| LifeLines |

Relapse, Rebuild

By C. Saphir | January 1, 2020

My only hope was admitting that my marriage was hopeless

echiel.

He was everything I was looking for at the time: learned, charismatic, and passionate about Yiddishkeit. A truth-seeker, he came from a nonreligious family and embraced Torah on his own. I had grown up in a more modern family, and I was drawn to Yechiel’s zeal for Torah and enthusiasm for avodas Hashem, as well as his sense of humor and loyal nature.

During our engagement, Yechiel mentioned to me that he had a drug problem that he was getting help with. He didn’t tell me which drugs he had a problem with, and I naively assumed that he meant marijuana; I didn’t dream then that he was addicted to cocaine, heroin, and other opioids. Not wanting my parents to get involved and possibly tell me to break off the shidduch, I decided not to share this information with them. For the same reason, I also didn’t tell them about other worrisome tendencies I noticed in Yechiel: that he drank, that he had quite a temper, and that he spent money frivolously.

Yechiel and I began our married life in Eretz Yisrael, where he learned and taught Torah in a yeshivah for boys who were becoming stronger in their Yiddishkeit. He also became a certified drug addiction counselor, because he wanted to help others who were struggling with drugs. Burning as he was with love for Torah and mitzvos, he had a knack for getting through to even the most difficult students, and our home became a magnet for boys who looked to him for inspiration and guidance.

It was after our oldest child was born that Yechiel’s unpleasant character traits began to emerge. The arrogance. The rage. The selfishness. The blaming.

When I asked him for help, he would retort, “Do it yourself.”

Once, he agreed to wash the dishes, but when I reminded him two hours later that I needed his help with the dishes, he roared, “I’m busy!” There was no partnership between us, and I had to become extremely capable and resourceful in order to manage the house and care for the baby alone while working to support the family.

About a year after the baby was born, Yechiel became much more detached emotionally. He didn’t do anything with me or the baby; he wouldn’t even come along with us for Shabbos meals when we were invited out. He slept a lot and became very angry and arrogant, which led to his losing his job at the yeshivah. I would confront him by talking to him, writing him letters, or even going to our rav, but nothing helped.

“It’s all in your head,” he would tell me. “You’re just not grateful for what you have.”

When I was expecting our second child, he started using drugs again, but I didn’t catch on until that baby was six months old. During that time, he didn’t have a job and he wasn’t learning, but even so he would forget to pick up the kids from gan when I was at work and relying on him to get them. He received mysterious packages by mail and would quickly hide them away.

Once, I found strange needles and vials in our closet. “What are these?” I asked him.

The next second they were gone. “You’re seeing things,” Yechiel declared. “You’ve lost your mind!”

I really did feel that I was losing my mind because of the way he twisted things and made me doubt myself. In any event, it was almost easier to tell myself that I was crazy, that I had been imagining things, and that Yechiel’s disturbing behavior was not that big a deal.

Not wanting anyone to know what was going on, I didn’t breathe a word to my parents or any of my friends about Yechiel’s behavior. To cover up for him, I would tell people that he wasn’t feeling well, that he was working on things, that he was worried or overwhelmed. Only when Yechiel brought a gun into the house — the drugs were making him paranoid — did I realize that he was dangerous.

In desperation, I called family friends who were like parents to me, and they met me at my apartment, where I gave Yechiel an ultimatum: “Hand me the gun, or I’m leaving.”

He refused to give me the gun, so I left with the kids to the home of these family friends and called the police, who surrounded our apartment, made Yechiel hand over the gun, and arrested him. When the gun was safely in their possession, I had to go to the police station and make a statement. Yechiel was released the next morning, but the police kept the gun.

Yechiel’s parents prevailed upon him to go to rehab, which he knew was the right thing to do. When he left, I moved back into our apartment with the kids.

At that point, I told my parents what was going on, and they flew to Eretz Yisrael to help me with the kids. They also urged me to get divorced. But I was a young mother of two small children, only 22 myself, and I desperately wanted to keep the family intact. Rather than walk away, I decided to learn more about addiction so that I could help Yechiel with his struggle.

