As I sit here, my alcoholic husband is out looking at an apartment.  He says we no longer have a relationship.  This, after 45 years of marriage and one-and-a-half years of sobriety.  I was looking for advice when I came across this site and saw James letter about how AA ruined his life and felt compelled to write.  I totally agree with him.  Since my husband has been in AA he has undergone such a personality change that I don't recognize him anymore.  His new relationships mean more to him than I do, or even our adult children.  He has decided he wants to embrace his new life and toss away his old.  To be totally honest, I never thought the man was an alcoholic.  Sure, he had a few too many on the odd occasion, but who hasn't.  He has embraced the 12 steps and has become a different person, not a good person, but a different person, one who is selfish and self-absorbed and only cares about himself and the program. Like James' wife, he attends 6 or 7 meetings a week, only socialises with his new 'friends' and has given up all his old friends, some we have known all our lives.  I really don't understand and now have to let him go, the only man I've loved my whole life, 45 years, and watch him walk away from a woman who loves him with all her heart, the wonderful home we've built together, and the alienation of his children.  I don't understand any of this :(

Had I not found AA, I would be dead undoubtedly. It was the only way I could stop the destructive path I was on with my drinking. Nobody ever encouraged me to be irresponsible or turn my back on people I had obligations to. This doesn't sound much different than someone coming out of the closet later in life. I almost wonder if that is next. Either way, I get that it's devastating but I assure you, it's not AA. I have NEVER heard anyone one from AA instill that a person's wife and/or family were triggers.

If you need to be angry at AA and carry misconceptions, that's fine, but fact is it saves lives and your husband was likely looking for an out anyhow and this is the medium he found it.

I'm so sorry that this is happening to your marriage after so long...I am also sure that your husband has a different take on things and probably figures he found something that was spiritually meaningful and life changing for him and you were not on board with it.

Welcome Spot, glad you're here. Keep coming back because the insight I had gained in al-anon was like striking gold.

I agree with Pinkchip, AA is not the cause for ruining your family. no.

It is often said, that the codependent ends up sicker than the alcoholic. I saw that in myself when in a fit of anger, I had put a hole in the kitchen wall and broke the window. That event convinced me that I was, indeed, sick too.

And it is quite possible, that if you believe the drinking is no big deal, yet he has hit a bottom with it ... you two are not in agreement over a trigger that he has determined he cannot live with, a trigger that has the power to turn him into a person he no longer wants to be. My marriage was like that too, I did not like who I was becoming. So I had to detach at all costs, it was the best I could do at that time.

You may want to evaluate your own drinking, has anyone ever complained about your drinking? For me, I wanted to understand it all, so I took the test and explored all of it.

It's going to be okay, no matter what he does or doesn't do. You can always love yourself. Al-anon showed me how to do that ((hugs))

Hi again sweetie, you didn't offend ME, that's for sure, we never have to give anyone that kind of power.

I know this is a painful time and I hope you continue with your meetings and stay close to your fellowship. I had been married for 26 years, and I never thought I could live without him either, I had made my alcoholic husband my higher power, which was wrong, that had to be un-done. I had to lean on a fellowship to hold me up in my grief, and for company. Today, I continue to do that because they are the most beautiful people on the planet.

Our program suggests that we keep an "open mind," and that really worked for me, learning the principle of humility, just staying in a learning mode, just kinda saying to Higher power,

"oh. so this is the way it has to be, huh? Have your way then."   (surrender)

Bottom line is, we cannot KNOW that divorce won't be the best thing for us, in fact, we can believe that it will (faith.)  We can always trust that when we are powerless over something, (in this case, you cannot change his mind) that the best thing for us will, indeed, come to pass. That is how it has worked for me. Faith brings supply. everything I need always comes, Higher power seems to love me sooo much. And I am not "special" or "faithful" as much as I just try to be "surrendered." That's what they told me to just keep practicing.

Your share here today helps ME, my friend, so I do hope you keep coming back, this is a "we" program that works well when we stick together. Keep sharing your grief and know that it is safe to do so, you never have to walk through this alone   (((big hugs)))

In one of our daily readers, Hope For Today, there is a reading about the recovery triangle

".... with my Higher Power at the top. Underneath are the basic, core tools, the steps, traditions, concepts, slogans, meetings, service, sponsorship and conference-approved literature. Next comes me and my physical, emotional, and spiritual health. At the base of the triangle are my job, my family, my friends, and my hobbies.

