"He is either gonna drink, or he won't.... what are YOU gonna do?"

nadjjaa · Member

New - my story. Help and advice please!

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

Welcome Dawn. All your questions can be answered via Al Anon. The book that helped me was/is; "Getting Them Sober." But Toby Rice Drews. Its so easy to take in and learn and relate to it.

Meetings would be so good for you. I put the site and phone number on the bottom of my post to you, to find a meeing.

There are so many truths you will find that are hard to face. One big one is we can do NOTHING to stop, start an A to use/drink. It is totally up to them.

But we can make boundaries with consequenses. We must stand behind them. These are boundaries for us, for our children so we can live happier lives.

Them getting help is up to them. We have to learn to make our lives ok, not depend on them.

Hoping to see you here more. love,debilyn

RLC · ~*Service Worker*~

Dawn,
Welcome I am so glad you found Miracles In Progress. You are not alone in this cunning, baffling, and powerful disease. I understand where you are and all your concerns. Al-Anon face to face meetings can be for you as they were for me, a life saver. Others on this board will offer the same suggestion. No one will offer you advice here or in the rooms of Al-Anon only what has worked for us.

The first step in the Al-Anon program states: "We addmited we are powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable." You might not be ready to admit you are powerless over your husbands drinking yet, but I think you will admit your life has become unmanageable because of your husbands drinking. I can say with certainty that was the way I felt. Nothing I tried, no amount of talking, pleading, or begging changed my alcoholic. Absolutely nothing. The disease is just to powerful. The disease is progressive as you have described. It takes over the mind, body, and spirit of the alcoholic, It comes before family and friends, it destroys lives and everything it comes in contact with.

That's the bad news, the good news is you can find help for you. The Al-Anon program will give you the tools to make your life better whether the alcoholic in you life is drinking or not. We have no control over the A in our lives but we do have control over ourselves. We become as sick or sicker than the A without realizing. The disease consumes us and makes us say and do things no sane person would ever do.

You will receive responses from other members offering their experience, strength, and hope, what has worked for them as they live in this disease that effects all of us. Heed their suggestions, find a f2f meeting in your area, read prior posts on this site, and start your recovery. The most important thing you can do for yourself and your child is take care of yourself first. In the rooms of Al-Anon is where you will find the help you need. Again we care and only want the best for you and understand you as perhaps no one else can.

HUGS,
RLC

-- Edited by RLC on Tuesday 15th of March 2011 02:46:49 PM

searching4peace · Veteran Member

I agree that Alanon would be a great help to you. I have found an amazing amount of support both online and in f2f meetings. And so many tools that really help me find peace and joy in my life again.

I also have an alcoholic husband that feels he can drink responsibly and maintain control. He is currently undergoing treatment in an outpatient program that supports him in his endeavorer to gain control over his drinking without abstaining. I was livid when I found out that was what was happening. And I was confused. I had been through so much. Searching for evidence of his drinking. Counting empties. Checking bank and credit card statements. I won't go into all the details of my many and varied attempts to control his drinking. So much pain and conflict between the two of us. So far off balance. And when he finally went in for treatment I really thought the end of the craziness was finally in sight. I couldn't believe that he wasn't actually quiting. I thought all my hope for relief had been destroyed. But it turns out that my peace and hope don't depend on his sobriety.

Through the literature and meetings and posts here I have learned something amazing. I don't need my AH to be sober to find peace and contentment in my life. I don't need to control his drinking or his recovery. I don't need to control his paycheck or his recreation time. I don't need to control him. Amazingly the only think I need to control is me. I still have so much to learn. So much room for growth and discovery. But I am starting to make small changes. I am backing off. Letting his choices and his consequences be his. I am no longer trying to limit or even monitor his drinking. I am setting boundaries. Behaviors I will accept and behaviors I won't. And I am enjoying more peace and contentment then I have in a long time. I am finding each day a little better than the one before.

DadtoCandE · Veteran Member

I would recommend Al-anon, the price is right, and so far for me its been the most helpful. I resisted for a long time, it was crazy, because at one time going to Al-anon seemed like a "betrayal" of my spouse, but if I had gone maybe I could have avoided getting sucked into the drama of the addiction, or at least avoided the co-dependancy I allowed myself to fall into. My spiritual beliefs are similar to what you describe your husband having. In the group I go to, no one has pushed an organized religion on me at all. In fact I have a friend with 3 years under his belt that is very agnostic and well respected in the group.

