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.
The quest for personal control is natural...we all want it and we all like it because it gives us a sense of balance..."everything is okay with me" until alcoholism invades our lives and destroys our personal controls. Nothing goes right and our value system is disrupted and even destroyed. You want something one way and you can't have it. It involves another in order to get your way and unfortunately that another is messed up mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually...the other person is on another planet and actually wanting to be there and not wanting you to have your way...that is bothersome to most folks, especially those folks who come here...this is normal; the way it is supposed to be within the disease of alcoholism. Even he has given up his quest for personal controls to the chemical alcohol and he also is bothered by it and that is one reason to hide the bottles.
Trudy I got that you got it from reading your post...the awarenesses are there and I read it while listening to the words of the First Step running thru my head. Admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanagable. We will do what it is that we don't want to do...the disease has the power over us and we go look for proof rather than going to and letting a power higher/greater over alcoholism have our control. We will not be managed we will do what our egos and pride urge us to do to prove we are right (rather than be happy) and we will search and search and search to make sure we are right (rather than happy) and because we come away from it right and not happy we are bothered.
Read your post as if it were someone else writing it and I believe you will see the answers and solutions to your question. Like Pinkchip I think you have program experience from somewhere. The solutions are in the program..."It works when you work it"...I've thrown the program out the window in favor of being right more often than I care to mention and then I got sick and tired of being sick and tired of being bothered and hated admitting to myself that something else controlled me while I didn't like being controlled by anything.
You got the only consequence you were able to accept when you found the bottles...That is why you were looking for them. Back to step 1...do all 12 daily...24/7 and you'll get control back of TrudyS.
(((((hugs))))) In support.
My sponsor once told me "When you're not ready to accept reality...the only answer to the question why is...another why".
-- Edited by Jerry F on Tuesday 21st of August 2012 08:53:41 AM
Could use some advice today. I know my AH hasn't been sober, he says he is - says he doesn't feel the need to drink, but I know he has been drinking. For some reason this morning I decided to look through the trash, and there they were, two empty vodka bottles. I know he was home yesterday while I was working and he was drinking. I have not had any illusions that he is sober so why does this upset me? I am disappointed in myself for looking (haven't done that for months) and upset with him that he still lies lies lies. He lies every day to my face when he says he is sober and 'doesn't even feel like drinking', he lies every time he goes to an AA meeting and pretends he is sober, lies lies lies. Soooooo, if I know he hasn't been sober why does finding the physical proof send me so low. I know we have no trust, he can't be trusted, he lies so easily it frightens me. Why do I want to pull those bottle out of the trash and say to him "I'm not stupid, you are drinking, at least be honest". because I know he can't be honest, I know it's how the disease works. I am really trying hard to this morning to think through my feelings and not react, why why why?
It is natural to want to trust and believe the person you are married to. You are having to learn coping skills to deal with alcoholism and alcoholism is cunning, baffling, and powerful. It brings insanity into your relationshp and your life and you did not ask for any of this. I would be mad too.
Of course you sound like you've been through some alanon or know some about this so you know that you being mad does not help or solve anything. You have awareness now and are not just reacting. It's progress but you still have to go through the painful process of acceptance before you can detach.
I am working my program (or trying to) and my brain knows what I should do, my heart and my pride want something else. Jerry F, wow, your post was so on the money I reread it five times already. You are right, so right. I guess I am still fighting with the concept that I am powerless, I've been working Alanon for a year and am still grappling with that first and most important concept. You are right, he has given up his quest for control to the chemical and is bothered by it or he wouldn't hide it. My quest is to give up my control over him (I don't have any, never had any, never will have any). It all makes perfect sense, except the disease makes no sense and is maddening. I need to refocus on myself today, I have thrown myself into a tailspin and only I can get me back under control. Thank you all for your words, they help more than you can know. ts
You're mad because someone you love is engaging in self-destructive behavior and lying about it - that is only a normal reaction. I would always feel like I got a kick in the gut when I would fine bottles or receipts that AH was at a liquor store. This was even when I knew that he hadn't given up drinking. Knowing it is one thing but something about seeing the evidence makes it all the more painful, because its start evidence that the disease is running rampant. Probably everyone who's loved an A has engaged in codependent behavior - looking for bottles, trying to sense it in their smell or the tone of their voice, etc. etc...What I learned the very hard way was that doing that never achieved the desired result - eg., that he would stop drinking. That had to come from him and only him. You've gotten some really good esh above. Detaching from someone you love can be very tough but with Alanon, it is doable. Wishing you support, nyc
so many stories here are simialr to mine.. I have great detachment skills (not sure if thats good or not) but I refuse to let someone think when they lie to me I beleive them.. my AH gets worse and worse the more I let it go. I knew mine wasnt sober either.. lots of tell tell signs.. anyway I was busying myself cleaning around dog kennels and sure enough an empty vodka bottle had been shoved under the kennel (I know its not "old" becasue im out there often) i took a pic on my phone sent it to him and said.. dont think Im foolish enough to beleive your lies. Of course he is txting and calling like crazy .. I have nothing more to say.. I pick itup and throw i away. but even tho I may be wrong for calling him out on a lie.. it helps MY healing !!