As long as I keep everything in that order, with my HP at the top as my sole focus, everything in my life works serenely, even joyfully. God provides strength, wisdom, and guidance which flows down to me through the al-anon program. With the help of al-anon and HP, I receive what is necessary to maintain a good, balanced life and I attend honorably to my various needs. Then when these things have been taken care of, I use whatever time and energy I have left on work, family, friends, and hobbies. This is how I keep "principles above personalities" and practice "First things first."

If I put something or someone else at the top of my recovery triangle... my life becomes unmanageable. I cannot make a thing, an event, or another person my Higher power without becoming starved in all areas of my life. Such replacements simply do not nourish me. Often when my life does start to feel unmanageable, all I need to ask myself is, "who or what is at the top of my triangle."

My recovery is ALWAYS my responsibility, the same is true for anyone else, however anyone chooses to use the suggestions of recovery.  Al-anon, or AA, or MIP, or my sponsor is NOT responsible for my husbands drinking or my divorce, or anything else that has happened in my life.    

I do know this,  victims do not recover.  For as long as I believed I was a victim, I remained stuck.  Grief is one thing, my victim role is quite another.  I could not move on, or know peace as long as I saw myself as a victim.

Hi!  Sorry for your pain, I know it must hurt terribly.  I'm a little confused about his drinking habit, why did he feel the need for AA if he only had a couple of beers on the week end?  I agree something else must be going on.  Whatever it is, I know it hurts.

Gettingitright!!

Well, my position is that it is absolutely the fault of AA, or at least the people in it!  I've been a member of both fellowships for awhile...AA a long time, Alanon not so long.  But the people in AA (which is the same thing as AA when you're new and have to lean heavily on humans) tell you to devote your time to getting sober, everything else goes on the backburner.  They do, I did it myself and it's wrong!  It has ruined my life too because my husband did just that, his AA friends got the best of him and my kids and I got the rest.  He went to meetings cock of the walk that he was, boasted about his long-term sobriety, bossed the new-comers around and humiliated them, then came home and acted like an a$$ to us.  Then he went to work where he's a drug/alcohol counselor and earned his paycheck off of teaching the 12 steps.  All the while, I was going to meetings, inventorying myself half to death to see why I was so selfishly asking for my husband to treat us better.  He turned it all around on me and made me doubt myself, I even began having panic attacks!  Finally, I left him before I killed myself and in no time flat he'd replaced me by moving his old girlfriend (who drinks and smokes) into our house!

Oh, he still goes to meetings occasionally, but I can hardly stand them anymore.  I feel like it's just a bunch of bs.  Now, let me write one disclaimer here...AA does help one get sober.  But that is all.  That's a lot for some people, but not enough for others.

Spotser

You are not alone  Please keep coming back and try to attend alanon face to face meetings. 

 You will find many who can understand what you arefeeling and will offer constructive support as you recover.

The program only helps one get well if they work the program. The hard reality sometimes is realizing the alcoholic when drinking needs a enabler, someone, anyone that will put up with their junk. Often when they get well they no longer need the enabler & will move on. I have seen it happen over & over. In fact my ex did it to several women since I left him. My alcoholic son is doing it over & over. First he needed his wife, she left, then it was his brother he manipulated, until his brother saw through it, then he needed his kids, now he has a lady friend that drinks with him so his kids are now a niceness. It is the crazy making of the disease.

there is a difference in physical sobriety and emotional sobriety. 

Rejection hurts like hell, I feel your pain. Even though it was I that left my A husband I still felt like I was the one that was abandon in a way I was but not by my A husband but by the disease. It was the disease I had to come to terms with & learn how to take care of myself.

So often I hear in the program people asking does my A husband love them. It says it the book

" Getting Them Sober " His first love is the need to drink or do drugs, that is pretty much where his love is. Just because someone goes to the program does not mean we are well. For me it is a continuous journey

Please keep coming back, I promise if you go to face to face meetings, come here & read & read, you will start to feel better. There is much love & understanding here & in face to face Alanon, all you have to have is a open mine

