I'm the one in recovery in our house. Sixteen years now without cocaine or heroin. So I can't write this from Sandra's chair, and I'm not going to pretend to. I'd get it wrong, and it isn't my story to tell.
What I can tell you is what I've seen from my side of the table. And what I'd want someone to say to the person who loves me.
Here's the short answer to the question people actually type into Google. You support a partner in recovery mostly by not making their recovery your job. Get your own support, from people who've stood where you're standing. Set limits you can keep. Let them do their own work. And if you're scared of them, that's a different problem with a different kind of help, and I'll get to it below.
What it looks like from the person in recovery
I notice things. I notice when my partner is reading my face a bit too long. When a late night or a bad mood or a vague answer gets weighed for what it might mean. I don't blame anyone for that. Sandra met me after I'd stopped, but once you know what drugs did to someone, you don't unsee it.
But I'll be honest about how it lands on me. Being watched makes me want to hide. Not use, hide. Those are different, and the second one still does damage, because hiding is how a lot of us got into trouble in the first place.
So the thing I'd say to partners is that the watching costs you more than it protects you. You can't stand guard over another adult for ten years. Nobody can. You'll burn out long before they do anything.
Your recovery is a separate thing (and you're allowed to have one)
This took me a long time to get. The person who loves someone with a substance use disorder goes through their own version of it. Fear, anger, hope that keeps getting yanked around. Sometimes shame, because people judge the partner too ("why do you stay?").
That deserves its own help. Not as a side quest to fixing the other person.
There are free groups made exactly for this. I'd look at them in this order, but pick whatever fits you.
Al-Anon and Nar-Anon. Twelve-step groups for family and friends. Al-Anon started with alcohol, Nar-Anon is for people whose loved one uses drugs. Free, peer-run, in person, online and by phone. The Al-Anon meeting finder has French meetings if you search Québec, and Nar-Anon lists meetings internationally. From everything I've read, a lot of the relief is hearing your own thoughts come out of a stranger's mouth.
SMART Recovery Family & Friends. If the twelve steps aren't your thing, this is the secular option. Free meetings, online and in person, run by trained facilitators, many of whom have a loved one with an addiction themselves. It's about coping and communication skills. Their Family & Friends page explains it, and you filter the meeting finder by that program.
CRAFT. Community Reinforcement and Family Training. It's an approach built for spouses, parents and kids of people with drinking or drug problems. It teaches you communication and problem-solving, and it's aimed at improving your own life while making sobriety a better deal for the person you love. You do it with a trained therapist or through programs listed by its developer, Robert J. Meyers. It's especially useful if your person isn't in recovery yet, or is wobbling.
In Québec, Drogue : aide et référence (1 800 265-2626) takes calls from family and friends too, not only from the person using. Free, confidential, 24/7.
Things I'd want my partner to know
None of this is a script. It's just what I've worked out.
You didn't cause it. You can't cure it. I know that's an Al-Anon line and I know it sounds like a fridge magnet, but it's true and it took me years to stop secretly wanting someone else to carry it for me.
My moods are mine. When I come home wound up or flat or snapping at things, that's for me to handle, with my own tools and my own people. I've had to stop asking the person I live with to manage that for me. Some days I'm better at it than others.
Ask me straight. If something feels off, say it plainly. Not a trap question, not a hint. "You seem off. Are you okay? Is it about using?" I can handle a straight question. It's the silence and the guessing that make things weird between us.
Have a plan you made when things were calm. What you'll do, and what you won't, if things go sideways. Write it down if that helps. Return to use after years does happen (I wrote about why relapse after years clean is so dangerous), and a plan made in panic is usually a bad one.
Don't play doctor. If someone you love is going through withdrawal, from opioids, alcohol or anything else, that needs medical help. Not home detox, not a weekend of "toughing it out". Call 811 in Québec, your doctor, or go to emergency.
Keep your own life. Friends, hobbies, sleep, whatever you had before. If everything in your week is organized around the other person's recovery, something's wrong, and it isn't on you to fix it alone.
Where the line is
This part isn't negotiable, so I'll say it flat.
Recovery doesn't excuse abuse. If you're afraid of your partner, if there are threats, if things get thrown, if you're being controlled, cut off from people or hurt, that's domestic violence. It doesn't matter if they're using, in withdrawal, sober, or "doing the work". It's not your job to absorb it so they can stay clean.
In Québec, SOS violence conjugale is free, confidential and open 24/7 at 1 800 363-9010, and you can also text or chat. Elsewhere, the numbers for your country are on the Get help now page. If you're in danger right now, call 911.
I wrote more about this in living with someone's outbursts, and where the line is. Anger has been part of my story. It is never the partner's job to manage it.
What recovery looks like at year sixteen, from inside a couple
Boring, mostly. That's the good news.
It's not a movie ending. Some weeks I barely think about drugs. Other weeks something knocks me sideways and the old wiring hums a bit. What changed is that I've got more places to take that than just home. If you want the longer version, it's in sixteen years clean: what it's actually like.
And I think the person beside me gets to be tired of it sometimes. Gets to be angry about the hard years we've had, like 2022, even if things are good now. They can love me and still be fed up. Both at once.
If you're the partner reading this at 2 a.m., wondering if you're doing enough, you probably are. Go find your own meeting. You need people too.