Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between. 

What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way.

Adanna*, 36, met the man she would spend ten years with in university. He was gentle then, attentive, and always had a way of making her feel chosen. What followed was a slow erosion of everything she had built and everything she was, driven by an addiction that grew from something she barely noticed into something that swallowed him whole and nearly took her with it. This is what she said.

Can you tell us about yourself? 

I’m Adanna, I’m 36. I work in brand management, been doing it for about eight years now. I come from a comfortable family, we were never struggling, so I always had a foundation. I started a hair business on the side a few years back that was doing well, then I tried to open a salon. Neither of them made it to where I wanted them to go. I’m based in Lagos. I’m single. 

You reached out to talk about a relationship that took a lot from you. How did it start?

We met in university. He was in my department, we had a few of the same friends. He was genuinely gentle. Soft spoken, attentive, remembered small things you mentioned in passing. He always made me feel like I was the most interesting person in the room just by how he listened to me. I fell for that version of him completely. We started dating in our second year and by the time we finished school I could not imagine my life without him in it.

That sounds sweet. When did things start to change?

It started very slowly. There is no single morning where I woke up and everything was different. It really crept up on me, I think even him. In our mid twenties we were in Lagos, both trying to build careers, and the social scene around us was what you would imagine. It started with regular parties and clubs we would frequent, then we kept running into the same people, certain crowds, and eventually we started noticing certain things that got passed around. He tried Molly first, at a party we both attended. I was there. It didn’t seem like a big thing then. A lot of people around us were doing it. I didn’t think too much of it. I later tried it myself but quickly stopped because the trip wasn’t was for me. 

When did you start thinking about it?

When it stopped being a party thing and became a regular thing. He was using every blessed day. Then LSD came in. He was curious about everything, that was part of who he was, and he framed it as exploration. Expanding the mind. I was not completely naive but I also loved him and he was still functional, still showing up, still the person I knew underneath it all. Or so I told myself.

What came after that?

I smoke weed recreationally so I once tried to wean him off all he was doing and transition to weed since he needed to use so badly and I felt it was a safer option but it backfired and he started doing Cocaine. That was when I felt the ground shift properly under my feet. 

Cocaine is expensive and it is hungry. It asks for more of you faster than the other things did. His personality started changing in ways I could see but struggled to name. He became more erratic. More defensive. Small things would set him off. The gentleness that I had fallen in love with started having gaps in it, moments where someone else was looking out of his eyes.

How did it start affecting you practically?

The main thing was money. That’s where it always shows up first. He started borrowing. Not large amounts at first, just here and there, I’ll sort you back by the weekend. He never sorted me back. I kept lending because I kept believing him. Over time the amounts got bigger and the timelines got vaguer and I stopped seeing any of it come back. I think in the first three years alone I had given or lent him close to two million naira that simply disappeared.

Did you talk to him about it?

Many times. He always had an explanation. He was between jobs, a deal had fallen through, he just needed to get through this one rough patch. He was a convincing person, that was one of his gifts and eventually one of his weapons. He could explain anything in a way that made you feel like the unreasonable one for questioning it.

Did it ever escalate beyond borrowing?

Yes. One payday I came home and my card was not where I left it. I turned the whole apartment upside down. Eventually I checked my account and the money was gone. Nearly everything I had been paid that month, withdrawn in chunks from different ATMs across two days. I confronted him and he denied it, then admitted it, then cried, then promised. He said he owed people, that things had gotten out of hand, that he was going to fix it. He came back three days later with flowers and an elaborate apology and I, God help me, I stayed.

Why did you stay?

Because I remembered who he was before. Because I genuinely believed the person I had fallen in love with was still in there and the drugs had just covered him up. Because leaving felt like giving up on someone who was sick. I had read enough to know addiction is an illness and I kept applying that framework to justify staying inside something that was hurting me. Also, I will be honest, I was ashamed. My family knew him. Our friends knew us together. Starting over at that point felt enormous.

Did it happen again, the stealing?

Several times. He got better at it. Sometimes it was cash from my bag, small amounts, something you might think you miscounted. Once he took jewellery, gold pieces my mother had given me and he sold them. It broke my heart. When I found out he said he had been desperate, that he hadn’t known what else to do, that he was going to replace everything. He never replaced anything. 

