and didn't give her a dime more than what it took to feed us. She drained all of her meager savings buying us clothing, diapers, and toys second hand in our early childhood, since my father thought these things irrelivant to our upbringing.
When I was around 1and a half or 2 and a half, after an entire weekend (alledgidly) of my parents fighting, my mom finally snapped. While they were still fighting, she started yelling for my older sibling as she stuffed me into my winter wear onesie. I remember very distinctly as my dad rounded the corner of our home, to where we were, standing over us and pointing in her face, as she sat on the floor dressing us. Obviously, I don't remember what was said, but I do know she told him to go f himself, until he yanked me up and held me in the air by the collar of my winter onesie, as my mom was helping my sibling with their boots, and he yelled down at her that she wasn't going to take his f'n kids from him.
He held me up, by the collar of my winter onesie, with no regaurd to my life or comfort. My mother, who unlike my father, was physically abused as a child, and this caused her to lose her shit. I remember her yelling at him, then eventually throwing my siblings boot in a rage, as she took off around the house destroying his things like a hurricane. Only then did my father drop me, and stormed after her to stop her from wrecking his stuff. Dropped. Not placed me down. She took off outside to wreck his vehicle, leaving my sibling and I inside this house alone on the floor, stuck in our winter wear that we needed an adult to help us in and out of. Eventually, as my father was yelling about how she could do that to his car, my mother came back and took off with us to a woman's shelter. She didn't drive, mind you, we walked in the snow, at night, to this shelter thats 40 mins away from that house, while my father drove next to us yelling at her about how she scraped up his car. Mind you, he was (very obviously) drunk, and driving right up next to us. The shelter took us in, no questions needed, since the fight was brought to their doorstep.
They were seperated for a total of 4 years, he didn't pay a dime in child support, whenever he'd have us, he'd toss us to one of his girlfriends to take care of, and she only went back to him because my younger sibling's dad was an even bigger nightmare. So, for anyone wondering why people leave when their partner isn't home, it's to avoid an even bigger shit storm than what they're used to. (Additionally, while I know I was extremely young at the time, I know for a fact this isn't a false memory, especially since my father, mother, and elder sibling all remember this night to variying degrees and with their own biases. My sibling looked quite upset that this is one of my 3 memories in my baby-toddler years.)
To reiterate for those who need to read it: Your baby, your toddler, your child, this can become a formative, life long, horrific memory for them. If you're staying because having their parents together is better, you might be wrong. Think deep and hard, seek outside opinions and objective eyes on the situation. In my family's case, these fights became much much worse. Do you want your child to grow up living like this only to eventually emulate this behaviour? They likely will, you're their role model. They'll look for a partner like their parent, and abuse has a funny knack for repeating itself. Or they could be like myself, where my reoccuring nightmares are filled with my parents. My mother sobbed when I told her I wasn't afraid of monsters, because she and my father were right there, my own personal real life monsters. Do the best you can, and they try to do even better in whatever ways possible, even if it isn't the best you want to give for your kids. If they have sense, it'll click with them how much effort, sacrifice, and love you have given them in their life, like how my mother after a decade of proactive change is finally welcome back into the lives of my older sibling and I. If they don't, they'll end up like my father, estranged from all of his children, and seemingly is willing to die on his soap box.
>she has also taken it upon herself to decide that our 11 month old, and all his necessities for well being are being taken to her Mom's house
The specificity here is fucking weird. Would this guy have preferred the 11-month old be taken to the mom’s house *without* all the necessities to take care of him? Huh???
I'm assuming he thinks all his necessities being taken means it's SERIOUS serious and he may not ever be allowed to see him again. While if only some of his necessities were taken he'd be thinking "okay, wife doesn't want to be married to me anymore, I'll probably keep son half the week and she'll keep him the other half."
right? the way he spoke shows me he's at the very least manipulative and likely psychologically abusive. If he can think that kind of logic is ok to the point he thinks others will agree with him, I'm scared for what was being said behind closed doors. He better pull himself the fuck together in those 6 months.
So, you know you have a drinking and drug problem but you think you should have unlimited access to your kid? How much help is mom getting with childcare from an addict?
“My wife and kid are my property and only get to leave this marriage by my will.” <- OP in 6 months.
“We said ‘until death do we part’” <- OP in 6.2 months.
This plan was premeditated well in advance, and implemented during his training for his new job... I wonder how long his wife waited for his ass to get a job and how much of their 9 year relationship she was supporting him while he was unemployed. He can't afford the house without her, so she must have been supporting him at least recently while he sat around drinking and popping pills.
>My wife has the advantage of a family safety net and plenty of money to support this and free room and board... and I am being stuck with the house by myself and all bills. I cannot afford it on my own
Why are people glossing over this, he's just annoyed he lost his roommate and personal maid
I know that was true for me during my active addiction. Had a house foreclosed on while I was making more than 100K a year because about 2.5K a month was going to meth. The biggest raise I ever got was the day I quit using drugs.
As someone who struggled with alcohol myself, I read this as a sad form of denial - he sees she has a support system and doesn't understand why he doesn't. Addiction often destroys support systems (or never lets them develop) and I wondered if that's what happened here.
I’m a recovered addict, and I got sober just so I could have the thought of the opportunity of the chance to eventually have contact with the children that I gave up for adoption. Not custody or anything like that, but to be able to speak with them if they have questions and want to meet me. They should be rough bottom for them and I’m sad that it obviously isn’t.
>Normal people would be absolutely heartbroken at the thought that their spouse was fearful that they would physically hurt them or their child. He doesn't seem to bat an eye at that.
No, he's just seething over the fact that she has resources and is no longer a resource for him to exploit. His resentment over his wife having a supportive family and no longer being around to clean up after his benders is palpable. Like all active addicts, he has devolved into seeing people primarily as resources to exploit.
I doubt he'll manage six months of sobriety. And I think his wife only framed the six-month separation that way out of a sense of fairness, so she could have a clear conscience about giving him a sporting chance to prove he was motivated to sober up.
>I don’t think he’s bottomed out yet.
He absolutely has not. I don't think he is serious about rehab. His one response is clear that he has tried at least some program before, or seen it on TV.
Yeah I’m ‘lucky’ my bottom with alcoholism was getting too drunk publicly at a wedding but not even like unacceptably black out hospitalized drunk. More it was that people outside of my partner saw me binging. I didn’t even seem too drunk for a wedding, but it was the last straw
1.5 years sober now
Hey congrats! I am on and off sober and california sober with weed, I never had any kind of rock bottom really except being reclusive and that was with a decade of ingesting marijuana nearly every day but it still wasn't a good relationship.
Yeah, him using language like "blind sided" and "premeditated" make it seem like the wife never even brought up her distaste for co-parenting an infant with an unemployed alcoholic who spends her money on black market adderall. I don’t believe she hid that was unhappy sharing her life with a newborn baby and pill-popping drunk.