I saw a lot of red flags in what you wrote, you will not be able to convince or control your husband into sobriety, and if you go down the intuiative path of trying to protect your husband from the disease the most likely scenerio is you will end up frustrated and co dependant.

Don't gang up, or nag your husband, that can lead to you becoming the enemy and a justification to drink, not the cause, but an irrational rationalization. If he throws up on the carpet or pees on the couch make sure he cleans it up. Let him feel the consequences of his actions.

Good luck and remember it is his problem, you can support him if he chooses sobriety, but you can't save him if he chooses addiction.

Rora · Senior Member

Welcome.

I recognized a lot of me in your post. Like many of us here, I too felt like a walking breathalyser always on and always waiting to detect and then issue a lengthy lecture in response to what I thought I knew, or suspected, or questioned or wondered. It's not a fun way to live- nor for me did it ever prove useful.

You wonder if your husband is an Alcoholic, but I've heard it said that what really matters in Alanon is if YOU have a problem with your husbands drinking. You are terrified. That is a common emotion amongst us who live or have lived with an Alcoholic. Others include loneliness, anxiety, sadness, uncertainty, disappointment, nervousness and the list goes on and on.

The best suggestion really is to focus on ourselves and not spend our time trying to figure out the A and try to him them happy. Focussing on ourselves is about creating our own happiness, regardless of what the A is doing.

Rora

canadianguy · ~*Service Worker*~

Wow Nadjjaa - so many red flags here, there are almost too many to list.... In a nutshell - my two cents would be:
1. Well done for finding MIP and starting on YOUR journey of recovery - whether or not your hubby chooses recovery for himself is irrelevant to what YOU choose for you...
2. From what you have described, he is most likely an alcoholic - the incidents you have described don't happen with common, so-called normal social drinking....
3. He (and perhaps you?) are using the religion piece as an excuse to NOT choose the main (almost exclusive) way to find sobriety through AA - by design, AA reaches out to people of ALL (or NO) religious affiliations - literally thousands of athiests have found recovery through the doors of AA - he is apparently using it as an excuse not to pursue sobriety....

Just my two cents

Tom

blender_girl · Senior Member

(((Nadjjaa))) You are most definitely in the right place. You've gotten some great suggestions - I hope you choose to check them out and keep coming back!

nmike · ~*Service Worker*~

Welcome to MIP! Alanon seems the right place for you. And that is what we do here is work on ourselves.

Keep coming back.

In support,
Nancy

Jerry F · ~*Service Worker*~

Aloha Nadjjaa...and welcome also. You have been responded to by others who have
been in your situation almost exactly at one time or another. My alcoholic wasn't
male but female and I had to learn what you heard here. None of that matters as
long as I had a problem with the alcoholic's drinking. Like the others I also got into
Al-Anon...twice. The first time I took my fear and reservations and rules...how I
wanted things to go, for me. I ended up leaving and was told at the door that things
would get worse because Alcoholism is a progressive disease...It always gets worse
never better. So I ended up coming back and in worse shape than when I left the
time before.

I read your post and filter it thru how I was and what I said and did when I first got
into Al-Anon. It is soooo familiar and I am grateful I found the rooms of Al-Anon.
I stopped putting my faith into what the alcoholic, said and promised and only went
with the hard evidence. It was what she was doing that I needed to watch and listen
to and then go seek help like you have done here. There was no way I was going to
fix someone addictively altered by chemical dependency. Alcohol owned her and
controlled her and she was as powerless as I was over it and her life was as much
or more unmanagable than my own.

Al-Anon gave me my life back and convinced me that I am responsible for my own
life alone especially if the Alcoholic doesn't want me to interfere in her drinking.

Keep coming back. ((((hugs)))) smile

nadjjaa · Member

Good morning! I am planning to attend an alanon meeting. There are plenty in my area, the trouble is they are so late. I go to bed very early due to being exhausted by pregnancy (lol) and have a small child that goes to bed around the time when all the meetings start. So I've been procrastinating, but I think I'll try to find a Sunday meeting since I haven't been going to church.