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..."expecting the world to treat you fairly because your a good person, is like expecting a bull to not attack you because your a vegetarian "
Jerry, your post was awesome. That really helped me to understand some things I haven't yet regarding the control aspect. Thank you for that. And Trudy, so sorry you are going through it. It's just so darned confusing and difficult.
I feel the need to call them out on a lie too. I don't like being manipulated and I don't feel I can make the best choices for me if I don't have the facts. Knowing it in my mind or heart is not enough for me to make a decision on because I see things in to many shades and then get confused. The facts help and then I can't play victim and live in denial. The choice is mine.
This has also happened to me. I would get assurances from the alcoholic that he's not drinking and then find empty bottles in the recycling. Even though I didn't believe him and knew he was drinking, I would still get a strong sense of being deflated. As if just when I thought that maybe a change was finally coming, bam...we're right back at square one.
Subconsciously there was that hope that maybe he wasn't drinking. It's extremelly hard to give up that hope. That's why we come to al-anon to give ourselves hope that we can change our attitude and not change the alcoholic.
I suspect you're bothered because of the lies lies lies. The lies allow us that glimmer of hope that maybe this time things will be different. Then the truth is hammered home with the finding of the bottles and even though you say you knew in your gut that he was drinking, you really had hoped you were wrong and as long as you didn't find the bottles, that hope was still alive.
The hope fosters dreams of him finding sobriety and everything returning back to good, the monster vanquished, being able to live together, finding each other, all the hopes and dreams you shared before you found out he had an alcohol problem - you want to believe the lies because they lead you down the path of least resistance - everything in you wants to go down THAT particular path, back to a good life, a sane life with a person you love. You WANT to believe the lies, and you try your hardest to believe them, denying what your other senses tell you until they get the better of you and you go looking for the proof.
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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
You know it took me so long to really wrap my head around the issue of expecting an alcoholic to be an alcoholic. If they are not in a program, not pursuing sobriety they are going to behave like an alcoholic. For so long I really couldn't agree with that maxim I had all these BUTs around it. But they look okay, but they promised, but they are going to AA, but they whatever.
In reading Getting them Sober by Toby Rice Drew I really got to embrace that concept. Expectation is everything. When I am around an alcoholic I expect them to be one. I expect them to lie, I expect them to deny, I expect them to be completely willing to engage in some kind of a subtrefuge. I have to say it took me years and years of beating my head against the wall to do it. I think the issue is its far easier to beat myself to a pulp than to really come to grips what means for me.
When I lived with an alcoholic for 7 years if I had admitted he was an alcoholic it would have thrown it back to me that I didn't have the relationship I had invested so much in. I couldn't count on him (not for even the prospect of returning my calls) . I couldn't expect him to be responsible (he wasn't to anything but he could camaflage it so so well) . I couldn't expect him to pay the bills (he didn't and I did when I stopped paying them the sky didn't fall in he paid them after he waited to see if I would!) . I couldn't expect him to be considerate of me (he could put on a show about that too and in some ways he did think of me but it was all totally squashed by his obsession with drinking and using) . All I knew was to rail on, rage cry, then go into denial again and on about what he didn't do, what he had promised, what his mother did, what his friends did...what happened when and what. I simply wasn't at a place where I could get to that acceptance of what it meant to me that he was an alcoholic. Not that getting to that point really happens for anyone overnight. But I have to say when I am around an alcoholic these days the line to getting to acceptance is a much clearer one than it ever was before its weeks at the most and not years, decades and lifetimes anymore.
But before I could even get to that line to get out of the confusion, fear and grief that goes along with alcoholism I had to learn to detach. Ironically I had to learn to not look in the garbage, to not know rather than to try to come to grips with what I already knew deep inside me. I never really had to look for drug/drink proof around the ex A his behavior was proof of that but I kept right on wanting to doubt myself because it was too hard to say I didn't have the person I needed, the support I craved and the love I felt I had shown him was ineffectual against alcoholism. I had to get to a place of being willing to take suggestions from people in al anon (and boy did I hate having to listen to them because after all I was expert on what I needed for him to change rather than for me to change after all there was nothing wrong with me? ) However because I was in so much pain I had to admit what I was doing wasn't working anymore and trust that maybe just maybe what people in al anon suggested might help. Of course trusting anyone when you have been around an alcoholic is somewhat difficult if not impossible but since they have been there and done that no one is going to mark you and give you a grade on your program (Although in my judgmental days I very much did that and always always always gave myself an A!!!!).
Expecting someone to lie, hide, deny and twist everything around is a hard one. I felt like it meant that I wasn't a good partner, didn't have hope for them and wasn't being supportive and any alcoholic will tell you likewise. Irregardless expecting an alcoholic to be an alcoholic is a way to learn to take care of yourself. If you can get to that no matter what they are going to be an alcoholic you can take back all that obsession and put the focus on you, what do you need to take care of you, where can you get your needs met? Remember the three C's you didn't cause it, you can't cure it and you definitely can't control it).
