I have been here reading for a few days and it is such a wonderful feeling to know that I am not alone and that there is support!!  I am new here and will try to quickly fill you all in on what has led me here.   I actually deal with 2 A's daily.  First there is my Abf, who drinks every day.  He is very high functioning but on average I would say that he drinks 20 beers a day over the course of 8-10 hours.  We have been together eight years and are raising seven kids.  I love him very much and most of the time I am able to handle his drinking.  There are times when I don't do it as well and when anger and resentment do enter the picture.  I have learned to detach and that has made it a lot easier for me.  To be honest in the past couple of years I have spent so much time and energy dealing with the other A in my life that I have not had much time to think about Abf and his drinking.  There are certainly times though where anger and resentment enter the picture.  I should have actually said that I deal with 3 A's on a daily basis because I am a recovering A.  When Abf and I got together my drinking quickly picked up.  Prior to that I would have been seen as a social drinker by most people although there were plenty of times that I had far more than I should have.  I did not drink that often, more of a weekend warriior.  I now know though that there were signs that I missed along the way and can trace back problems with drinking for many many years.   Once I was with Abf, I started to drink more often and then it became clear that I was not a person who could control their drinking.  I was suffering from depression and adding alcohol only worsened everything.  One day I woke up and realized that this was not what I wanted my life to be like and that this was not the person that I wanted to be.  There was no real catalyste other than an honest evaluation and that sent me off to find a alcohol rehab program.  I went to a counselor at a outpatient clinic for over a year and I worked hard to understand my issues and my problems with alcohol.  I built a support system and worked all the steps.  I am happier than I have ever been in my life and I would never ever want to feel the way I did when I walked into that rehab center 3.5 years ago.  Sobriety is the best gift I ever gave myself and my family.  As a recovering A, I always am looking to help other A's that say they want to quit drinking.  One such A came to me for help when I had about six months sobriety.  She is my exH sister.  She had already nearly died from alcohol related complications, in a coma for a week,  not expected to  make it and yet she did.  She went to an inpatient rehab program and for a while she was able to stay sober.  She was 40 years old, living with her parents, on disability, dealing with cirrhosis, diabetes, neuropathy, and brain issues.  She had continued to drink and wound up getting pregnant.  She had been told she could never have kids but she had always desperately wanted them.  Now she found herself pregnant, not sure who the father was.  Thankfully she did remain sober for the remainder of the pregnancy and although they were born two months premature, she gave birth to two healthy(though small) baby boys.  I really thought this was going to be the turning point for her and that she would stay sober.  This is not the way that it turned out though.  She struggled with health issues and I was helping her with the babies for that reason.  I knew she was overwhelmed and insecure and I did all I could to try to build her up.  I found community resources to come to the home and lend a hand as well and work with her.  She did ok for a while but once her health improved a little and she felt better physically, she soon returned to drinking.  I by this time already had the boys a lot of the time and soon the times that she would drop them off would get closer together and for longer periods.  It wasn't uncommon for her to drop them off with me for a week at a time.  I knew I was being used and I probably would have stopped except that I was concerned about what she would do with the boys if I did not take them for her.  They were the innocents in the picture.  I continued to take them and I found that they were here far more than with her but by that point I did not really care, I had come to love those boys as if they were my own.  She was drinking  heavily but would not admit it to anyone and was in and out the hospital.  Finally I had had enough.  I knew she was getting money for the boys through ssi and yet she was not supply their needs not food, not clothes, not diapers, not medicine, nothing.  This was all coming out of my pocket.  I sat her down and said I would help her locate a treatment program and that she needed to do this for her boys.  She agreed and I thought that finally she was going to do it.  She did go to rehab for 28 days and came home and we set up a plan for visitation and to slowly get the boys back in to her care.  We never made it past the first step, she started drinking again within a couple of weeks.  I went to the doctor with her one day and the doctor told her that she should get her affairs in order that she had entered end stage liver failure.  Wow!! I was not prepared for that news.  I really thought that it was going to get her to stop but it did not turn out that way.  At this point I became the twins legal guardian and officially had custody of them which was a huge relief to the entire family.  We at least knew that they would now not be in jeoprody and that the situation was now legal.  They have lived with me now for three years and since they are almost four, this is where they consider home and they are secure and happy little boys.  They refer to me as mom and to my boyfriend as dad and the other kids are to them their sisters and brothers.  They know nothing else.  They still do see their mom and they also call her mom but it is clear that they are more bonded with me than with her.  This upsets her but giving birth doesn't really make you a mother.  I have been the one there and she was not and that is all they know.  I can understand how it may hurt to hear your child call another woman mom but that is what I am to them.  The extended family which is my ex-in-laws all are happy and there is not anyone who has a problem with this except their birth mother.  This is her favorite excuse to use to justify her drinking. She makes it sound as though I stole her kids and have prevented her from being with them.  The truth is that she never really wanted to take care of them and was never there when they needed her.  I have made every attempt in the world to help her and to enable more involvement on her part, but ultimately those attempts fail because she is drunk.  At one point her drinking just became constant, morning,noon, night, round the clock.  This became way too much for her dad to try to live with and we once again sat down with her and spelled things out.  She would need to go to rehab, get help, and stop drinking or she would have to leave the house.  Well ofcourse she agreed to go to rehab but she got kicked out of rehab after 14 days for drinking.  She came back home and we helped her find an outpatient program and local AA meetings but no one was going to spoon feed her this anymore, we knew she had to want it.  She did not.  She kept drinking and left the house.  She stayed in hotels and shelters and finally in an apartment with some drinking buddies and continued to drink around the clock.  I had no involvement with her during this time, I would not allow her to visit the boys unless she was sober and so there were only about three visits in six months.  