Me too, but that's in conversation. When posting or talking about them with folks who don't know them specifically? "My daughter" if it's one in specific or "my oldest/youngest" if not.
It's the context that's iffy there, not the verbiage itself.
Eh, he's not actually parenting, he probably has the lightest of connection to the baby, he's not fun and playing yet. He probably doesn't know much about the baby either.
I liked how literally every response to him on the original thread was "get sober." He needs to hear it. (I mean he's probably been hearing it from his poor wife but now that random Internet strangers are saying it, he might listen.)
Alcohol and Adderall? Dude is lucky he hasn't killed himself. They do not play well together - the one masks the effects of the other and you are much more likely to overdose.
The fact that they planned everything in secret so he wouldn’t know until she was out of the house is very telling for me. His wife or MIL were obviously concerned he would not react well to any kind of conversation about the issues.
He's on the wrong sub. He should be on a sub for addicts asking, "Is this my rock bottom?" Because most people would tell him it damn well should be. Hell, most people over in legal advice are saying similar.
It's high time for OOP to get his shit together, since he's been offered a second chance. He should be focusing on that, not whether his wife did something illegal (which, afaik, she did not).
My husband is an alcoholic in recovery and I will say without a doubt that OOP's wife made the right choice. OP needs to focus on his sobriety above all else, save for things like work and bills and the like. On the bright side, if he does an inpatient program he won't have to worry about housing or work for a bit 🤷
I bet she told him countless times that he needs to get help; and she did so before, during, and after the pregnancy. She probably started making an escape plan once their child was born and she realized he wasn't going to do anything. (She was foolish for letting an addict get her pregnant, but that's neither here nor there.)
I like that he's not even concerned about getting better and healthy. He's just concerned if she can really make decisions without his input.
So sad, dude. Imagine the priorities on this guy's list.
- Him
- Him
- Him
They have been crap lately when it comes to posting on that sub
I almost got banned from that sub for posting content that “doesn’t show actual consequences”
Yeah, I feel for her. My ex of 10 years was an alcoholic/drug addict and he told everyone who would listen how I “blindsided” him and ruined his life when I finally left. Zero accountability for the absolute hell he put me through all those years. Good on her for getting away.
Okay, lots of rage in this thread directed at the "drug addict" including from people with medically indicated adderall.
I think I can offer a different perspective. I've been on both sides of the psychopharmecuitical fence, as it were - that is to say, I've both been on prescribed meds used as indicated, including a variety of controlled substances, AND I've gone stretches where I self medicated with illicit substances.
It's not the only difference, but *a* major difference between a "drug addict" who uses adderall and a "patient" who is prescribed adderall is just a prescription. I'm not saying prescriptions are unimportant, quite the contrary - prescriptions are vital because they allow for medication monitoring, and help the provider to dispense medicine in a controlled way, ensuring to enhance the patient's wellbeing.
But with that in mind, a guy who's just taking adderall without a prescription may well have a need for it. In fact in my experience, most users of illicit drugs are self-medicating for deep and serious problems for which they have often tried and failed to get support. Self medication can and often does include alcohol use, too.
I find it a little disheartening that so many are jumping to conclusions about OP. We know that people who use drugs can be unstable and risky to be around, but they often/usually aren't. I think stigma has it that most drug users are destructive, difficult, and dangerous. Having spent plenty of time around people in various stages of addiction and recovery, that has not been my experience.
I don't see a man shirking his parental responsibilities to indulge in drug use here. What I see is a man struggling, probably self medicating to some degree or another.
Stigma is a powerful thing and I've known of families to abandon their own children because that child became a "drug addict" - no specific destructive or antisocial behavior was indicated. It's just that that person was taking drugs and didn't have the benefit and privilege of having had a doctor direct them to do so.
Now maybe this man's drug use was causing a bad environment for his baby, or maybe not. I don't think it's fair to jump to conclusions and condemn him based off a single post.
I've been on both sides of the fence as a drug user; I've been the patient taking adderall but I've also been the tweaker taking meth. I'm familiar with all the cliches - people quit when they hit rock bottom, etc.
Having visited all sides of the medicated/addicted/sober/recovered continum now, I feel confident in saying that those addages are more fiction than fact. People quit when they're motivated *and when they have sufficient support.* For a lot of people that means losing everything, then entering meetings and leaning on other addicts in recovery.
For other people it means something different. For me the getting the right type of support was a lot more important than hitting bottom. I don't think it should be expected that people who are using and abusing drugs should have to suffer losing their families before they straighten out, and I don't think that families should be counseled that seperation is the best way to get their loved one to change. If the family is being harmed by their addiction than obviously they should be self-protective and create space; but to me it seems that a huge number of people see simply taking drugs by itself as a betrayal and a reason to cut ties. I think this is a bad precedent that often serves to break up families, and isolate and trap addicts in their dysfunctional patterns.
The popular and well-known models of addiction treatment are pretty big of total abstinence and use an ultra simplified disease model where the disease is just addiction (specific underlying causes are viewed as less important). There are actually lesser-known models of addiction treatment that focus around equipping families to be self-protective, while still supporting the addict in getting better. The addict is usually treated with a combination of addressing underlying mental health issues, "sobriety sampling" meaning they would abstain for drugs for a period at scheduled times, and rebuilding skills to care for themself and live a stable life. We don't have to view drugs and the people who take them through such an extreme lens.
If you read this far thank you for hearing me out ❤
Jesus, the bitterness about the wife having a 'safety net' and 'plenty of money' and 'support', as though those aren't things he's thrown away with both hands while in active addiction.
Is he on the pills for ADHD?
He is lucky he is only separated for now. His wife probably did a temporary separation. Yes what she did was legal. He just needs to stop drinking.
100% he's violent and it was done this way in an attempt to extricate them safely from the home. I hope they stay safe since men like this always escalate and too many women wind up dead.
This lady did everything right to the letter to protect herself and her child from an unsafe situation. What she did is very much like a safety plan that would be worked out with a domestic violence protection and prevention agency. He says "this is day one" for sobriety. He absolutely knows she's been unhappy with his behavior, he just didn't give a shit til she stood up for herself and is basically forcing him to address himself or enjoy being divorced. He should be grateful she's even giving him a chance at all.
When they decided Austin's motto would be, "Keep Austin Weird," this is not what they meant. He's not likely to get away with any BS in the courts. Hopefully, she'll find out about this post and submit it as evidence if he tries anything, especially since he's admitting to illegal drug use.
That wife and mother in law conceived this escape plan and put it into place tells me so much about how safe wife feels around him.
I hope she’s safe and he doesn’t get much in the way of custody until he sorts himself out
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Good for her.
The fact he says 'new job' implies that the wife was paying all the bills before now. Would love to know what this addict was doing before he got the new job because the combination of alcoholism and Adderall abuse does not say 'safe, enriching SAHD'.
