**please, no judgement or unkind words. I'm looking for advice on how to support and help him. also, he is my husband. not simply "an addict"**

My husband and I have been together for a little more than 2 and a half years. Before we got together, he was married to another woman. This woman had health problems and was prescribed various controlled painkillers/muscle relaxers, such as oxys, gabapentin, Xanax, ambien, etc- pretty much the whole medicine cabinet. When he was doing demo, my husband fell off a ladder and hurt his back. Having no insurance and not being able to afford medical bills, he did not seek medical help. Instead, his (previous) wife started giving him some of her painkillers. His back eventually healed (though he occasionally has soreness when he overworks/is stressed). Unfortunately, he became reliant on these prescriptions.

It has been around 6-8 years since then, and he is still having trouble getting off of them. He doesn't take a high enough dose to get high or feel loopy, but just enough to keep the withdrawal away. When we found out we were pregnant, he started working even harder to work his dosage down in an effort to get off of them.

I'm now 6 months pregnant, and though it's not something that we talk about often, I still worry about him. This struggle has been the one thing in our entire relationship that he has been very protective about, and I won't push him about it because I know that that will only make him feel like he's being trapped in a corner, and he won't feel comfortable opening up to me about it. It's never made a huge impact on our daily life, but I understand his struggles with it.

When I was 3 months along, he brought it up, and explained to me about having been working to bring his dosage down as much as possible. He doesn't want to still be on these pills when the baby gets here. He asked me if I'd be willing to hold onto them, hide them away while he worked on this, and I told him of course I'd do anything I could to help. I haven't brought it up since, but he hasn't given me anything to hold onto or put away.

I struggle to figure out how to initiate a conversation about this with him, because I know it's such a touchy subject. I want to ask him how hes doing with it. I'm considering asking him to go through detox before our daughter arrives. With a new baby, our first, I don't want him to be stressing about his addiction, nor do I want any kind of opiate addiction to inadvertently impact our child/relationship. We don't really have the money to see professional help or go into a rehab/hospital program.

So, I guess my question is, how can I initiate a conversation with him about this? Detox at home is rough, how can I help him? How can I support him through this, but do more than stand on the side and let him handle it? What can I do to help my husband before our daughter gets here?