I think Mr. D, Slip, Stinky and others have given you good advice, BFA, as much as you don't want to the part of it that says you're going to have to make a change if you want peace and safety.

Folks don't tend to change without heavy-duty work and therapy and, in the case of addiction, recovery programs. Even then, substantive change doesn't happen very often, and addiction recovery is about a 33% shot under the best of circumstances.

Sounds like you have a lot to deal with right now just taking care of yourself. You're young. You have life in front of you. From what you've said in other threads, you've already had a rough row to hoe in your childhood. That makes you particularly vulnerable to picking people who'll help you act out and continue that roughness in your intimate relationships. I feel relatively certain your therapist/counselor has probably told you that. It's what they see in the lives of people who've endured abusive situations previously--they are compelled to continue seeking out situations like that later in life. At least until they realize that's what they're doing and learn to make different choices.

You're sitting right smack on top of one of those choices right now, hard as that is. I've spent 14 years volunteering with women who've been in abusive relationships at a local crisis center. Their stories all have hauntingly similar beginnings to the circumstances you described above: the possessiveness, the control, the drugs, the back-and-forth, ups-and-downs. And not a single one of their situations got better on its own.

You still have your freedom and your youth. You're not saddled with kids yet. You're smart and pretty and talented. And you're working on yourself. Keep that up. I don't want to see you go down the future road Stinky described, either. And you have the power not to. Keep up the good work on yourself. Get an education. And start looking toward the guys who're going to treat you the way you deserve to be treated. They're out there. I've heard women say "The good ones are boring," but that statement inevitably comes out of the mouths of women who're still locked in the cycle of needing to repeat the cycle of insanity they've already seen.