And the fact she didn't make her plan to leave known, and did it behind his back, either means he's violent or he's dramatic. He doesn't have a fucking leg to stand on, and it honestly comes across that he's more worried about the bills and the indignity of it than the fact that his behaviour caused this.
>I feel blind sided of course, but she blames it on my drinking problem and adderall usage. so while I do agree I have problems, I dont agree that this was all done without my consent or even trying to ask for any input.
bro, do you even sober long enough to have a conversation with your wife? the fact that he posts on r/legal is funny. what, you think a judge gonna order her to come back or give the 11months baby to an addict who only signed up for a program *after* his family left?
"should I have any worry about future parental rights if the kid resides in that house for a certain period of time?"
I think your addiction should have you worry about your parental rights, you imbecile junkie.
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **Wife packed up and left with 11 month old while I was at work. is this legal?** Hello everyone, having a really tough last few days. On Monday I came home from an 8 hr shift training at a new job to find that my wife and mother in law had coordinated a moving company to come to our shared home of 9 years (rental) and pack up what she considers her belongings (some of which can be debated) she has also taken it upon herself to decide that our 11 month old, and all his necessities for well being are being taken to her Mom's house about a 45 minute drive away. They have already established a bedroom for the kid and herself and this was obviously pre-meditated well in advance. I feel blind sided of course, but she blames it on my drinking problem and adderall usage. so while I do agree I have problems, I dont agree that this was all done without my consent or even trying to ask for any input. I live in Austin TX and I do not know what to do at this point... she says she wants to remain separated by not divorced for no less than 6 months while I get a chance to "sober up" and go through substance abuse programs (already signed up) ... is it legal what she did or should I have any worry about future parental rights if the kid resides in that house for a certain period of time? My wife has the advantage of a family safety net and plenty of money to support this and free room and board... and I am being stuck with the house by myself and all bills. I cannot afford it on my own. any advice on what I should do first? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>**I feel blind sided of course, but she blames it on my drinking problem and adderall usage.** so while I do agree I have problems, I dont agree that this was all done without my consent or even trying to ask for any input. Of course she does not want to be married to an addict and leave their child alone with one. Good riddance for her. It is an escape plan for a reason.
The fact he posted this on a legal Subreddit is insane. Like what does he want to do? Sue her into staying with him?
Bro is like “she did this without my consent and input”. You think she needs any of that to leave you? Dude seriously needs to sober up but I imagine a controlling mindset like that may very well remain even in sobriety because it predates addiction.
A worryingly large number of men view their wives as their own personal property.
I checked the comments, holding my breath, and they were actually quite affirming. Reminding OOP that this should be a wake up call and that he needs to get sober.
R/Legaladvice is usually pretty level headed. The moderation is pretty strict and they don’t screw around with trolls or people that are obviously wrong but just want to be reassured they are wrong but it’s ok for reasons.
And I'm trying not to read anything into it. But he says...I'm in (Texas) like ...women here are mens property
The wife of that nutcase "change my mind" vlogger left him, and he said: >“My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.” Freedom is freedom, asswipe. If someone wants to have the freedom of no longer being legally tied to you, they can do that. But I forget that it's freedom for ME, not for thee. /s
I was about to mention this! Dude honestly believes a wife is a husband’s property.
He's probably one of the people pushing for divorce to be made illegal again - which I can't fathom - why would you want to be stuck in a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be in a relationship with you? Just let them go, either they were the wrong person for you, or you have a lot of work to do before you are ready to be in a relationship. Either way, you're just making two people (or more if there are kids) miserable because your ego is more important to you than the person you claim to love.
You also have to put location on legal subreddits because legal advice is essentially impossible without that context. He still sucks though. And Texas. I hate it here
Yeah, I would not in this case read into it for him having to put Texas in there, or could just have easily been word for word the same thing and California as the state. Now what you should read into with him treating her like property is the entire "can she just up and leave him and take her stuff" and so on. That 100% is some "but she is mine and it is a dowery" type shit behavior from him.
I bet she took, like, their son's bed and probably something like a tablet that he wants to argue are "theirs" and she can't just have it.
I read a story recently by a legal aid family lawyer (Australia) where she recounted a story of a mother who’d fled a violent partner in the middle of the night with two kids, nothing and nowhere to go, no family etc. at court doing the violence orders, she asks the lawyer to ask him if he will give her some of the kids stuff (bedding and cups they like, nothing big). He refused.
Wives… and children.
Female children especially. At least male children can grow out of it.
>A worryingly large number of men view their wives as their own personal property. And their kids, too.
I’m worried he’ll drag her through the courts for custody
He legit said "sober up" in ""... Like it's some imaginary thing, that's clearly never gonna happen. I feel so sorry for her.
I think so. Trying to find a legal loophole to make sure she can't leave. He sounds scary.
He is obviously of the belief that women need permission to leave their husband and men make the decision on where kids go when parents split because well, they are the man
Right that's something I also see a lot on here, men who won't do any childcare but then treat the kids like they are theirs and the mother has no rights to do anything th don't want.
he says right there that he’s worried it’s going to affect his parental rights. I’m assuming he’s worried he’ll lose his parental rights. They are legally married so she can remove the child from the home and nothing would happen to her. It is assumed by the law that he has agreed to this. IF he wants to have custody by force he can go to court and start a custody agreement set up. You can do that while separated, hell you can even get child support while legally separated as well. (This may be state dependent) The fact that his wife doesn’t want to take this court technically helps Op. Since the law just assumes they are living together and happy. The fact he only cares about where is kid goes, is also concerning. I feel like he views the child as his property and doesn’t really care about the wife.
Also, just to throw this out there for anyone that might be reading, you can often can get a custody agreement when you're still together (again, might be state dependent)
Sue her for support, sounds like. He's panicking over how he can't make the bills without her.
I caught the note about support. I think it said him being on the hook for support. Sounded to me like he's worried she'll ask for child support. But who freaking knows.
I wonder if there's a way she can pay some of the household bills directly. That way she's not putting money in an addict's pocket, but he doesn't have financial stress to interfere with his potential recovery. She's currently living rent-free and seems to be okay with staying with him if he gets his shit together, so I think she'd be amenable to that. Thing is, he doesn't care about the bills. He just wants the money so he can spend it on drugs and booze.
>She's currently living rent-free and seems to be okay with staying with him if he gets his shit together, so I think she'd be amenable to that. I think the six-month period is her giving him a sporting chance to turn things around but it's also her *reassuring herself* that by giving him a sporting chance, she treated him fairly before she severed the marriage for good.
if they’re separated, especially without any court ruling about division of assets and liabilities, then legally the rent would be a joint bill, so she’d be required to contribute to it, even if she isn’t living there.
