Can someone behave totally different under the influence of alcohol - Al-Anon Family Group

shannah · Member

Can someone behave totally different under the influence of alcohol

abbyal · ~*Service Worker*~

You bet they can -- but dont blame it all on alcohol , if his character is to cheat he will do it drunk or sober , his abusive attitude is totally unexceptable u don't deserve to be treated that way .. be careful take care of yourself .. alcoholics arent very considerate when drinking and sexual diseases are more the norm than not .You don't deserve that either . find Al-Anon meetings for yourself and learn all u can about this disease , it only gets worse never better . learn to set boundaries that are healthy for you , dont waste your time trying to figure out why he does what he does , figure out why you allow it ?? Al-Anon will help u with that .

shannah · Member

Thank you for your reply. I had alrerady dropped him a month ago, but he still acts as if we are together, because I thought we could stay friends; Nothing has changed in his attitude, and as you said, it is only getting worse. He is in hospital at the moment as he has head injury for the third time in six months due to drunken fights. I have decided to go for the no contact rule once he is out of hospital. We live in different cities and already I have refused to see him or to talk to him on the phone. The only contact I have is short text messages.

Yes I will attend the meetings. I have been severely psychologically damaged.

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

Not a naive post at all. Great question.

It made me think about something. First I learned an A can at some point be sober and be as awful or more so than when they were under the influence.

Also how can a person ever be who they are when they have NO idea who that is?

So how can we ever really know an A?

My experience has shown them to have very low self care, self love, self actualization. Thank goodness there are some addicts who don't have as many markers in their dna as others so they have a better chance at loving themselves and knowing who they are.

People cheat and abused becuz they are cheaters and abusers. Has zero to do with being an addict. They are no symptoms of being an addict. However using, makes them lose inhibitions so they don't care what they do. I could drink all night and not abuse or cheat.

I am not an addict, am blessed not to be. However I have endless compassion for those that are.

Hoping you are getting to meetings now. Getting Them Sober is a great book to read.

keep coming. love,debilyn

shannah · Member

Wow, thanks; I am already feeling a lot better because I am starting to understand things.What you say about his personality is totally right.

I will read the book. Can you tell me more about the DNA markers please?

If I understand correctly, there is no hope for the realtionship. I have already broken up with him, and though we could stay friends, but he is acting as if we are still together. We live in different cities and I have already told him that I will never see him or speak to him again. We are texting as he is in hospital for his third head injury in six months due to drunken fighting, which I intend to stop once he is released.

Love Shannah

kitty · ~*Service Worker*~

Hi and welcome. The thing is, even on six months - the A doesnt like to give up on an enabler. Six months isnt a very long time, as most have us have spent with years with A's. But still in six months u can see how crazy, intense and insane loving an A can be. It isnt easy to get - dis-entangled from an A. They know u gave in in the past, so they are in denial when the realtionship is over. The denial is the cornerstone of their disease and it i runs very very deeply. So, if u truly want out of the relationship, whatver u do, dont back down on your boundaries.

When I left me exAH - since he always yelled at me and was abusive and (obviously) never listened to me - I would not talk to him over the phone, I had him email me to contact me. So at least I knew he had to read my words. Not that that helped. When I left, he went on a binder for a few weeks, taking tons of pills (he didnt drink) and not sleeping. Two weeks in, he was threatening to kill my entire family if he saw me in his county. I had it all dated and timed (emails) and contancted police in my county and his. They all suggested I stop writing him, which I did.

A's need enalbers, so they will pursue you, do what u have to do to take care of yourself. Maybe u wil be lucky and he will go away quietly but if he doesnt and reasr his head, dont hesitate contancting law enforcement if u feel u are in danger - that is what the police are there for, to serve and protect.

To answer ur question, yes alcohol lowers your inhibitions and when u get drunk, u might do something u wouldnt normally do. Alcohol is an extremely powerful drug.

My step dad cheatted on my mom for a long time in their marraige and she and I both never had a clue - he was so good at hiding his behavior and leading his double life. I was told that cheatting is one of the symptoms of the disease, that it can happen eventually. Maybe Debily is right, there is something in them that makes them a cheatter and they would do it sober too, Idk ~ maybe, maybe not.

tlcate · Senior Member

As an A I can say "ABSOLUTELY"!!!

