Courtesy of the Grogans
“Tough Love”[1] is a HuffPost series about the real-life challenges couples face during the course of a relationship.
Jessica Grogan was pregnant[2] in 2013 when her then-boyfriend (and now-husband) Ben’s drug addiction[3] resurfaced. She refers to those five or so months as “the dark days.”
“It started with him going out for drinks with the boys after work,” said Jessica, who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. “The story I would get is that he wasn’t able to come home because he drank too much so he’d stay out and come home the next day. Then all of a sudden he wouldn’t come home for two or three days and I’d be getting to the point of, am I allowed to report him as a missing person yet?”
Ben said he doesn’t remember what he was doing at the time.
“Probably something stupid, though,” he said. “I was always under the influence. In typical addict fashion, I would lie and deny, and when I was questioned I would get defensive and angry.”
Courtesy of Jessica Grogan
Ben told Jessica he had a history of misusing drugs shortly after they met through dating site Plenty of Fish in 2012. Though he was several months clean at the time, he told her on one of their first dates that he had been addicted to methamphetamine[4] (also known as “meth” or “speed”).
On Sept. 23, 2015, after Ben had relapsed and gone to rehab