When he flew off to a rehab facility in America, he encouraged me to join the local chapter of Al-Anon, a support program for family members of addicts.

In Al-Anon, they say that people come in trying to save their spouses, and that’s exactly what I was trying to do then. I believed that if I could really understand what Yechiel was going through, I’d be able to help him and ensure that he’d never go through another horrific relapse like this one.

Yechiel returned from rehab two months later a different person. He interacted calmly with me and the kids. He was helpful. He took responsibility. He apologized if he did something wrong. He maintained a predictable daily schedule that started with minyan and learning. He went to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings every night.

Yechiel’s parents paid for our family to fly to America for the summer while he attended a daytime rehab program. Once we were there, I saw how beneficial it was for us to be near family, so I told him that I wanted us to stay in the US for a year or two and then return to Eretz Yisrael. He didn’t think it was a good idea, but his parents and his mentor at the rehab thought it was. Reluctantly, he flew back to Eretz Yisrael to pack up our stuff, ship some things to America, and rent out the apartment we owned. But he never forgave me for taking him away from Eretz Yisrael.

When Yechiel returned to the US, he got a job helping at the rehab center, but he was fired a few months later because the director said he was a negative influence on the other patients. He took another job but was fired six months later, after which he didn’t bother looking for work because he was planning to study for his master’s in social work. In the meantime, I found a job working in a school, while continuing to attend Al-Anon meetings regularly in our new community.

I gave birth to our third child several months after Yechiel began studying to become a social worker. When my doctor gave me a prescription for Percocet to alleviate afterbirth pains, I asked Yechiel to throw away the prescription, but instead he filled it. He started using drugs again when our baby was three months old, but I didn’t really catch on until the following Rosh Hashanah, when she was eight months old.

Again, I left the house with the kids because he brought in a gun and wouldn’t give it to me. I confided in a good friend of mine, and she invited me to move into her basement with the kids. In the meantime, Yechiel started going to meetings again and attending outpatient rehab.

At this point all my good friends knew what was going on. I wasn’t willing to hide it anymore.

After Yechiel got clean, we remained separated for two months. Then, under the guidance of a marriage counselor, we moved back in together.

Yechiel’s third relapse happened after our fourth child was born. By this time, I was able to detect the pattern: Each relapse coincided with Yechiel’s shouldering additional responsibility, whether due to the birth of a child or due to the family’s financial needs. And about eight to twelve months before each drug relapse came an emotional relapse, in which he would stop going to meetings and start heaping blame and emotional abuse on me. Addiction is a disease of isolation, and meetings force people to share and connect instead of closing themselves off and turning to drugs or other ways of escaping their pain. Once Yechiel stopped attending meetings, it was only a matter of time before he would start using.

Through each of his first two relapses, I had been committed to holding the marriage together — or perhaps I was too weak to leave, depending on how you look at it. By the time he relapsed a third time, I had a strong network of friends, I had been going for therapy and participating consistently in Al-Anon meetings, and I no longer felt the shame and guilt that had spurred me in the past to make excuses for his behavior and cover up for him.

Despite Yechiel’s insistence on secrecy, I turned to friends, rabbanim, and people in the community for support as necessary, and I refused to lie for him. I explained to the kids that their father suffered from a disease called addiction, which explained — but did not excuse — the rage, the yelling, and the name-calling that terrified both me and them. When we were invited out for Shabbos meals and Yechiel couldn’t make it because he was in a drugged stupor, instead of saying, “My husband isn’t feeling well,” I would simply say, “I decided to come myself with the kids.”

Al-Anon had taught me that I had to do the right thing and not worry about what anyone else was doing or how anyone else would react. I had learned to seek out the silver lining in every situation and focus on the blessings in my life rather than drown in the chaos of a spouse’s drug addiction. And I had learned that I was a person, too, and that it was important for me to take care of myself and even pamper myself so that I could be strong for the people who relied on me.