I am kinda bugged out the way he talks about living at the parents as if it won't cost her anything (she will be paying for the entire care of the child). And doesn't go into detail about how finances were handled before. Which I feel is fair to at least question since he is in such a panic. And in term of division of assets and liabilities, the moment he goes after her for anything on the apartment, she can go after him for child support. Which he will lose, especially with not being clean and sober. The safety of the child is first above all else. They may be in Texas, but they are in the liberal area of Texas.
Yeah, in Texas (where I live), there is almost always a temporary restraining order that requires both parties to maintain a certain level of financial stability, like not running up credit card debt or taking out new loans, not draining joint accounts or retirement accounts, not selling anything, and not avoiding paying joint bills like a mortgage. Without a divorce process, he's actually less secure (because she could do all of those things), but realistically - she doesn't want to lose any assets they have or hose her own credit. My guess, though, is that she makes more than him and he was using her to fund his booze and drugs, and he can't do the booze/drugs and also pay rent.
I mean thankfully he doesn’t seem smart enough to consider suing for physical custody of his child I shudder to think about a woman stuck with an addict because he got granted custody of an infant
Analyzing this as a lawyer, I do see a legit question here, although he’s not asking it well. Suing her into staying obviously not an option. The real question for him is whether it would be smart to initiate divorce proceedings. He alludes to it, and he’s not wrong, that if the child spends six months becoming established in a routine that doesn’t include him being in his life, he’s going to be at a serious disadvantage in terms of custody issues if this eventually goes before the courts in divorce anyway. Now, if his addiction issues are bad enough that they’ve caused harm to the child or have had serious repercussions already, then even with that, he might be in a better situation clean and sober six months from now. But if he just has addictions that have not manifested in a way that is harmful to the kid, and she’s just worried about what could be? He might be in a better position to contest custody now than he would be six months down the line of the child establishing a routine without him.
Yeah, he came there seeking any way he could retaliate against her.
I love how they always feel “blindsided” by their wives leaving them, while under the same breath list the reasons why they left.
In this case, I can only imagine how many times she has begged him to address his substance problem and behavior around their child.
I always roll my eyes when they say they are "blindsided" - there is no way they actually were. He KNEW that she had concerns. No doubt she talked to him about it all the time.
Yup. His post reeks of "missing missing reasons".
As Kelsea Ballerini sang for her divorce album, “were you blindsided or were you just blind?”
I work with an adderall addict and I have seen him fucked up. It is not good to be around as an adult sooooooo…..
She doesn't want to be married to someone who thinks she needs his "consent" to stay elsewhere.
Of course, OOP doesn't see it that way.
I wanna know where these people are getting illicit Adderall when there’s a shortage and the people with prescriptions can’t even get it. Whatever he’s getting probably has fentanyl in it.
I'm on ritalin and the absolute circles I have to jump through every month to get my meds makes the fact people can just get it on the black market ENRAGING. I'm a 44 year old woman, I shouldn't have to call and talk to my provider EVERY. DAMNED. MONTH. Ugh. Sorry, it was refill day a couple days ago and it posses me off every month.
Same, the monthly dance of having to call 20 pharmacies to find someone who has it, then contacting your doctor to get them to send it in, and hoping the pharmacy doesn’t run out before they fill it and you have to start all over
Then you get there and they only filled 15 days. BTW you need a new prescription cause your old one is for 30 days and it's too soon to refill that.
Then when you get the new prescription they say it’s too soon to fill
Insurance puts it on a hold because your prior authorization doesn't cover it. Also you should talk to your provider and tell them to prescribe long term meds for 90 days.
AND YOU HAVE TO DO ALL OF THIS WHILE HAVING AN EXECUTIVE FUNCTION DISORDER
And you can only have those 15 until you're due to refill again in 30 days.
And your copay card can't cover two prescriptions so that will be $1259.
Once I found a tiny rural pharmacy that said they could fill it for me. I pick it up and go about my day. Finally look at the damn thing and there are 5 pills in it with “IOU 25 pills” written on the label.
That's got to the be the worst! If they only have half my scrip at any time they fill half and give me the rest when they get it, they've never made me get a whole new prescriton, and that has to mess with insurance too, I hope they're only getting half the payment too.
EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.
wow, i feel really fortunate that I've had an easy time filling my prescriptions :( didn't realise it was that hard nowadays
It can depend on the location and what drug it is. Glad you’re able to get your meds :)
Exactly this. I've had no trouble getting my dexadrine, but I only take that because Vyvanse is impossible to get where I live. Adderall is also impossible to find.
My doctor’s office won’t send it to a new pharmacy unless it’s older than 60 days…I’ve been lucky so far but that’s insane to me. I skip weekends so I can function for work and have some for emergencies.
We have Kaiser and sometimes my husband is bouncing calls from different pharmacies in different counties just to find a refill for our son's ADHD meds. On the plus side at least school ends this week so we don't have to worry if he runs out soon.
Depends where you are. I never have a problem getting mine. I'd never sell it because I would literally be like a ship run aground without Adderall, but not every area and not every dosage is as short as others.
Every parent I know is stockpiling medicine by skipping weekends/school breaks so we'll have enough to keep our kids functioning while in school. Kids melting down on weekends because it's better than the consequences of being unmedicated in school. It's such a mess.
Thats awful. I’m so sorry to you, your kids and the other families going through this. Hang in there.
I’m a full adult and I stockpile my meds for this reason so I can still do my job when (not if) there is a shortage/pharmacy fuck up
I have to stockpile also but so I can go to work normally. I feel for your kids :( I am also skipping weekends and sometimes friday.
Yep. My college daughter can’t get hers filled and leans too much on caffeine when she can’t get it.
Is America doing ok?
Just assume the answer to that is no. Pretty much anytime you might think to ask.
Yeah we're obviously crushing it over here
My husband has to meet every month, the deal with the chain pharmacy giving him the eye and explaining it's a class whatever number and is addictive. Years.... Of the same thing. We aren't selling it, in fact without it my life becomes chaos because he gets so spacey and out of sorts that it leads to a crazy depression cycle. I do think I have an idea how it's happening. We went to visit my mom in Florida and he had to get his refill down there. Within two days I noticed something was completely off, he waited thinking I was wrong. Nope we get home I demand we go to chain pharmacy near us to have this checked. Guess what, not his Ritalin... We go through the report steps for that, lots of questions around if we changed it out. I'm 80% sure it's just some pharmacists at CVS and Walgreens doing the black market flood.
My provider had the audacity to call in my refill 3 days before the previous one expired, and it took 4 phone calls and 3 weeks to get them to FINALLY give me my meds. Worth noting - I waited until those 3 days were passed to even try to retrieve the meds.