Let me be clear, religion doesn't scare me the way it scares my husband and yes - he is using religion as an excuse to not go to AA. I have always been a believer, but I've never really found a church that I love, and I hate going alone and I hate sacrificing my sunday morning for boring services (just being honest! I know it's terrible!). My husband and I go to my old church sometimes because he likes the preacher there. That all being said, religious stuff won't keep me from alanon...other stuff has though.

We talked when he came home last night. He admitted he was an "a-hole" for not telling me the truth about having a few drinks a few nights a week, but he assures me that he is terrified of drinking in the car or hurting someone on the road, and will never, ever get behind the wheel while drunk. At this point I believe that, but I warned him that it's a slippery slope and no one goes out the door with the intention of committing vehicular manslaughter or getting a DUI - it just happens. He agreed and said that he is severely limiting his drinking now so that he does not get drunk.

But he says that he enjoys a drink while watching The Daily Show or Glee or Good Eats or whatever...then he goes to bed. And that, he says, is where it will stay. He will no longer be drinking in social situations because it makes everyone uncomfortable and he agrees that he needs to take a nice long break from social drinking because he tends to go overboard when having fun.

He agreed there will be no drinking period when our new daughter, Parker, comes in July. I told him one of my big fears was that he was going to leave me taking care of an infant and a toddler while he was getting his drink on. He said that he would be there, sober as a church mouse, for that and would only have a drink at times when it would not impact anyone in the house. /shrug

I also reminded him that he has court in May for his DUI and the best outcome he could hope for is 1 year of diversion and 100 hours of community service. Diversion rules state that the offender cannot consume alcohol for 1 year and they WILL check periodically. He said that if that happens then he will accept it. He said he was more bummed about the community service!

It all sounds too good to be true and probably is. I'm not so naive that I don't realize that he's telling me exactly what I want to hear, but he believes it will work. He believes he is "different" than the guys at AA - the true alcoholics. He thinks he is a guy that let himself get a little crazy and that he can restore HIMSELF to sanity. Hell, maybe he can. Only time will tell. But I am afraid of this not working because I am afraid of losing him.

One positive thing is that he did find himself a psychiatrist yesterday. I kind of yelled at him over the credit card bills I found - I know I shouldn't have but I was angry and I deserved to be angry - and in an effort to make some peace he finally got off his ass and called his EAP and got himself an appointment with a psychiatrist that specializes in mental health issues (depression, anxiety) and alcohol and drug addictions. Perfect. In fact, I know this doctor and he's kind of a big deal around here...

(PS, I work in a jail, and I'm an RN...)

So I'm happy about that. I asked him though, "what if this doctor tells you something you don't want to hear?" He said that he figured this guy was the expert and he'd follow his suggestions. We'll see.

I've been taking tally of my fears and they are probably similar to others here: I am scared of being a single mother, I am scared of losing a man I really love and KNOW is a great husband and father. But I am also scared of my kids growing up in a toxic home and seeing their father ruin his life - something I can't allow to happen. My mother grew up in an alcoholic home and struggles with mental health issues even today. I won't allow that to happen to my children, as much as I love my husband and would suffer to be with out him.

BUT I realize that I need to back off. If he's going to drink, he's going to drink. I need to stop making myself crazy by trying to catch him or discover the evidence of his drinking. I am not going to search for clues, I am going to go to bed and let him do his thing. I am going to concentrate on preparing myself for my new baby - I plan to deliver medication-free this time and hope to breastfeed longer than 10 months like I did with my first daughter Elliet.

Thanks for your replies everybody...I think I'll stick around this board.

Mattie · ~*Service Worker*~

I'm sorry you're in this uncertain situation. The "good" news is that if your husband is a compulsive drinker, he won't be able to hide it forever -- the truth will come out. If he's really a moderate drinker who made a couple of mistakes, then he'll be able to get a handle on it and things will go well. I have to say there are some red flags for me too, so I think you are very wise to be cautious. In the early days I was so uninformed about alcoholism that I missed a lot of signs and also believed what my husband told me wholesale. It sounds as if you have more awareness than I did.

One of the big problems is, of course, that moderate drinkers and alcoholics will say exactly the same thing. They'll both say, "Things may have gotten out of hand that one time, but I know my limits and this has been a lesson to me. From now on I'm going to be smart, and don't worry, because I'm in control of it all. I don't need a recovery program because I'm not out of control -- not like 'those guys.'" And they'll both believe it. The problem is that for the alcoholic, it won't be true. But as I say, the "good" news is that the alcoholic can't keep the secret for long -- the secret that he's hiding from himself and others -- that his drinking is compulsive.