I did so many things I wouldn't have done sober.

While intoxicated - completely unpredictable. I drove with my daughter while black out drunk - Wow. Truly amazing. I haven't cheated so I can not say what that is like for folks who do it, but if I would drive drunk with my kid, being intoxicated and having someone show me some attention and going home with them doesn't seem that far of a stretch. One thing I have learned is to not say "I will never" - especially with things I have no experience with. Chances are I will be doing it next week

.

One thing that I found is that my actions were usually based on something real. I might have a resentment the size of a grain of sand and when drunk, I turn it into K2. It might be all mushy - "I love you man" because that is the seed, or it may have been a yelling abuse match because of a resentment. Rarely did my actions have nothing to do with reality. So, if I was hanging out with the opposite sex, calling my SO and shoving it in their face, I would have to guess it would have been due to some underlying lack of respect and loyalty that was completely blown out of proportion due to alcohol. I have been on the receiving end and will not let alcohol play as an excuse in any of it. It was due to lack of respect, lack of self-respect on their end, lack of integrity, lack of morals, lack of honesty - and on my end lack of self respect enough to find any of it intolerable and enough to walk away. Alcohol may have made it worse, but the underlying reasons were still there.

So my take as an A - even when drunk I would not cheat unless there was a seed of it already in my feelings for my partner. I wouldn't do it sober ever, but if I wasn't really loyal to my partner, alcohol would be enough to push me into an action I wouldn't normally take otherwise. I don't know if I would call alcohol a "truth serum" because what always came out for me was a completely overblown version of the truth - in it's ugliest form. But - there usually was a grain of truth in there somewhere.

That is purely just my experience. One thing I can say - even though A's feel they are terminally unique and we are all really just suffering human beings - their experience is not mine and never will be. Categorizing A's as all the same is just like categorizing Al-Anoners as all one thing and they all react the same. I find it just untrue. We are all just hurt people hurting people, stumbling through life reeking havoc on ourselves and others until we find a better way. Why and how seems to change from one to the next - but I find that love and self care is the answer.

Hope that helps. I am so sorry that he hurt you. I remember it clearly and the pain and betrayal is like no other. Please take care of you.

Please keep coming back,

Tricia

ythannah · Senior Member

From the two As I have been involved with, I'd have to say it goes both ways. In some cases, their behaviour drunk was just them with the volume turned wayyyy up.
My last ABF could be far more emotionally expressive under the influence than he was sober; it was bittersweet for me to experience this, all the stuff I wished he'd say would come out when he was drunk. He was always checking out other women in my presence, however, and I think he could have easily cheated in the right circumstances because he was quite insecure and depended on external validation.

The ABF before him was the Jekyll and Hyde type. He was a kind, gentle man who hated to cause anyone the slightest pain, and was very self-conscious. Drunk, he turned into a nasty, hostile person who would regularly get into physical fights.

Both of them had that sense of what Tricia calls "terminally unique" (I love that term! lol). They both expressed thoughts that they had something so deeply and terribly wrong with them that made recovery from alcoholism impossible. Or that they needed intense psychotherapy to untangle their "special" pain. I understand this is pretty common with As -- they think they are different from the other addicts. So, of course, if their addiction is unique then a program like AA isn't going to work for them, which is their rationale for avoiding it.

Bottom line is that when I realized that there were no hoops I could jump through to "fix" their alcoholism, the only thing I could do (for my own sanity) was walk away.

shannah · Member

Thanks for the warning about the enabler.All this is new to me.You are totally right.Yesterday I said a final goodbye over the phone, to give it closure. Guess what? He sent me a text at midnight and called again first thing in the morning...ughhhhhhhh!!!!.Luckily we live in different countries so he won't turn up at my door that easily.

What you said about the abuser is true as well. We went out together as teenagers,and at the time he hadn't statred drinking, and was already abusive and a cheater, and that is why I dropped him.

Strangeley enough I missed him all my life and went back to him 32 years later. BIG MISTAKE.

shannah · Member

Thanks Tricia for the insight and he warmth and support. He is in rehab in the moments and giving twisted versions to his therapy group. Totally in denial. No use going to therapy to give BS. Gets him nowhere. No hope.

shannah · Member

Really thank you everyone for your replies.They certainly allow me to undersatnd tha t the only way is out, and never look back.

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