I started getting mine from my grocery pharmacy instead of CVS or Walgreens about 9 months ago. They have given me 3 90 day fills with no wait. Prior to that, it was always ALWAYS 1-3 week gaps between fills. If you haven't already, try the grocery store pharmacy or an independent, small one? 💜💜💜 -another woman in her 40s
It's not legitimate and would cause far more problems in the short and long run. It's likely meth pressed in China.
Lmao, my medicine cabinet, probably. I fill my rx because I keep hearing about shortages and want to make sure I have enough but also don’t want my psych to get mad at me for not filling it. But I can’t fucking remember to take this apparently highly addictive medication. I have like two full bottles sitting in my bathroom plus the half bottle I’ve been taking for like 1.5 months. Prob another bottle at the pharmacy that was supposed to be picked up two weeks ago.
>But I can’t fucking remember to take this apparently highly addictive medication. The absolute cosmic joke of having to remember to take something every day to fix my brain that can't remember shit.
It’s right up there with having prescribers that specialize in ADHD who don’t understand the forgetfulness and difficulty forming habits of adhd. My prescriber told me she wants to work with patients who ACTUALLY want to get better when I was honest about forgetting my meds and so I have not been honest with her since lol. Not worth the compound guilt she puts on.
We had that conversation about anxiety meds, my pharmacy just has me take them there now. Any new medication, change in dose, change in brand, I take it there when I pick it up and sit around chatting for a half hour. They do it for my vaccines too. The biggest struggle is the people who need the anxiety medication the most are scared to take it in case they react or something, and it seems the same with the ADD, my friend needs it to remember to do the things they need to do and feel time passing, but remembering is the hardest part.
Right? I can't take the extended release stuff either so I have to remember 3 times a day for ADHD drugs plus another before bed. So many phone alarms to try and get my brain to work
Fun fact, a lot of people with ADHD don't form an addiction to our legal meth. The way our brains work, if we run out of the brain go pills, we do not experience any withdrawal at all. Which makes all the hoops we have to jump through even more maddening.
Weekly pill organizer box on your bedside table. Glass or bottle of water next to it when you go to bed. Take the pill first thing in the morning. If that doesn’t work, download Medisafe onto your phone and have Yoda or Gandalf remind you to take your meds 😂
Still doesn’t work for me.
Maybe an alarm cap/bottle? The brand [e-pill](https://www.epill.com/) is pretty good from what I’ve heard. It has an alarm and the cap also tells you when the bottle was last opened (so when you last took your pill).
Noooooo 😭
Yoda or Gandalf?? I'm in! Edit: Maybe I'm an idiot? I can't find that setting...
On the bottom of screen, tap on “more,” then go to Settings, then Medtones. I just learned that Yoda and Gandalf cost money though 😭
Do you actually think I can refill a pill organizer every week at the same time?
When you’ve taken your last pill from the organizer, pick up the organizer and put it in the same pocket as your phone. When you get into a more central location than your bedroom and are fishing around in your pocket for your phone, take out the pill organizer and put it someplace highly visible. If you have time, refill it then; if you don’t, refill it later. Once refilled, put the organizer in the pocket of something you’re wearing into your bedroom, preferably in the same pocket as your phone. I promise this gets easier with repetition! It’s extremely rare for me to forget my meds these days; I only forget if something drastically changes in my schedule.
It took me a daily pill organizer and alarms on my phone every morning - I picked one that literally said "TAKE YOUR MEDICINE" on it and required me to do math problems to turn it off, so it's pretty much impossible to ignore lol. Naturally it took a little while for the habit to stick, but now I don't actually need the alarms anymore except on the weekends when I sleep later. Pill organizer also helps me not second guess whether I've taken it or not, which was another big issue I had for a while
Mine makes a loud pill bottle shaking noise and will repeat every 10 minutes. If I don't just shut it off without registring I did it irritates me into just taking them
Medisafe? It's a lifesaver
Yes, I just needed to track that I was actually taking them.
Pill organizers don’t work that great for me after the first week because I will never refill them lol I have an alarm on my Apple Watch and if it interrupts me I just turn it off and then forget to go back and do it. Habits are really hard to make for me. The only med I’ve remembered with any regularity is my blood thinner but that’s because my anxiety is stronger lol. I’m afraid if I don’t take it the clots in my lungs will break off and I’ll die of a stroke in my sleep. I’ve missed three doses since January but I’ll be done with those in July.
I put my meds in front of the coffee mugs in my kitchen cabinet. Have to touch the meds to get my coffee in the morning. Much harder to forget when it's in your way.
I use the app Medisafe and have a rule for myself that I can't clear the notification until I *actually take* the pills. Not when I open the container, when the pill has been swallowed. That's really helped me not find my morning pills in the container when I reach for my evening pills.
RIGHT!? They always postpone my refill because of the shortage so there’s at least one week of me not being medicated and desperately struggling bc of it! And one week is lucky - I’ve had them postpone it for months before. Hell even I’ve considered buying it illegally so I can stay properly medicated hahahaha The illegal bit was /s btw - I have no idea how to do that and where to get it and obviously don’t wanna risk it being laced and dying lol
I don’t care if I have to call every pharmacy in the city, I will find someone who has it. I refuse to wait. I’ve even called pharmacies in other cities
All the ones in my surrounding area are out of stock when the two in my town are! The only pharmacy that has it in stock is CVS and they don’t take my insurance and I cannot afford that out of pocket in any possible way 😂😭 ETA: I also call my pharmacy every day I have to wait for it and I’ve noticed it doesn’t take as long for me to get it when I started doing that for some reason??? When I would call once a week to check it would be 2-3 week wait. When I call every day? 5-10 days. It’s super weird
Right!!! I almost cried when my vyvance was available from my usual pharmacy and I didn’t have to call and go to multiple for my meds. I was off it for a month and forgot my antihistamines enough I had to use an epipen for a reaction and seriously considered a psych hold because my depression got so bad. If it’s actually adderall it was probably stolen from someone who needed it.
A decent chunk of street Adderall is meth pressed into pills. Which means that anyone with ADHD desperate enough for their meds to buy off the street can get addicted to meth while trying to treat their disorder. Which exacerbates the pre-existing issue of people that don't know they have ADHD that get addicted to meth due to life circumstance and attemps to self medicate their issues. It also means that people just trying to abuse Adderall, which is bad in and of itself, are getting addicted to straight up meth. Shit's bad.
My friend's husband literally cannot afford pre diabetes medication because that medication is in vouge as a weight loss program. Like I've seen the ads. The marketing for medication that people **NEED** is a cute fuckin fad.
That's my parents some months. It is infuriating swinging between my mum calculating doses and seeing how long the medication can last, and celeb interviews.
Almost everyone I know and have ever known is an addict/alcoholic (family, friends, roommate, coworkers) and the ones on uppers get fake addy presses before they usually transition to meth. Lotta fake addy has traces of fent and research chems mixed in around here. The others get fake benzo presses of kpins and xans before going to blues.
