Around this time my wife hurt her knee exercising. This led to an addiction to painkillers. My daughter tried to make me aware of this but I refused to believe it. I thought my daughter was overreacting. My wife assured me this was the case. My daughter (a college graduate by this time) wouldn’t let up on it. I scheduled family therapy. We all went, but my daughter refused to believe that my wife was following her prescription. I sided with my wife and my daughter left the session angry.

Two months after that my wife approached me and essentially said my daughter was right. I felt terrible about doubting my daughter. I was deeply hurt that my wife knew better but had let me side against my daughter. I never thought she’d pull something like that. I had a lot to learn. I stuck in therapy for two years. Sometimes we went together. Sometimes I went alone. The only constant in that time was that my wife’s addiction became worse.

After a shade over two years of therapy I told my wife I couldn’t go on. She’d developed a personal world of her own, she was in her own words (just spoken to me last week) not herself any longer. Pain killers had become her ring of power and like Frodo she was becoming a shadow of herself. She left in a huff (or was it Neon?), taking only the possessions she could fit in an econo-box car. I was left with two cats, two mortgages and one income.