I just posted here for the first time last night, after coming home from spending the day with my family at the lake to find my AH (who was running a fever and coughing terribly when we left that morning) drunk.  I got very angry, but mostly contained it.  I can't handle the drinking, but it's not the alcohol consumption that makes me so upset.  Our family has been through a lot of major stresses in the past four years- critical illness of one child, another diagnosed with special needs, my husband's industry tanking due to the economy and the resulting unemployment/underemployments we have been dealing with since 2008.  Then my father in law, who was basically the glue holding an extremely dysfunctional family together, died suddenly.  After his death we discovered that my mother in law had pretty advanced dementia and he had been covering for her for the past few years of his life.  He left no money behind, and my husband's childhood home was foreclosed upon.  It was left up to him to go over there every weekend, for months on end, and sort through thirty years' worth of family pictures, belongings, etc. and decide what to keep and what to allow the bank to throw out into the street.  Then we discovered that his two sisters had been spending what little money my mother in law did get from her husband's life insurance payout.  Out of the original $250,000 she received two years ago, there is only about $45,000 left, and that's all the money she will ever get for the rest of her life, as she never worked and his pension terminated upon his death.  When my husband tried to intervene, his sister again used her mother's money to go to lawyers and get power of attorney, along with control over her bank account.  We don't have any money to hire an attorney ourselves and we have no room or time to take my MIL in and provide her with the care she needs.  There's nothing we can do now to stop his sisters short of calling the police, which my husband has been hesitant to do because it could turn really ugly.  But as it stands, in the past four years, there has been a lot of loss and a LOT of stress on us. 

So I get that alcoholism is a disease that he has and that he uses it to numb the extreme amount of stress and pain he has been dealt in the past few years.  I can understand why he is an alcoholic and why he wants to self medicate.  But the fact is that his drinking is causing major problems for our family, as all of you well know.  And one thing I can't get past is the lying.    He says he knows he has a problem, and he really wants to stop, but then he will turn around and buy an eight pack of airline bottles of vodka and drink them all in the car on his way home from the package store.  Then we go through this stupid dance, over and over again- where he asks me what's wrong and why I'm being distant, then I say because he's been drinking and I don't care to be around him when he's drunk, then he denies up one side and down the other that he's drunk, and so on.  So tonight when he came home from his first day at his new part time job drunk and then AGAIN asked me what was wrong, I just lost it at him.  Told the kids to go outside and play, then really let him have it.  Screamed, yelled, hit the wall with my fists, told him to get out of my house and never come back, he is ruining my family, etc.  So he left.  That was over six hours ago, and I don't know where he is.  I actually don't really care, my kids and I had a nice evening without him instead of things being tense and horrible around here. 

The other thing that makes me so angry is his refusal to take any action to make things better, despite the fact that he readily admits he has a problem and wants to stop drinking.  He has been to a few AA meetings, but then he quits going.  He attended three group therapy sessions, then quit those too.  He started seeing a private therapist, stopped after a few weeks.  He saw an addiction specialist last week who prescribed some sort of medication that is supposed to curb the cravings for alcohol- the scrip has been sitting on our kitchen counter ever since.  He doesn't really want to get better.  I know that.  But it makes me so angry.  I honestly don't know if I even care at this point if he kills himself, which is what I think he will do if I take the kids and leave him.  We're all he has left, as he has let go of most of his friendships. 

When does this anger pass?  How can I get to a point where I just don't care what he does anymore?  Right now I am devastated because I am watching my family disintegrate.  I grew up with divorced parents and it was horrible; my formative years were full of anxiety with my parents constantly fighting and after they split up I literally became the red-headed stepchild, being shuffled back and forth between my mom and stepdad's house and my dad and stepmom's, listening to them argue about whose turn it was to pay my orthodontist bill and such.  I felt like a huge imposition whereever I went, and never wanted to put my kids through that.  I have worked so hard to try to give them the childhood and nurturing that I didn't get, and my AH is doing his best to come right behind me and undo all of it.  This is the other reason why I get so angry with him that I have to restrain myself from punching him in the face when he looks me right in the face with that stupid, drunken look on his face and denies that he's been drinking.  That and the fact that he sees nothing wrong with picking up my kids from school/daycare after he's stopped by the package store and fortified himself after work.  He can't even do something as simple as wait until he is safely home with them to start drinking.  One more thing for me to add to my list of things to do for the kids, because I can't trust him to stay sober long enough to drive them home. 

There's really no hope that he's going to get better, is there? He'll come home tomorrow probably, apologize profusely, go to an AA meeting or with me to family counseling.  He'll be good for about a week or two, and then start it back up again.  It's only a matter of time before something terrible happens, like him getting a DUI (which means he will be fired from both of his jobs) or much, much worse.  I feel like I can't breathe anymore but I have no money or way to get out of this marriage at the moment.  I have started taking some steps to get my life back, like starting my own bank accounts, going to a gym to try to lose weight and make myself healthier, and I think I'm going to try to attend a local Al Anon meeting tomorrow night.  But at this moment I just needed to vent.  Thank you for reading if you made it all the way through this epistle!

I have also heard many times that "only an alcoholic will find themselves in a hole and keep on digging." It is very sad indeed that a person keeps searching for answers in a bottle that do not exist. When faced with massive life stressors, we need to mobilize and use coping skills. An alcholic tries to escape and then the problems don't get solved and new problems arise from lack of problem solving and those that are created from the drinking itself.

So sorry you are facing the fallout of this disease. Alanon will at least be a place where others can aid you, support you, and recognize exactly what you are dealing with and how frustrating it is.