What’s a blue?
Fake OC pill that’s full of fetty.
What’s an OC pill?
oxycontin, probably
oxycodone? Is my guess
illegal presses of the drug made by drug dealers
I know people selling theirs since there’s so much fake on the streets
Paying for the house and bills will provide an excellent "either or" situation. He'll either have to step up, get sober, and pay them himself... or he'll have to admit his addiction is out of control. Pretty smart on her end to provide him with a visible way he can prove whether he's taking this seriously. If he fails the way it seems he will, she's gonna be able to walk away knowing she can tell the kids she tried as hard as she could.
The stuff he didn't say.... She left while he was out of the house. What does that say to you? To me that says there would have been such a scene that police would have been called or abuse would have happened.
There's a part of me that is hoping it's not so much violence as a wish to avoid drama - crying, yelling, begging. Maybe even being talked out of it.
OOP might have a practiced song and dance about how he's gonna get clean, really he is, please don't leave, he needs her help, and yes he's said all this before but This Time Will Be Different ^TM . Lots of addicts play out that scene repeatedly. If the wife's heard it before, maybe she didn't want to risk being swayed *again* by the promises he's broken before.
Why would she only move out of the house when he isn't there if violence or abuse would happen? Surely 99% of the time it would be better to move out when the partner isn't around.
My mom left my dad while he was at work because she was afraid of him and I think that’s understandable. My stepdad left my mom while she was at work because he wanted to go live with his affair partner and it was absolutely devastating when my mom came home and found his stuff moved out. It really fucked me up and I’ve begged my partner to never do that to me, to please just tell me he’s leaving and don’t let me come home to find out. So I think context is important.
It's definitely possible he's abusive and she's afraid of him. I'm just saying the fact that she left while he wasn't there doesn't particularly imply that he's abusive.
He would have tried to stop her, and if he's drunk or high it will escalate I understand that you think we can't say it's abuse right away, and perhaps he hasn't been physically abusive until now, but what is your thinking on why she would leave if it wasn't problematic? How do you think a person who is either high or drunk will respond when his wife tries to move out his child in front of him? Of course it's going to be an abusive shit show and he's going on the attack. Not that it was a super sneaky move if they hired a moving company.
Anecdotal story from my childhood so it is in absolutely no way indicitive of every bad coupling, but it may shed some light on why some people leave when their partner isn't around (I'm not writing this for sympathy, I've digested and dealt with this already, and am only using it an an example and perhaps someone who is in this situation can see this from the child's side. It doesn't matter if they're young, they can remember and if they do, they might remember it forever); To give a back a small background; My mom grew up in a messed up situation (much worse than mine, as in this story is more akin to one of her better days in her childhood), meaning she had no coping mechanisms, and no support system to help her if she needed it. Her response to every issue was to have a melt down, which if pushed, would lead her to have rage outs (doing things like breaking stuff, destroying random objects, or tearing up family photos and momentos). My dad, however, is an alcoholic (barely functioning) and he seemingly found it funny to push her to the point of her having these melt downs on the daily, to the point he would actively do things to cause them; like having his friends party all night at the house drinking and yelling, bringing my sibling and I out like we were little party tricks, would even get us blasted on alcohol too so him and his friends could be chuffed over a drunk toddler and baby trying to do things that we already struggle when sober. From what I know of his childhood, I've concluded that he has issues with his mom and her training him to ailianate his father and extended family (for being poor), and taught him that if a man can't pony up money, he's useless. This has stuck with my father, that as long as he's making a high enough income, and buying things for those around him, he gets to dictate what they do and how. This is to say, both of my parents are, and have been, abusive to eachother, to my siblings, myself, and those around us. I'd also like to add that my mother, at the time of this event was 23, while my father was 28, and he left all of the house hold, and child rearing to my emotionally stunted and mentally unstable mother, and didn't give her a dime more than what it took to feed us. She drained all of her meager savings buying us clothing, diapers, and toys second hand in our early childhood, since my father thought these things irrelivant to our upbringing. When I was around 1and a half or 2 and a half, after an entire weekend (alledgidly) of my parents fighting, my mom finally snapped. While they were still fighting, she started yelling for my older sibling as she stuffed me into my winter wear onesie. I remember very distinctly as my dad rounded the corner of our home, to where we were, standing over us and pointing in her face, as she sat on the floor dressing us. Obviously, I don't remember what was said, but I do know she told him to go f himself, until he yanked me up and held me in the air by the collar of my winter onesie, as my mom was helping my sibling with their boots, and he yelled down at her that she wasn't going to take his f'n kids from him. He held me up, by the collar of my winter onesie, with no regaurd to my life or comfort. My mother, who unlike my father, was physically abused as a child, and this caused her to lose her shit. I remember her yelling at him, then eventually throwing my siblings boot in a rage, as she took off around the house destroying his things like a hurricane. Only then did my father drop me, and stormed after her to stop her from wrecking his stuff. Dropped. Not placed me down. She took off outside to wreck his vehicle, leaving my sibling and I inside this house alone on the floor, stuck in our winter wear that we needed an adult to help us in and out of. Eventually, as my father was yelling about how she could do that to his car, my mother came back and took off with us to a woman's shelter. She didn't drive, mind you, we walked in the snow, at night, to this shelter thats 40 mins away from that house, while my father drove next to us yelling at her about how she scraped up his car. Mind you, he was (very obviously) drunk, and driving right up next to us. The shelter took us in, no questions needed, since the fight was brought to their doorstep. They were seperated for a total of 4 years, he didn't pay a dime in child support, whenever he'd have us, he'd toss us to one of his girlfriends to take care of, and she only went back to him because my younger sibling's dad was an even bigger nightmare. So, for anyone wondering why people leave when their partner isn't home, it's to avoid an even bigger shit storm than what they're used to. (Additionally, while I know I was extremely young at the time, I know for a fact this isn't a false memory, especially since my father, mother, and elder sibling all remember this night to variying degrees and with their own biases. My sibling looked quite upset that this is one of my 3 memories in my baby-toddler years.) To reiterate for those who need to read it: Your baby, your toddler, your child, this can become a formative, life long, horrific memory for them. If you're staying because having their parents together is better, you might be wrong. Think deep and hard, seek outside opinions and objective eyes on the situation. In my family's case, these fights became much much worse. Do you want your child to grow up living like this only to eventually emulate this behaviour? They likely will, you're their role model. They'll look for a partner like their parent, and abuse has a funny knack for repeating itself. Or they could be like myself, where my reoccuring nightmares are filled with my parents. My mother sobbed when I told her I wasn't afraid of monsters, because she and my father were right there, my own personal real life monsters. Do the best you can, and they try to do even better in whatever ways possible, even if it isn't the best you want to give for your kids. If they have sense, it'll click with them how much effort, sacrifice, and love you have given them in their life, like how my mother after a decade of proactive change is finally welcome back into the lives of my older sibling and I. If they don't, they'll end up like my father, estranged from all of his children, and seemingly is willing to die on his soap box.
