How can I relate to my partner who does not take E?

I am an E user and my partner is totally agianst it (we have 3 kids together) I feel that if she cannot share what I like and feel it is impossible for us to have a real relationship togheter.....or is it?

In your book, I read a lot of stories on how E has solidified a relationship, or indeed broken up some and I can see the piont when both parties are E heads. But when only one partner hes had E experience and the other is in permanent denial where does one go for help?

Can E break up a relationship in this way......the worst of it is that I am told by my partner "You choose drugs or your family" I am not an excessive user, even if I'll admit to liking drugs and I have experimented for many years now.....

I'll welcome any advice you can give me on how/if to bridge the gap between a user and a non user, there must be others like me.... where are they?

Response from a reader

My other half has quite a serious antagonism to LSD, having had several bad experiences on it in his younger days, and therefore objects to my use. The same cycle happened with ecstasy - first the enjoyment, the enthusiasm, the touching of paradise, followed sharply by the fall into a paranoid oblivion. Unfortunately with both drugs he decided that he would do it again, and yet again, and each subsequent experience induced ever increasing levels of paranoia and eventually depression. I suspect he worries about my use, and for the past 18 months or so I've had to battle it out with him on a regular basis - this problem of my experimentation with drugs.

This calls to mind the question of using drugs at all. I know that I do it because I have a need for the kind of knowledge that it can provide, or at least hint towards, and in the absence of such knowledge I feel a void; I believe that the knowledge to be had in the world is mine to have, as far as is possible for someone to have. I cannot imagine not wanting to know, not having or wanting to have deeply spiritual or profound cerebral experiences. I cannot imagine a world which exists within the confines of the four dimensions that we know, acknowledge and accept, for I have seen - glimpsed - the others. I believe that we can live in peace, for the understanding of those antagonistic towards drug use is part and parcel of the understanding of the inner complexities of the human mind, which is inherently fraught with contradictions.

I believe that unless the one party in a relationship is truly fulfilled the other cannot also be truly fulfilled - unless I can see me, and know me, the other cannot. If love exists at the core of the relationship then it can, will and must allow for the complete and utter fulfilment and construction of both parties within that relationship. Naturally the fears of the non-users must not be trivialised, because these fears are very real indeed - to a non user every pill, every tab, every dabble is a dance with death, a step beyond life, and to a non user the life is bounded only by death. The user knows this not to be the case, that it is not so much a step beyond as a step between. Sharing the travels between these coexisting worlds with a loved one is an experience which compares with no other. Happily I think my other half may eventually come round.

English woman, married, early twenties