With Yechiel using again, my rav advised me to get out of the house, and my Al-Anon sponsor supported that decision. By this point, I knew the marriage was over. I moved into the empty house of a friend who had given birth and was staying with her parents, and about a month later Yechiel flew off to rehab in Florida.

I spoke to a rav about my concerns regarding divorce, and in response to all the “what if” scenarios I raised, he said, “Do you believe in ratzon Hashem? Yes? Then stop with the what-ifs and just do what you have to do, because if you keep saying ‘what if,’ then you’re going to get OCD on top of everything, and we don’t need that.”

Yechiel did not want to get divorced, but when he flew back from Florida two months later to see the kids for a few days, people in the community somehow persuaded him to give me a get.

After the divorce, people asked me if I wished I had left Yechiel sooner. My answer was an unequivocal no.

“You can only take a step like that when you’re really ready for it,” I said. “Before, I wasn’t ready. Now I am.”

Change happens, they say in Al-Anon, when the pain is too great for denial to continue.

My family and close friends were also very concerned about whether I was happy now that I was finally free of the craziness that came with being married to a drug addict. But after all the work I had done through Al-Anon, I knew that being happy is not the goal in life — the goal is to be working and coming closer to Hashem, and sometimes that work doesn’t feel so happy. As my sponsor put it, “Just because you’re doing the right thing doesn’t mean it’s easy.” Yet even in less happy times, knowing I was doing what’s right allowed me to feel a certain sense of calm and connectedness.

With Yechiel out of the house, life did feel much lighter, for both the kids and me. But being a single mother of four young kids was far from easy. Throughout that period, I felt Hashem’s comforting presence not because things looked rosy when I awoke in the morning, but because as soon as I awoke I said “Modeh Ani” and thanked Hashem for what was good in my life, and then I put my feet on the ground, ready to do the work I had to do and face whatever the day would bring. My own willingness to work, coupled with the belief that Hashem would help me, made me feel that I was inside His embrace no matter what was going on.

While I was juggling all the responsibilities of caring for and supporting a family — Yechiel did not provide any financial support — he would often post pictures of himself having a great time in sunny Florida, with captions like, “This is the life!”

Yet although it was painful to see those pictures, I knew that I was doing well, and he was not. I had plenty of support from my family and from the community and did not feel at all abandoned. I received countless invitations for Shabbos meals, but usually I made my own Shabbos, often with guests at our table.

After that third relapse, Yechiel never fully recovered. He rarely came to visit the kids, and he didn’t speak to them much on the phone, other than during short spurts when he was clean.

In the meantime, both the kids and I were in therapy and thriving. Early in my marriage, I had learned to do everything myself, and now, as a single mother, those coping skills stood me in good stead.

About three years after the divorce, when I was working on my master’s degree in special ed, I felt ready to start dating, and I set up a meeting with a local shadchan.

“You don’t really want to get married,” she told me.

“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “I’ve been alone for three years!”

“You have a full-time job,” she replied. “You’re in school. Your laundry is done. Your house is neat. You have supper on the table every night.”

Basically, she was telling me that I didn’t have room for a husband in my life; I was coping too well.

“You’re going to say no to anyone I suggest,” she predicted.

Sure enough, when she suggested that I meet a divorced man with five children who was 13 years older than I was and lived in an out-of-the-way town, I said, “No way.”

“See?” she said. “I told you so.”

Then my friend met that fellow, Benny, and she began raving to me about how wonderful he was. When my siblings heard about this, they, too, started nudging me to go out with him.

“But I’m 33 and he’s 46!” I argued. “He has five kids! He lives in Yehupetz!”

“What’s wrong with you?” my sister retorted. “You have four little kids, and you’re all alone! How can you say no?”

“Just go out with him to get your feet wet,” my brother advised. “You need to start shidduchim somehow.”

With their encouragement, I was just about ready to give the shidduch a try. But as I was working up the courage to call the shadchan with a yes, I got a call one day at work from Yechiel’s mother.

In Al-Anon, they say there are three things that can happen to drug addicts: They can get clean, they can land in jail, or they can die of an overdose. On some level, I always knew that any of those things could happen to Yechiel. I just preferred not to think about the latter two possibilities.