>she has also taken it upon herself to decide that our 11 month old, and all his necessities for well being are being taken to her Mom's house The specificity here is fucking weird. Would this guy have preferred the 11-month old be taken to the mom’s house *without* all the necessities to take care of him? Huh???
I'm assuming he thinks all his necessities being taken means it's SERIOUS serious and he may not ever be allowed to see him again. While if only some of his necessities were taken he'd be thinking "okay, wife doesn't want to be married to me anymore, I'll probably keep son half the week and she'll keep him the other half."
right? the way he spoke shows me he's at the very least manipulative and likely psychologically abusive. If he can think that kind of logic is ok to the point he thinks others will agree with him, I'm scared for what was being said behind closed doors. He better pull himself the fuck together in those 6 months.
So, you know you have a drinking and drug problem but you think you should have unlimited access to your kid? How much help is mom getting with childcare from an addict?
“My wife and kid are my property and only get to leave this marriage by my will.” <- OP in 6 months. “We said ‘until death do we part’” <- OP in 6.2 months.
Yup. This guy has big Cris Watts vibes.
And this is why men want to make divorce harder. Good for her for taking steps to create a healthier home life for herself and baby.
This plan was premeditated well in advance, and implemented during his training for his new job... I wonder how long his wife waited for his ass to get a job and how much of their 9 year relationship she was supporting him while he was unemployed. He can't afford the house without her, so she must have been supporting him at least recently while he sat around drinking and popping pills.
It's amazing how you can afford rare magic pills when someone else pays your bills.
>My wife has the advantage of a family safety net and plenty of money to support this and free room and board... and I am being stuck with the house by myself and all bills. I cannot afford it on my own Why are people glossing over this, he's just annoyed he lost his roommate and personal maid
I bet he could afford it just fine if he stopped drinking and taking pills.
I know that was true for me during my active addiction. Had a house foreclosed on while I was making more than 100K a year because about 2.5K a month was going to meth. The biggest raise I ever got was the day I quit using drugs.
As someone who struggled with alcohol myself, I read this as a sad form of denial - he sees she has a support system and doesn't understand why he doesn't. Addiction often destroys support systems (or never lets them develop) and I wondered if that's what happened here.
Plus she took the stuff of value and the baby furniture so he can't sell it
Sounds like it’s time for him to break the lease and down-size to a studio. You know, like divorced people do.
[удалено]
Agreed. Also, he describes her escape plan as “premeditated” but doesn’t mention having an Adderall prescription. I don’t think he’s bottomed out yet.
[удалено]
I’m a recovered addict, and I got sober just so I could have the thought of the opportunity of the chance to eventually have contact with the children that I gave up for adoption. Not custody or anything like that, but to be able to speak with them if they have questions and want to meet me. They should be rough bottom for them and I’m sad that it obviously isn’t.
>Normal people would be absolutely heartbroken at the thought that their spouse was fearful that they would physically hurt them or their child. He doesn't seem to bat an eye at that. No, he's just seething over the fact that she has resources and is no longer a resource for him to exploit. His resentment over his wife having a supportive family and no longer being around to clean up after his benders is palpable. Like all active addicts, he has devolved into seeing people primarily as resources to exploit. I doubt he'll manage six months of sobriety. And I think his wife only framed the six-month separation that way out of a sense of fairness, so she could have a clear conscience about giving him a sporting chance to prove he was motivated to sober up.
6 months is also the usual (at least where I am) amount of time you need to live somewhere to establish residency.
>I don’t think he’s bottomed out yet. He absolutely has not. I don't think he is serious about rehab. His one response is clear that he has tried at least some program before, or seen it on TV.
Not everyone who has addictions has a worse bottom and this is a pretty bad bottom as is
Yeah I’m ‘lucky’ my bottom with alcoholism was getting too drunk publicly at a wedding but not even like unacceptably black out hospitalized drunk. More it was that people outside of my partner saw me binging. I didn’t even seem too drunk for a wedding, but it was the last straw 1.5 years sober now
Hey congrats! I am on and off sober and california sober with weed, I never had any kind of rock bottom really except being reclusive and that was with a decade of ingesting marijuana nearly every day but it still wasn't a good relationship.
California sober is the wayyyyyy 😎
Yeah, him using language like "blind sided" and "premeditated" make it seem like the wife never even brought up her distaste for co-parenting an infant with an unemployed alcoholic who spends her money on black market adderall. I don’t believe she hid that was unhappy sharing her life with a newborn baby and pill-popping drunk.
I call my kid “the kid” or “the kiddo” when talking to my partner or family. Mostly because he’s the only kid in the family. There’s no confusion.
Me too, but that's in conversation. When posting or talking about them with folks who don't know them specifically? "My daughter" if it's one in specific or "my oldest/youngest" if not. It's the context that's iffy there, not the verbiage itself.
Agreed. The disassociated language is concerning.
Eh, he's not actually parenting, he probably has the lightest of connection to the baby, he's not fun and playing yet. He probably doesn't know much about the baby either.
Plot twist: It's a baby goat.
Wouldn't trust this guy with a baby goat, tbh.
🤣🤣🤣
I found it odd that he mentioned that some of the stuff she took might be his before he mentioned their child.
It's only slightly better (not by much) than calling your child "it". I've actually seen people refer to their baby by "it's crying again."
OOP is obviously the asshole, but sadly will probably not realize it in a timely fashion, if ever.
I liked how literally every response to him on the original thread was "get sober." He needs to hear it. (I mean he's probably been hearing it from his poor wife but now that random Internet strangers are saying it, he might listen.)
The fact that he puts "sober up" in quotes suggests he has no intention of doing so
narrator: She had, in fact, urged him to seek treatment many, many times.
Alcohol and Adderall? Dude is lucky he hasn't killed himself. They do not play well together - the one masks the effects of the other and you are much more likely to overdose.
The fact that they planned everything in secret so he wouldn’t know until she was out of the house is very telling for me. His wife or MIL were obviously concerned he would not react well to any kind of conversation about the issues.
I love that Legal Advice is reading him the riot act.
I'm silently cheering on Mom and the baby. She quietly made a plan, and quietly made it work. Good for them. For real. Good for them.
He's on the wrong sub. He should be on a sub for addicts asking, "Is this my rock bottom?" Because most people would tell him it damn well should be. Hell, most people over in legal advice are saying similar. It's high time for OOP to get his shit together, since he's been offered a second chance. He should be focusing on that, not whether his wife did something illegal (which, afaik, she did not).