I want to say that I was in a committed domestic partnership with a 3 year recovered alcoholic when we met.  She had two relapses one in 2010 when she was fired after 16 years as a paramedic. Another, when her family of origin has some brouhaha over something.  In the last 8 months, she finally had a good job, was home each night, we didn't have issues between us.  We both worked full time, my son graduate high school and is a full time freshman in college.  I am attending grad school part time.  Last February, she started drinking when she and her brother went to a family event and came home drunk.  She did it again, around a Mother's day trip to her family's house.  I had had it and told her to leave.  I had never seen her like this.  Hostile, crazy talking that was unrelated to anything going on in life, obsessed about her father being born illegitimate?  He's 74 what did that have to do with the present?  She drove several miles before falling asleep at the wheel.  Her youngest brother met her on the road and found her before police did.  She was lucky.  I told her she had to go back to AA before she could come home, so she said she would.  She actually is very depressed, refuses to see a doctor or therapist.  Had made suicidal implications in the past.  I am an RN and was terrified by this.  Where was my sweet loving partner who shared things with me?  I still don't know where this came from.  She snapped out of it for a while on a few aa meetings but didn't get a sponsor and stopped going.  She did it again mid July at her 30 year high school reunion.  Several of her friends asked me what was up because they knew her history and that she had been sober.  She didn't stop this time and when she started her verbally abusive tirade, saying untrue hurtful things to my son, I made her move out until she could get in therapy, and AA, and go to a doctor for a referral to an addiction specialist.  She found a sponsor, who told her DON"T talk to me, DON'T go to therapy, get an apartment, move out and focus on herself!!!!  She just walked out on bills, is hostile if I call trying to get these things switched over.   I found her sponsor's # on the phone bill and called her to see if I was being told the truth and she was hateful to me and wouldn't answer if she was directing this crap or is my former partner was making it up.  I am getting an attorney.  I have contact the local AA central committee to report this woman, will have to go to court to get my bills settled and will NEVER refer anyone to AA as a course of my work as a nurse or as an individual.  I expected her to get on meds, get stable, participate in AA, get her thinking clear, come home and resume our life.  Why would a supposedly family repairing organization like this rip my home apart when we didn't have issues prior to her falling off the wagon?   All we needed was for her to have control of her drinking again.  AA is a crock.

I hear your pain.  I have been ot my family doctor 4 times in the last 7 weeks since my partner left.  I ususally only went for annual check ups and mammograms/pap visits, but her AA sponsor having her leave and focus on "herself" when I know she is depressed and suicidal has caused me to have major depression and now a medication for that, panic attacks and medication for that, and three blood pressure pills to function.  First time in my life.  We were making plans in early July for our anniversary trip in October.  I know her high school reunion in mid July was her trigger.  I am so angry at AA for having her disrupt our home, when our relationship was not the problem.  I too, only wanted her to recover, treat me like she used to before all this drinking started, and get back to our life which was good.  {{hugs}} to you and your family.  My son seems to be just as confused as I am, but coping better.  He told me today, after she refused to accept her part of the phone bill and switch it to her name as I had asked her to arrange by yesterday....." forget her.  she is crazy."    I agree.

Why is making an adult observation about blame? The program trains people that any critical thinking is blame. I have witnessed the exact behavior that is stated as a "misconception". 

Denying someone's reality is actually emotional abuse. There is a lot of emotional abuse that is ignored or denied to "protect" the program. 

AA is not above reproach. Just like the Catholic Church is not above reproach. 

Well stated!!

It is so hard to find true opportunity to discuss this issue because from day one in the program, it has been about the "yet unsaved"/ the "still suffering".

  People are so very different, psychology is very profound, and our own experiences in life are going to affect the angle of a slogan or "suggestion" that we are exposed to, by the program's many supporters.

   There are all types in AA/ NA/ all support groups.  Narcissism is VERY commonly found, and no simple subject to discuss on one support board.

   There are two types of aggressors,:  passive, and overt.  A passive aggressive will do their best to control by guilt, shame, sympathy, and even the threat of being "unpopular" in a group setting.  They "forget" to do things, or to do them on time, because how can you blame someone who "forgets"?  How can one be angry for becoming insignificant to their "significant other"....."don't you want him/her to get well"?

  When my wonderful beautiful and psychically in-tune relationship started to feel very very lonely and I was being made to feel "less than" important in my own marriage (after 3 yrs. of living together) and after a mutually agreed on priority of pushing alcohol out of our list of priorities because of the children in our blended marriage......I was very shocked to find any conversation with my "soul mate" was tempered by "the program" and it's secret (by necessity, I was told) increasing hold on my husband; father of 5 children, owner/operator of a business that became increasingly less important.

