The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I am feeling really confused about alcoholism today. I know I need to detach and work on myself. I have been working really hard on this, but today I need to vent. My A BF left me 3 months ago for another woman who is an alcoholic. He is further down the rabbit hole then he has ever been now that he is with her and I don't understand. When he was with me for over 2 years he was sober most of the time, only had a couple of relapses. Now he calls me and is in so much pain, so sick from the drinking. Why do alcoholics choose alcohol over everything else in their life? He is drinking so much he can't spend time with his daughter? He left me for another woman so he could drink with her? His life is more out of control than it ever was while we were together? His worst binge started when he finished a 9 month school program and finished it successfully?? Now he is so drunk all the time he can't even interview for jobs, let alone sent out his resumes.
I thought I understood, but now today, I feel I understand very little about the nature of alcoholism.
as they say alcoholism is a cunning baffling disease. I have noticed my AW who has been sober for 10 months would rather hang out with other recovering A's than non A people. So in my case it is not about the drinking but being with other A's. She works the program which means for her going to 10 meetings a week usually stays another half hour after the meeting to chat and at least once a week will go out for dinner for 2-3 hours after a meeting. Not to mention the phone calls. Again this is recommended in program just it is clear who they would rather be with.
Jasobel, It is sometimes hard for me to understand as well. My "A", my hub, has lost his family because he will not stop using. What I need to remember is that it isn't personal, it is the disease.
From living with my hub and watching him slip further and further into the disease I saw that the furhter he went into it the more the disease protected itself. Anything for the sake of getting high it didn't matter to him. It is becasue the disease had such a hold on him and he wasn't/isn't ready to fight it.
I know my hub loves our kids and when he is clean/sober he is more than able to show them, but when he is using they are not on his radar. This disease is very selfish. All it became for him was chasing his next high.
What I needed to do was focus on me. Wondering why he was doing what he was doing wasn't going to do me any good. He is an active addict doing what active addicts do. I had to ask myself what I was going to do and I figured I spent enough time and energy trying to figure him out that I could do some real great work on me if I just focused on me.
Keep coming back and put some focus on you. Keep venting here.....it is very safe and for me the venting here kept me from erupting other places :).
Yours in recovery, Mandy
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"We are not punished for our unforgiveness, we are punished by it" Jim Stovall
If we think how hard it is for us to let go of them -- worrying about them, trying to change them, trying to move on, trying to detach, trying not to think about them and why they do it ... think how hard that is, and imagine something even harder, which is to give up alcohol. They find it as hard to give up as we find it to give them up. I have a hard time imagining it because alcohol doesn't do much for me; but when I think of the craving I get for the A himself, I see how a craving can make you lose all perspective and start behaving insanely.