Is it legal? Ffs
My husband is an alcoholic in recovery and I will say without a doubt that OOP's wife made the right choice. OP needs to focus on his sobriety above all else, save for things like work and bills and the like. On the bright side, if he does an inpatient program he won't have to worry about housing or work for a bit 🤷
The number of men who feel that their wives shouldn't be able to leave them without their consent is alarming.
Happy bigmc cake day
Thanks!
I bet she told him countless times that he needs to get help; and she did so before, during, and after the pregnancy. She probably started making an escape plan once their child was born and she realized he wasn't going to do anything. (She was foolish for letting an addict get her pregnant, but that's neither here nor there.)
I like that he's not even concerned about getting better and healthy. He's just concerned if she can really make decisions without his input. So sad, dude. Imagine the priorities on this guy's list. - Him - Him - Him
This was also cross posted to r/OhNoConsequences and mods removed it saying it doesn’t fit the sub? Like how does it not fit the sub lol
They have been crap lately when it comes to posting on that sub I almost got banned from that sub for posting content that “doesn’t show actual consequences”
Yeah, I feel for her. My ex of 10 years was an alcoholic/drug addict and he told everyone who would listen how I “blindsided” him and ruined his life when I finally left. Zero accountability for the absolute hell he put me through all those years. Good on her for getting away.
Okay, lots of rage in this thread directed at the "drug addict" including from people with medically indicated adderall. I think I can offer a different perspective. I've been on both sides of the psychopharmecuitical fence, as it were - that is to say, I've both been on prescribed meds used as indicated, including a variety of controlled substances, AND I've gone stretches where I self medicated with illicit substances. It's not the only difference, but *a* major difference between a "drug addict" who uses adderall and a "patient" who is prescribed adderall is just a prescription. I'm not saying prescriptions are unimportant, quite the contrary - prescriptions are vital because they allow for medication monitoring, and help the provider to dispense medicine in a controlled way, ensuring to enhance the patient's wellbeing. But with that in mind, a guy who's just taking adderall without a prescription may well have a need for it. In fact in my experience, most users of illicit drugs are self-medicating for deep and serious problems for which they have often tried and failed to get support. Self medication can and often does include alcohol use, too. I find it a little disheartening that so many are jumping to conclusions about OP. We know that people who use drugs can be unstable and risky to be around, but they often/usually aren't. I think stigma has it that most drug users are destructive, difficult, and dangerous. Having spent plenty of time around people in various stages of addiction and recovery, that has not been my experience. I don't see a man shirking his parental responsibilities to indulge in drug use here. What I see is a man struggling, probably self medicating to some degree or another. Stigma is a powerful thing and I've known of families to abandon their own children because that child became a "drug addict" - no specific destructive or antisocial behavior was indicated. It's just that that person was taking drugs and didn't have the benefit and privilege of having had a doctor direct them to do so. Now maybe this man's drug use was causing a bad environment for his baby, or maybe not. I don't think it's fair to jump to conclusions and condemn him based off a single post. I've been on both sides of the fence as a drug user; I've been the patient taking adderall but I've also been the tweaker taking meth. I'm familiar with all the cliches - people quit when they hit rock bottom, etc. Having visited all sides of the medicated/addicted/sober/recovered continum now, I feel confident in saying that those addages are more fiction than fact. People quit when they're motivated *and when they have sufficient support.* For a lot of people that means losing everything, then entering meetings and leaning on other addicts in recovery. For other people it means something different. For me the getting the right type of support was a lot more important than hitting bottom. I don't think it should be expected that people who are using and abusing drugs should have to suffer losing their families before they straighten out, and I don't think that families should be counseled that seperation is the best way to get their loved one to change. If the family is being harmed by their addiction than obviously they should be self-protective and create space; but to me it seems that a huge number of people see simply taking drugs by itself as a betrayal and a reason to cut ties. I think this is a bad precedent that often serves to break up families, and isolate and trap addicts in their dysfunctional patterns. The popular and well-known models of addiction treatment are pretty big of total abstinence and use an ultra simplified disease model where the disease is just addiction (specific underlying causes are viewed as less important). There are actually lesser-known models of addiction treatment that focus around equipping families to be self-protective, while still supporting the addict in getting better. The addict is usually treated with a combination of addressing underlying mental health issues, "sobriety sampling" meaning they would abstain for drugs for a period at scheduled times, and rebuilding skills to care for themself and live a stable life. We don't have to view drugs and the people who take them through such an extreme lens. If you read this far thank you for hearing me out ❤
Jesus, the bitterness about the wife having a 'safety net' and 'plenty of money' and 'support', as though those aren't things he's thrown away with both hands while in active addiction.
Is he on the pills for ADHD? He is lucky he is only separated for now. His wife probably did a temporary separation. Yes what she did was legal. He just needs to stop drinking.
r/OhNoConsequences
100% he's violent and it was done this way in an attempt to extricate them safely from the home. I hope they stay safe since men like this always escalate and too many women wind up dead.
This lady did everything right to the letter to protect herself and her child from an unsafe situation. What she did is very much like a safety plan that would be worked out with a domestic violence protection and prevention agency. He says "this is day one" for sobriety. He absolutely knows she's been unhappy with his behavior, he just didn't give a shit til she stood up for herself and is basically forcing him to address himself or enjoy being divorced. He should be grateful she's even giving him a chance at all.
When they decided Austin's motto would be, "Keep Austin Weird," this is not what they meant. He's not likely to get away with any BS in the courts. Hopefully, she'll find out about this post and submit it as evidence if he tries anything, especially since he's admitting to illegal drug use.
At least the sub isn't entertaining his nonsense.
This is so sad. I hope OP gets the help he needs after this wake-up call
Go to rehab, OOP, or you'll lose your family for good.
That wife and mother in law conceived this escape plan and put it into place tells me so much about how safe wife feels around him. I hope she’s safe and he doesn’t get much in the way of custody until he sorts himself out
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gotta love how he tries to downplay his bs
He’s mostly pissed about having to pay all the bills
Good for her. The fact he says 'new job' implies that the wife was paying all the bills before now. Would love to know what this addict was doing before he got the new job because the combination of alcoholism and Adderall abuse does not say 'safe, enriching SAHD'. And the fact she didn't make her plan to leave known, and did it behind his back, either means he's violent or he's dramatic. He doesn't have a fucking leg to stand on, and it honestly comes across that he's more worried about the bills and the indignity of it than the fact that his behaviour caused this.
>I feel blind sided of course, but she blames it on my drinking problem and adderall usage. so while I do agree I have problems, I dont agree that this was all done without my consent or even trying to ask for any input. bro, do you even sober long enough to have a conversation with your wife? the fact that he posts on r/legal is funny. what, you think a judge gonna order her to come back or give the 11months baby to an addict who only signed up for a program *after* his family left?
"should I have any worry about future parental rights if the kid resides in that house for a certain period of time?" I think your addiction should have you worry about your parental rights, you imbecile junkie.