The material presented
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level.
Hello all, not been on for awhile. AH and I had reached an impasse and he was set on doing the "moderation" thing. I set some rules of what I could tolerate and went about my own business. I have started counselling with a therapist who specializes in addiction. I have not been to any meetings lately but tonight has convinced my to go back...TOMORROW.
Anyway, he came in tonight unsafe behind the wheel and staggering.
I refused to have a discussion, remained calm and sent him to bed.
I hate this.
I hate being in this position....
Sorry to complain, I just don't know what my next move will be. I know I have to do something before he wraps himself around a tree or hurts one of the kids.
I think I'll have to tell him to get treatment or get out. The idea of doing this makes me very anxious. I'm not sure I can actually do it.
I
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Kelly
"Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence...." Desiderata
I will be praying for you. My AH and I also went through the "moderation" thing and I still had to start with step one a few years later. He actually did pretty good for a while. He went from a case a day to a six pack a day... to a 12 pack a day... to six 16ouncers a day now back up to a 12 pack a day... but they are 16 ounces each... the continuous counting as he gradually worked his way back up to right where he was was only torturing myself... because just as always... there was a reason..."I had a hard day so I drank some extra, 16ouncers are onn sale... the list goes on" I am a past opioid addict myself and I know... if I touch them again i will start finding excuses to snort a methadone up my nose... so if i walk into a situation where I am offered one... i simply say no thank you and walk away... just like we tell our kids to do. I amnot worried about my husband hurting my daughter... all he does is drink himself into a sorry corner and goes to sleep... he has no interaction with people whenb he drinks... he doesn't want it.
I do believe al-anon is the right place for you. It has not only changed my life but has given me some healthy coping skills to pass down to my daughter. i know that even if I left my husband, which i will not do (I believe too strongly in marriage) that he would still be in our daughters life. And I want her to know how to love him anyways and not get wrapped up in the chaos of alcoholism. My whole family... and his whole family have been noticing the differences. I love watching the compassion grow. Al-anon has saved me and taught me how to deal with my cravings for going back to addiction. I did not realize I had crossed the line between being dependant on medication and addiction until I had been 3 years clean and started al-anon.
26 years ago my then husband was coming home so drunk he couldn't open the house door - I'd hear him scrabbling at the door and I would open it, let him in and let him go find his way to bed. I was the type of person who never said boo to anyone but one night I'd had enough. I hit him with both barrels. I opened the door and he's standing there, looking apologetically pathetic, wavering on the stoop and saying his key wouldn't work. I let him in and lit into him. I hit him with a string of "what ifs" - I talked about killing someone on the way home, killing someone's little girl - killing their daddy, crippling somebody's baby, killing himself and leaving her fatherless, etc. I purposely hit below the belt emotionally because I was tired of letting him get away with it while I did all the worrying. Surprisingly, it did what I hoped it would - stopped that particular behavior. Maybe it stopped because he adored his little girl and couldn't live with the thought of hurting someone else's child; maybe it stopped because he was still young and not so set in his ways; maybe it stopped because he was afraid it would make his meek little wife go off on him again - i don't know, don't care, just was glad it worked. FYI - Alcohol is not the reason I am not married to him anymore.
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I am strong in the broken places. ~ Unknown
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another! ~ Anatole France
I understand what you are going through. I only speak through my experience, but my mother always thinks she's in control.
I'm assuming the Moderation thing is..: "i'm only gonna have a couple"...right?
It's sad. They think they have control of these things when in reality the bottle controls THEM.
If you are going to tell him to get treatment or get out, I would suggest meaning what you say. And if doesn't get treatment...follow through with it.
I was taught that "idle threats" like that are just that. Idle Threats. If we don't follow through...they never suffer the reprocussions (sp) of their actions, thus making it a constant cycle.
My idle threat was "if you drink again...I'm gone"
And i kept coming back and coming back...and "enabling" her.
She never got it.
It never sunk in.
Maybe now...now that I'm truly "gone"...maybe now she'll get it. *shrug*
You guys keep making me bust out my big book. I only do this because I am not so sure Alanon focuses on it as much as AA...but this discussion totally hits home with chapter 3 "more about alcoholism." I will share it with you all and hope you get something out of it. Of course, when I read it, I thought they had just done a home study on me and my partner of the time....
Chapter 3
MORE ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
MOST OF us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals-usually brief-were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet.