There was a period where I started hiding money in places around the house, in books, in pockets, in a small envelope taped behind a drawer. I was living with someone I loved and I was hiding my own money from him in my own home. I didn’t let myself sit with how absurd that was until much later. Even when the gambling started.

Gambling?  

It came with the cocaine era and got worse when heroin entered the picture. He was trying to multiply money quickly to afford the habit and he thought he could gamble his way there. He could not. I found out about the gambling debts when people started calling his phone at strange hours, and then calling mine when he wouldn’t answer. Men I had never met, asking me where he was, telling me he owed them. I paid some of those debts because I was terrified of what would happen if I didn’t. Looking back I was also funding the problem by doing that but at the time it felt like protecting him.

What happened next? 

He started getting physical when I started trying to protect my money more seriously. Once I began refusing to hand over cash or lend when he asked, he would get frustrated and it would tip into anger. The first time he grabbed me I told myself it was the drugs, that he would never do that sober, that it wasn’t really him. 

The second time I told myself the same thing. By the fourth or fifth time I had run out of that excuse but I was so deep in by then and so tired that leaving felt harder than staying. He always came back afterwards with something, a letter once, handwritten, pages long, telling me all the ways he knew he had failed me and all the ways he was going to change. I kept those letters for a long time. I don’t know why.

How was all of this affecting your work and your businesses?

My 9 to 5 I managed to hold onto because I needed it, it was the one thing I kept a wall around. But the hair business I had started, it was doing genuinely well, I had supply chains, regular clients, things were building. The money I should have been reinvesting kept going elsewhere. Into him, into his debts, into replacing what he stole. I couldn’t grow it past a certain point because every time I got to that point something happened and I was set back. I eventually let it go quiet. The salon I tried to open a few years after that, I had saved carefully, I had a location, I was ready. He found the account. I still don’t know exactly how. By the time I was due to sign the lease the money was significantly short. I had to walk away from that one too. Those two things, what they would have been by now, I don’t let myself calculate it too often.

Was there ever a moment where you almost left before you finally did?

Many moments. I packed a bag once and went to my sister’s place and stayed for two weeks. He called every day. My family, who only knew part of the story, encouraged me to think carefully before making a permanent decision. He showed up at my sister’s door one evening looking so diminished, so genuinely broken, that I went back. I went back and things were better for maybe three months. Then they weren’t.

What finally ended it?

My younger sister. She had come to visit me for a weekend and he was in the house. I had run out of some things and stepped out briefly to get them. I came back and she was shaken. She didn’t tell me immediately what had happened, she just said she wanted to leave. Later she told me he had cornered her in the kitchen and asked her to lend him money, and when she said she didn’t have any on her he got aggressive with her. He didn’t touch her but he frightened her. My little sister came to visit me and she left frightened.

Something in me went completely still when she told me. Not angry, not sad, just still. Like a decision had already been made somewhere inside me before I had consciously made it. I called him and told him to come and get his things. He came with another apology. I listened to the whole thing and then I told him to take his things and go. He did.

How was the aftermath?

Harder than I expected and easier than I feared, at the same time. The first few months I kept reaching for my phone to call him because ten years is ten years. Habits don’t care about good decisions. I also had to properly look at what I had lost, financially, professionally, in terms of time and choices and doors that had closed while I was busy managing someone else’s crisis. The number, when I finally sat with it, was staggering. Not just money. Years.

Do you have regrets?

About staying as long as I did, yes. About loving him, no. I think I loved a real person, the person he was at the beginning was not a performance, he was genuinely that man. The drugs just ate him. My regret is that I kept trying to save someone who at a certain point had stopped wanting to be saved, and I paid for that with things I cannot get back.

Do you still keep in touch?

Not at all. It took me a long time to leave him so when I finally did, I cut all access. I even moved a few months later because he kept showing up at my door. He kept calling so I had to change my sim and even requested for a transfer to a different branch because he kept showing up at my office as well. It is very difficult to unravel 10 years of entanglement. But eventually I did. I do not seek him out. I know nothing about how he is. I genuinely don’t even know if he’s alive. It’s okay. It’s better like this. He’s done enough. 

What do you want someone reading this to take away?

That love is not enough on its own. It is necessary but it is not sufficient. You can love someone completely and still be completely wrong to stay. And the longer you stay trying to rescue someone from themselves, the more of yourself gets lost in the rescue. Get out before you have to rebuild from nothing. I got out with something left. Not everyone does.

*Names have been changed.