My wife was addicted to cocaine. I should rephrase that, my now ex-wife was addicted to coke. We were married a very short time, three years, but we have a child together... so I've had to deal with her, her temperament, moods, druggie boyfriends, and addictions until our son turned 18. We met when I was 26 and she was 22. I had one more year left in the military and had met my future wife at a party where she did a monstrous line of coke. I had naively thought that she could walk away from drugs if she wanted, at any time. I was so very wrong. It took her almost 25 years to kick her addictions: alcohol, drugs, and sex. It would start with one drink on a Friday night with girlfriends. By the end of the night, she would have progressed from a drink to coke to whatever drug was also available to leaving with strangers to having sex with strangers for more drugs and she would find a way home by Tuesday or Wednesday.

This went on for our three year marriage. I had enough of her lies and threw her out and filed for divorce. Living with her was horrific: lies, lies about lies, drugs, small plastic bags turn up in the laundry, lethargic behavior for days after a binge, STDs, etc. It was horrible. I did the best I could to shield our son, but I know that I wasn't successful. Our son was a bed wetter until he was 14. I tried my best to keep a decent house, but money was always missing. She turned to stripping, which meant more drugs and druggies. I had to drop out of college for the time being.

After filing for divorce, we had a long and tenuous custody battle. She somehow lied enough to remain a sympathetic figure to the court. I agreed to shared custody when I didn't have enough money to fight for custody any longer. I had even sold my car to pay for the lawyer fees. We shared custody as I tried to rebuild my life. Eventually I went back to school, dated (or dated as well as a person with a crazy ex- can date), met a wonderful woman, married, bought a home, etc. All the while, our son was living in a drug den part-time. She would lie about stuff that our son would mention; her family would lie to cover up for her, because they knew I would take her back to court if I had any proof; our son started lying to cover up her drug use. She would cry and plead with him that she would get help. We tried the counseling route as a large extended family (my wife, ex-wife, me, and our son), but my ex- would lie about everything to the therapist. This went on for over a year.

Finally her lies fell apart and we had irrefutable proof of her drug, sex, and alcohol addictions. We immediately got full custody and got our son on a better path. He was in 7th grade when he came to live with my wife and I full time. We put him in the best schools we could afford, paid for tutoring, and tried to provide a normal life. Soon after he moved in with us, he stopped wetting the bed. This was a good and hopeful sign. He excelled in high school and is now a freshman in college. He won partial academic scholarships for school and is doing a little better than average (mostly As and Bs) in their honors program.

About two years after my ex- lost custody, she must have hit rock bottom and started to clean up. She eventually cleaned up and got married. She and her husband sued us for custody of our son in his senior year of high school. Our son said it was because her new neighbors looked down on her because she didn't have custody of him. They must have surmised that there was something wrong with her for not having custody. It was another long and tough fight, but we prevailed--but at the emotional expense of our son. Again, it was another emotional and financial nightmare for our family. I felt like I was a slave to a recovered drug addict... fighting her every step of the way.

Cocaine ruined almost twenty years of my life, stunted our son's life, and indelibly colored all of my relationships... all of them. I have never done any drugs, except smoke pot five or six times when in high school. I feel like coke destroyed my life, hurt my son, and hurt my new wife (she had to deal with my coke-head ridiculous ex-wife with frequency). I abhor drugs. They took all my money, made my life a living hell, and turned my then-wife into a cheat, whore, and liar. My ex- had a somewhat bright future when we met. She had dreams, she was pretty, and she wanted so much from life. Coke and her drug-use turned her into a monster.

I haven't spoken a word to her since our son turned 18. I have no idea how she is doing, but I really don't care. We are all still recovering from her b*llshit. My son turns 19 next month and will be starting his second semester at college. He has trouble with female relationships and is in counselling to help him along with that and other things that are bothering him in his life. Luckily, he is a caring and empathetic young man. The bad part is that he has no tools to cultivate any kind of relationship with women. So he just doesn't date and I feel he's probably terribly lonely at school. He has friends, but they all have girlfriends and boyfriends. None of them know how bad he had it as a child. It all goes back to his mom's coke habit. Maybe one day we'll all recover and be normal.