   Those like we were, with almost 18 yrs. totally sober at the time I started noticing that my husband was emotionally flat-lining with our young teen (at the time) sons and the business we ran together, and our own personal time as lovers.....you name it......it came in last.

   A completely fragmented personality was the result...socializing was for going out to eat with AA members; during the time I was working at home, the children were all in school, and suddenly he had to be in town EVERY DAY if possible, and was going out to eat in very nice restaurants with his "special group"....for seven years before we realized it wasn't just a hamburger shop , but the nice places that  "we" couldn't go to because the new "liquor by the drink" in our town would make HIM nervous.

   He liked always being able to socialize with his personal secret friends, never invited us even to his anniversary birthday.....but did tell us that "it" was the ONLY birthday that was of any importance.  That was nice for our children to hear, after he couldn't stay for his birthday cake at home, since his AA "monthly group birthday" was the same night.

  Many months of marriage counselling, I still do not know if the man was ever honest again, AFTER he joined AA, and I know how bad that makes me sound with those clinging to "the program". 

   Addiction treatment NEEDS to be about more than permanent hyper-focus on AA meetings!  For many, it increased the cravings AND the obsession about the substance of choice.  For some, they insulate and only relate personally with their group, because they don't have to mow the lawn or clean up after their own dogs in the parking area, or anything ELSE for that matter, at home.

  When in counseling, with a professional who was "up with" the rehab industry in our town....verified what I had read, that in marriages with one in AA and the other in ALanon, there is a 75% occurence of  divorce.  Approx. 25% HIGHER than in marriages without "the program".  The program can be very mis-applied and there are no professionals in charge of what can become abusive therapy in several cases of participation.  Someone needs to be there to catch those that fall through the mesh and are cast off like chaff.

A school resource officer told one of my sons, several years ago,:  AA is a good place to get sober, but NOT a good place to STAY sober.  He said, also, "after about one year the members stop working on their OWN problems and program and focus on EACH OTHER'S programs, instead.

   My husband, I discovered, had changed "home-groups" because the new ones didn't know that he never did work a "complete program" 1-12, etc. Originally, AA was only about doing the steps once, and at the very beginning, they were done "upstairs" in a prayer circle, 1-12, & done.  That does not make for a lot of repeat business!

  Personally, I truly believe that we ALL have to keep working on our OWN spiritual program, or relationship with God/ or our own guiding-moral program as we define it.  NONE OF US is ever done!  It is not a unique personality problem with addicts.

  I'm sure some have thrived in the kind of addiction recovery "utopia" that is totally focused on the program tailored and promoted by William Wilson (who stole the copyright from the other men involved and registered it as his own)....that is a factoid by an employed historian of AA World Services, the business end of the recovery business.

Not everyone has to change ENTIRELY, to untangle from an addictive substance.  Addiction is hard to explain to children, many of us fall prey to an addiction, and it is HARD, and it HURTS, but after a few days of detox it is GONE.  Some feel they have now been vaccinated against it, and have to do some more research, but it won't return unless we let it in again.  One can be very naiive without having deep unresolved spiritual illness, etc. etc.  

   Some live in environments that are super saturated in temptation, or in loneliness, having lost or never established family lives of our own.....in these cases, I believe that the AA saturation can be a God-send.  My problem is when a core supportive, and loving family becomes "less-than" to the dramatic co-shared experiences and even suggested memories or attributes that are embraced by support-group dependency.

   What about the rest of the adult world? 

Abba are you attending face to face family group meetings in your area?   Ours is called highly effective social model recovery by the psy professionals and they refer many to our step and tradition groups and program because it works wonders at getting those who have been hurt by the disease sane and serene.  I was certifiable when I found the program and it promised me sanity...that promise has been almost completely fulfilled...for me.  You can find the hotline for the Al-Anon Family Groups in the white pages of your local telephone book...the program has been on the planet for 60 years.   Please keep coming back and on the face page you will find the times for the 2 daily meetings which are held here.    ((((hugs))))

Discussing the pros and cons of AA and Alanon,  two recognized  World Wide, established recovery programs is a waste of my time.  They are not designed to save marriages but to save our lives .  
I know how the programs helped me and can state that once my son stopped going to meetings he relapsed big time and passed within a few years.

AA and alanon work if we work them and meeting makers make it

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