When I saw the incoming call from my former mother-in-law, my first reaction was to ignore the call. I knew that whatever she was calling to say would probably mean that my world was about to change, and part of me preferred to remain in blissful denial.

The first four or five times I saw her number come up, I ignored the call. Then, finally, I asked a close friend, who was with me, to answer.

Yechiel wasn’t clean, and he wasn’t in jail. He was dead.

There had been many times — both during the marriage and after the divorce — when I was so angry at Yechiel that I wished he would die. But now that he was dead, I didn’t wish that anymore.

I broke the news to the kids using words given to me by the people at Chai Lifeline. “You know that Abba was on drugs,” I began, “and you know he struggled with addiction. Well, his body was too weak, and Hashem decided that now was his time to leave this world.” I didn’t say anything about an overdose.

Since Yechiel had left the house, I had been very open with the kids about his problem, explaining what drug addiction was, in an age-appropriate way, without casting aspersions on Yechiel’s character. This left no room for shame or guilt on their part and dispelled the fear and anxiety that secrecy spawns. Now that he had died, I tried as much as possible to spin his behavior in a positive light, explaining that the reason he had not visited or called them before his death was that he had been too ill.

“He cared about you, so he wanted to protect you,” I told them.

Just before Yechiel’s shloshim, my friend called to nudge me again about meeting Benny. “Can we set up a date?” she asked.

She must have caught me off guard, because I answered, “I guess so.”

As soon as I hung up the phone, I asked myself, Am I crazy? What was I thinking?

Our courtship began with a phone call and then proceeded slowly, with numerous dates spread over a long period. I had made bad mistakes during my first dating experience, rushing into an engagement even though I knew Yechiel had a drug problem and serious character flaws, and this time I was determined to do things differently.

In Al-Anon, I had learned that things have to happen “in G-d’s time, not your time.” Another motto I learned was, “Take your will out so G-d’s will can be present.” When I met Benny, I dated with the knowledge that Hashem, not I, was controlling the process, and I had to let events unfold at their own pace.

The first time I was in shidduchim, I was looking for a talmid chacham who would learn in kollel and spread the fire of Torah.

In Yechiel, I got that.

I also got a husband who was emotionally abusive and addicted to drugs from age 11. (He had been abused as a child, and no one believed him.) He did try valiantly to work on himself, but he simply could not overcome the issues that plagued him.

The second time I was in shidduchim, all I was looking for was a mensch: a stable, emotionally healthy person I could talk to and build a relationship with. Benny, with his calm, unhurried, responsible nature, met that criteria perfectly.

When I told my children that I was dating, just a few months after Yechiel died, they were very anxious. But Hashem put the right words in my mouth.

“I think Abba must have sent us this person,” I told them. “My feeling is that Hashem wants him to be in our life.”

Hearing that, they immediately calmed down. It wasn’t as though we were moving on and blocking out Yechiel’s memory — he would remain part of our life, and we would carry him along with us as we moved forward.

Today, I’m happily married to Benny, and we are successfully blending our families. Of course, there are challenges that come up, but it’s very different dealing with challenges when you have a partner at your side.

Benny is a doctor who acts as Hashem’s emissary in healing children, while making minyan and Torah learning a priority. His spiritual connection bridges bein adam l’Makom and bein adam l’chaveiro consistently — something that Yechiel, for all his yearning, could not do.

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned from my journey is how to integrate spirituality with the motions of a Torah lifestyle. In all my years of frum schooling, including seminary, I had never even heard the concept of just talking to Hashem. I knew all about davening and saying Tehillim, and I kept halachah meticulously, but these were technical, perfunctory acts. I had to live through utter chaos in order to learn to turn to Hashem, to talk to Him, and to find solace in His presence no matter what the circumstances. —

The narrator may be contacted through LifeLines.

To have your story retold by C. Saphir, e-mail a brief synopsis to lifelines@mishpacha.com or call +1.718.686.9339 extension 87204 and leave a message. Details will be changed to assure confidentiality.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 792)

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