Addiction through the eyes of a loved one

There was a moment in the heat of an extra busy meal service at the popular Gold Coast restaurant owned by Emma and Tom when a staff member shouted at Emma: “It’s your husband you idiot, it’s your husband that has been taking the money out of the till”.

For a moment, the outburst completely stopped Emma in her tracks, and then came a dreadful realisation.

Her suspicions were true … her husband really was a drug addict and had been stealing from his family to support his addiction. He had covered his tracks so well, Emma says, but also admits she had “kept her head in the sand”.

Emma and Tom’s relationship started out as a young love story in England. When they were both aged 23, Emma fell pregnant, and after their daughter was born, they moved to Australia, Emma’s homeland. A son soon followed, and while there were some very real ups and downs, Emma says their relationship was loving and deep.

The couple had both dabbled in recreational drugs in the past, but when the kids arrived Emma assumed that they had left that lifestyle behind. Little did Emma know that Tom had resumed his drug use when he became a real estate agent on the Gold Coast.

Emma explains: “When Tom went to work in real estate, it (cocaine) was very much there and part of the atmosphere and party scene. I think he just felt I wouldn’t be OK with it and that’s where it started, because he started hiding it from me.  

“Somewhere in all this it became a really regular thing. He was doing weekends, then weekdays, and at some stage it came home.”

Around 2010, in the wake of the global economic downturn, the couple was spending a huge amount on childcare and staffing, so they decided that Tom would put his real estate career on hold and work at their family restaurant.

Emma says: “While he was in there he had access to cash. I had a very old-style cash till. There was room for people to steal, but I ran a very small business and I trusted people who worked for me.

“I genuinely wasn’t getting that Tom was taking money. I went through this whole process of thinking I couldn’t count and that I must be making mistakes when I was tired. I really felt I was stupid.

“And we were angry with each other. Tom seemed to be getting lazier – not doing anything with the kids and me. He was using more and more drugs and I really just had no idea.”

Then came the encounter in the restaurant and the sudden realisation. It was now out in the open, but Emma says: “Tom said he was going to stop, but it just went on and on. What I was told in the process were pieces but not the full story. I was only ever fed enough to keep me thinking I had a hope of helping.”

More points of crisis emerged – drug dealers wanting money, their daughter discovering money missing from her savings in a glass jar, and, eventually, a complete breakdown in family trust.

Although she had been desperate to keep the family together, Emma finally realised that she was “aiding and abetting” her husband’s addiction by supporting him.

“Although these people do decide to take the drugs, there is a point that the addiction takes hold and they are no longer themselves – and while the actions of the addict are really not forgivable, that person has to be forgivable,” she  says. “It is so complicated, because you don’t help by ‘helping’. They need to hit rock bottom.

“The point at which you are ready to cut someone off like that is a very, very personal point. It is the most horrible thing to have to do to someone you love.”

In desperation, Emma contacted friends of Tom’s and asked if they would get him to rehab.

Tom entered Fairhaven, The Salvation Army’s Recovery Services centre on the Gold Coast, and at first Emma says she had little hope anything would change. She just hoped it would buy her some breathing space as she was physically and emotionally spent.

“I was just determined he was not taking the kids down with him,” Emma admits. “I hoped he’d be OK and I would like the kids to have a father. I didn’t want them to miss out, and I was sad because I’d lost my best mate as well as my husband. But I had no hope. I genuinely didn’t.

“He went to rehab and we had nothing to do with him for the first four weeks.”

But then, says Emma, came a turning point: “While he was in there, he had started to say ‘sorry’. He started to tell me the things he’d done. He would tell me honestly, no more part truths.

“On one hand I was now so frustrated. I had done nothing wrong, I’d kept the family and the business going and I had just been put through one of the greatest emotional rollercoasters and head-screwing experiences that I possibly could have. But I was so happy to see glimmers of Tom back.

“Your friends all have these opinions that you should hate the person in addiction and you do hate what they have done and their choices – but you don’t necessarily hate them. One minute you are so angry because they were or are using the drugs, the next minute you want to go out and get all the dealers instead – and a lot of the time, you are just numb and lost.”

Spending time in rehab has turned Tom’s life around as he began journeying with God and putting into practice the steps he needed to take to recover. And while the journey to restoring the family unit will be a long process, Emma now has hope for the future.

“If Tom hadn’t got that help I’d say he’d definitely be dead,” she says. “I’d say the drugs would have killed him, or someone else would have got to him first – the money was getting pretty big. And then the kids would have had to deal with that terrible loss in some terrible way and also never seeing their dad well again.

“And I hope the kids may have learned something about the very real dangers of drugs. You don’t know, but I hope so.”

Emma says she would like to thank and encourage donors to continue supporting services like Fairhaven.

“Services (like Fairhaven) can definitely help the whole family. I know they are not all success stories, but when that person comes back, it is just like you lost them for a bit. He is Tom again – maybe even better – and whatever they were able to do in that program – and I didn’t have a lot to do with it –  it seems to have made a very real difference!”

By Naomi Singlehurst