She showed up all three times under the influence(9am).  The last time she stopped to see them she was so drunk she could not walk or talk.  I told her and the person that brought her to my house that if she ever showed up in that condition again, I would not hesitate to call the police.  She never came back.  Several weeks later, I got a call from one of her housemates to say that they had dropped her off at the hospital.  No big surprise there since I had taken her at least 20 times myself over the past couple of years.  Generally they would nurse her back to health for a couple of days and then send her home and she would start again.   I had no intention of going to the hospital because I was just too angry.  Then I got a call from the hospital social worker looking to locate her family.  Once again they did  not think that she was going to  make it.  She did though and then the question became where would she go.  There was no way that any of us were going to take her in again because we refused to live with her drinking anymore or let it control our lives.   Her roommates did not want her back because they were not going to take care of her, that would ruin the party.  So she was basicallly homeless and pretty much unable to take care of herself and her condition was terminal.  They decided the best place to put her would be a nursing  home.  There her  meds and diet could be carefully managed and she would be comfortable.  The nursing home also helped her to get hospice care to help her cope with the dying process.  In this controlled enviroment, she actually improved dramatically.  She is very stable and the threat of death no longer looms so prominently.  She goes once a week to spend time with the boys and her father at her father's home.  She is there normally eight hours.  I also try to arrange at least two other shorter visits for her each week.  On one occasion she had drank while at the nursing home(I know right) and she knew that if she did it again they would discharge her.  She has been good for quite a few months but this past week she went awol from the home and came back highly intoxicated.  She will now be discharged.  Lucky for her, she still qualifies to go to an adult foster  home where she will still have supervised care and will continue to receive hospice services.  This is really  now her last chance.  If she ends up getting kicked out of there, she will be discharged to the Salvation Army as a homeless person.  I have been through so much with her that really I don't care anymore.  I have come to expect that she is going to drink at every opportunity.  I know in the new setting she will have more freedom and I really do not doubt that is going to lead her to drink.  She attends AA but I know she has made little progress.  I listen to her tell me how she drinks because of this or that, or so and so said this, etc.  Excuse after excuse...she doesn't accept her problem and takes no responsibility for it.  As a recovering A I know that as long as she is blaming other things and other people, she is going to keep finding excuses to drink.  At this point I just want it to be over, I want her to be out of my life.  I am tired of words and actions that are always the opposite of what she says.  I am not angry with her, I know she has a disease.  If anyone ever doubted this was  a real disease, this is a person that would convince them.   Even after all that she has been through and inflicted on others, she still doesn't see a difference between her drinking and others who drink.  She does not see why she is different, she says things like so and so was drinking the other day...well so and so is not an alcoholic I say.  She doesn't see her drinking as a problem after all of this so I know there is really very little hope that she is ever going to get it.  Even before I found this site, I realize that I was already practicing detachment and now I don't feel guilty about it.  I did before I started reading here, now I know it is ok to take care of myself and my needs and those of the boys without feeling guilty.  She is a master  manipulator and relentlessly calls me to try to make me feel sorry for her and do things for her.  I will not.  I do provide visitation with the boys with the condition of sobriety because I feel that is the right thing to do.  However, that is where I draw the line.  She fluctuates between guilt trips and angry tirades.  Ofcourse where she is and her condition is all my fault or someone else's depending on her mood.  I am so disgusted that I can hardly stand to look at her.  Here again she has really gotten another chance... the only reason that hospice has continued with her is because they know in a less controlled setting she will quickly deteriorate.  She could have a chance to survive for quite a while now if she was willing to stop drinking and to be compliant with her meds.  On her own, she never will be.  I do have resentment that I can't completely shake.  When she starts on me about the boys, the anger just comes.  She fails to realize that she is actually lucky that I have the boys or she would not be seeing them at all by this point.  They would have had to go to foster care as there was no other family capable of taking them on.  I have taken wonderful care of her children and they are thriving and she doesn't like that.  I have made a commitment here to these boys and I will be here for them for the rest of their lives.  I already had a large family and it was a big deal to add two more but there was little question in me there.  These boys deserve a normal life with a safe and secure home and love and affection.  I will make sure they get it.  They do have FAS though fortunately very mild from her drinking before she found out she was pregnant.  This is something that we will likely deal with throughout their schooling but don't yet know to what extent.  You would think that she would be grateful for what I have done but she resents it.  She blames me and other family members for not allowing her to drink and have her kids but the reality is that her drinking took that out of our hands long ago.  When I became their guardian it was due to involvement by social services and they would have removed them from her if we had not acted.  Trying to reason with someone in denial and so far gone from reality is pointless.  I have just distanced myself and detached.  There is nothing else to do.  I can't seem to get myself to not allow what she says and does to bother me so I just let her calls go to the machine and avoid having to deal with her at all outside of the visitation with the boys.  Generally that is ok because she does focus on them during that time and doesn't try to say crap as much then.  The nursing home called me to come there when she returned drunk the other day and I did but I did not stay for long.  I just can't be the babysitter anymore. 

So that is my story, sorry it was rather long.  I did not even touch on a fraction of it but you get the general idea.  I have taken my life back and now do not worry aout what choices she makes.  Her choices are just that hers.  I focus on me and my life and on the things I can control and that has been a very freeing exercise.  I am so glad that I came to this site and was able to read all the posts and learn about al-anon.  I plan to continue to come here and to work on these things.  I did not realize how much other people's drinking had affected my life until I started reading. I think that I still need to do a lot of work and to learn to use tools that will help.  Thank you!!!