The Obsession Files: How I Lived With Addiction for Nearly a Decade—and Won

By Conner Tighe

For nine years, I lived with someone who struggled with Adderall and alcohol addiction.

But if you walked into our home, you might not have known.

There were no drunken explosions in front of me. He never hit me. He never physically abused me. He cooked for me.

That's what makes this story difficult to tell.

Because when someone hurts you without becoming an obvious villain, you can spend years wondering whether you're allowed to call what happened to you harmful.

The guy was very good at showing me the good in him.

Sometimes, I think he was even better at making me see it than I was.

Our relationship didn't collapse all at once. It eroded.

We had become profoundly incompatible.

And sex was only one part of it.

Eventually, he stopped watching movies with me.

That sounds like such a small thing.

It wasn't.

There is a particular loneliness in sitting beside someone you love and realizing they no longer seem interested in sharing the ordinary parts of life with you. Relationships aren't made entirely from anniversaries, sex, or declarations of love. They're also made from stupid movies on the couch. They're made from deciding what to eat. They're made from the tiny rituals that say, I still choose to spend my time with you.

One by one, ours disappeared.

At some point, we stopped being a couple and became roommates.

We just didn't say it out loud.

I think we stopped loving each other two or three years before either of us was willing to openly acknowledge it. By then, we were sleeping in separate bedrooms and living increasingly separate lives.

His drinking happened there, in that separation.

The guy wasn't stumbling around the house drunk in front of me. At night, after we retreated to our respective bedrooms, he would drink alone before going to sleep.

There is something profoundly sad about that image to me now.

Two people who had once built a relationship together disappearing into separate rooms every night, one of them drinking alone.

His mental health deteriorated, especially after his mother died.

He never seemed to recover from losing her.

Grief appeared to become something he lived inside rather than something he moved through.

I could see that he was hurting.

And that's where things became especially complicated for me.

Because compassion can become a very effective chain.

The guy knew how to make me feel responsible for things that were never mine to carry. His feelings. His health problems. His drinking.

And eventually, his life itself.

He talked openly to me about suicide. He told me ways he wanted to hurt himself.

When someone you have loved tells you they might kill themselves, leaving stops feeling like a simple decision.

It can start to feel like a verdict.

If I leave and something happens, was it because I left?

If I stop answering, what if that's the night he needs someone?

If I choose myself and he destroys himself, am I supposed to live with that?

Those are terrifying questions to put inside another person's head.

For a long time, I carried them.

That is part of the psychological damage I am only beginning to understand.

Emotional abuse doesn't require a fist.

Sometimes it looks like guilt.

Sometimes it looks like gradually accepting responsibility for another adult's emotional stability.

Sometimes it looks like becoming afraid of what someone might do to themselves if you finally say, I can't do this anymore.

And the confusing part is that the person doing those things can still cook you dinner.

They can still have qualities you admire.

They can still be grieving their mother.

They can still be sick.

They can still make you laugh.

They can still be a human being deserving of compassion.

And they can still hurt you.

For years, I think I believed I needed to choose between those versions of the guy.

The good version of the guy or the dark one.

Now I understand that there was only one version of the guy.

Human beings contain contradictions. Someone's pain does not erase the pain they cause. Their addiction does not excuse everything they do. Their grief can explain their behavior without making that behavior acceptable.

And loving someone does not obligate you to become collateral damage in their suffering.

He left me in May. Two weeks ago, after nine years, I cut ties with the guy.

I wish I could say that severing contact also ended the fear.

It hasn't.

There is a thought I still carry that I don't particularly want.

I imagine getting a phone call someday.

I imagine someone telling me they found him somewhere.

Given everything he told me over the years, part of me feels as though I'm waiting for news I desperately hope never comes.

But I am beginning to understand something else.

If that call ever comes, it will not mean that I should have stayed.

I cannot keep another person alive by surrendering my own life to them.

I cannot cure someone's addiction by loving them enough.

I cannot resolve someone's grief for them.

And I cannot make myself responsible for every decision another adult makes after I leave.

Maybe that's the hardest thing nine years with the guy taught me.

Leaving someone doesn't always mean you've stopped caring what happens to them.

Sometimes you leave precisely because caring has consumed too much of you.

There are parts of the guy I will probably always remember fondly. I don't need to rewrite every good memory into a bad one to justify leaving. I don't need to turn him into a monster.

I don't need him to be a monster at all.

He was a person I loved.

Then he was a person I lived with.

Then he became someone I needed to leave.

All three of those things can be true.

For nine years, so much of my life was organized around his feelings, his grief, his addictions, his health, and the question of what might happen to him.

Two weeks ago, I finally stopped living with that responsibility.

I don't know what the guy will do with the rest of his life.

For the first time in nine years, that's no longer my life to manage.

I have my own.

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Conner Tighe is a writer, editor, and founder of the independent music publication The Deep Cut, and a contributor to Get Obsessed. Through candid storytelling, he hopes to help others feel less alone in the difficult experiences that often remain unspoken. Outside of writing, Conner enjoys music, houseplants, books, and spending time with his Chihuahua, Chewy.

If you or someone you know is struggling: Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For confidential substance-use treatment information and referrals, call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit SAMHSA’s treatment locator.