One of the things that most bothers me about alcoholism is the lying that seems to go hand-in-hand with it. The way I see it, the lying is another of the symptoms of the attitude-disease that produces the whole thing. Sort of "The world isn't going my way and I'm a victim so I'm entitled to do whatever I can do to get relief, because the rest of the world wouldn't understand me and my absolute need to do this."

My AH also said he couldn't deal with AA because of the religious aspects. This is ironic because he's spiritually-minded and I'm an atheist. He also had a dozen other reasons AA wasn't right for him. He wasn't like "those guys." Of course, by this time, he is.

I was also pregnant when all this started happening. I very much hope your husband is on top of things, Nadjjaa, but I just want to say that I found that I was a lot stronger than I thought I was, whatever happened. But support is essential as things unfold however they will. Keep taking care of yourself, find meetings, and keep coming back.

-- Edited by Mattie on Wednesday 16th of March 2011 09:30:22 AM

nadjjaa · Member

Yeah, I figure that, if he really can't control his drinking, then we'll know in a few short months. And he knows I'm watching him (though trying not to) and he usually owns up to his mistakes. However, he too plays the victim. He talks about the hardships of driving an hour to work each day, getting home late, working at a job he doesn't really love, never having enough money or time, etc and how he "deserves" to have a drink now and again. However, I still think the root of his problems are depression and anxiety, and drinking alcohol is a symptom. That is why I am pushing for him to get medical/psychiatric help; I really think it all needs to start there.

Lying is the big one for me as well Mattie. I hate it and told my husband if anything can kill our marriage it will be lying.

I know that everyone in alanon would call me naive, but I really do think that there are people out there who can learn some discipline and get a hold on their issues. I am unsure if my husband is one of those people, but as I said, it shouldn't take long to find out.

DadtoCandE · Veteran Member

nadjjaa,

Just one bit of advice and it's about you, try not to speak so much in absolutes "I am not going to..." It's good to strive for the ideal, but give yourself room to be human. You're attitude is great and your perspective is balanced between logic and emotion. Take the perfectionism out of it (that's what I'm reading a bit).

good luck, sounds to me like your kids have a great mom and your husband a great partner. I hope that Al-anon is as helpful for you as it is for me, but if it doesn't end up appealing to you, keep looking for personal support. The best thing you can do for your kids is to provide them a strong example.

Brian

Nutbar · Veteran Member

This is exactly what I went through with my wife for years. I call it my "Is she or isn't she" period! Well after seven years and numerous heated discussions I was convinced that I had a mental problem. Such is the cruelty of this disease and the alcoholic is a master at diverting blame. Anyway, her wheels began to fall off quite severely so I booked her into treatment and told her to check herself in or I (and the kids) would leave. It worked and she has been sober one year. There is so much great literature available and I read a lot of the Hazelden material which really helped. I used to keep the problem totally secret but I later found that people are generally very understanding of alcoholism and were very supportive of me and my wife. Stick with it and good luck.

nadjjaa · Member

Actually, I do not think he will be successful in trying to control his own drinking.......but then again, I do not really have a choice in the matter, this is what he has decided, so I have to go with it. And I suppose this is all the normal progression of the "A" coming to realize that he is an "A". I don't blame him for wanting to trying everything besides treatment and AA first. It must appear that I have faith in him, that I believe in him. I do think it's possible if he seeks drug and alcohol counseling and finds a good doctor to help with the depression and anxiety, for him to stay on the right road. Part of me believes it's possible for someone who lost his way momentarily to find the way back, but it's very shaky ground and it will take years for me to finally be comfortable with him having a drink.

He is so transparent when he's drinking that I'm positive he really is only having a drink or two a few nights a week. I still am not comfortable with this -- I went to bed last night, knowing that there was a possibility he was going to have one. But he came to bed a little while later, did not smell of alcohol, did not miss his alarm in the morning. If he had a drink it was a "normal" persons drink. I want to believe so bad that this is something he can maintain. For now, I am skeptical but hopeful.

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.

"He is either gonna drink, or he won't.... what are YOU gonna do?"