Hi! Welcome to MIP. I'm not an expert but I am a person who is learning how to stay healthy and cope with the disease of alcoholism and its effects on me as a person whose qualifiers include grandparents, spouse, adult child, neighbors, people who work with me, people I work with.
From what you describe here, sounds like alcoholism at work to me. The program suggests attending at least 6 meetings before deciding if Al-Anon is right for you. In it, we learn the 3cs: We didn't cause it. We can't control it. We can't cure it. We also learn how to keep the focus on ourselves.
By going to meetings, learning more about the disease, choosing conference approved literature, we help ourselves recover from the effects of this generational and fatal disease if not arrested. We have learned that AA and Al-Anon help us arrest the disease's effects on us as people who love people with this disease.

Al-Anon does not say that you should stay with the alcoholic or that you should leave.  Everyone's situation is different.  What it does is offer tools for understand and to keep your own serenity whatever the alcoholic does, and whatever path you choose.

Al-Anon also says: if the drinking is a problem for you, then it's a problem for you.  For me, your BF's habits ring alarm bells.  My experience is that people who have grown up in families where there is alcoholism are slower than regular people to identify alcoholism, not more sensitive.  I'm sure there's someone out there who has tried to say that some ordinary drinker drinks too much, but I haven't ever seen it happen. 

You probably already know that explaining the situation and the drinking to the drinker doesn't have the effect we want, that of making them take effective charge of their drinking.  Typically they deny and try to make us believe that we're crazy or oversensitive or controlling.  And we do try to control the situation -- and if only we could!  But you may already know the three C's: We didn't Cause it, we can't Cure it, we can't Control it.

I hope you'll find a meeting that's a good fit, read the literature, read the threads on this board, and keep coming back. 

 

 

 

 

Aloha NMT and welcome to the board...this disease is hell on analyticals (my past avocation) and will beat the hell out of analyticals who have degrees and work at professions that "fix" others.  One of the reasons being that the higher power which we constantly go to for verification is out of commission; our thinking/thinker and I never thought myself into, around or out of the disease of alcholism.  I've never met another person, professional and not who has done so either.  It took me a long time to learn how to quit trying to "figure it all out and just accept that it was broke and I needed to just let it go and learn something different...trust others".  When I learned how to let it all go I started to underestand how it worked/s.  Control is as basic an human need and underestanding as there is whether the person drinks or doesn't.  Control has many facets and directions the simplest form of control is "self" control only I had to learn that in the program and counseling and college and then counseling again both directions...I am also a behavioral health therapist with emphasis on the behavioral.  I didn't and still don't fool around with a persons thinking or feeling I work from what they do and don't do and when we can change that...the other stuff changes as a consequence...I digress.  It was my behavior that needed inspection and I needed to learn about alcoholism.  Like most others here I was born and raised within it on both sides of the family so it was a natural, a default for me.  The disease was normal and life threatening, natural and predisposed to continue on both the conscious and sub-conscious levels.  When I got into Al-Anon I didn't know about alcoholism...My then spouse was just simply a bitch and a bad one.  It was a moral issue until I found out (AMA) it was a disease and then my wife became a sick person. All during this time I attempted to maintain control over my mind, body, spirit and emtions and let go of trying to control my alcoholic/addict wife.  I could not even come close to getting self control until I admitted that I was powerless over alcoholism and how it fit in my life.  I was toast...I was working a suicide plan...again; until I just turned over control to the program.  I accepted that my wife had a life threatening disease which could and would be fatal to her and maybe to me also if it wasn't arrested by total abstinence.  I accepted that it was progressive that it would continue to get worse over time and that if she stopped for a time and then when back out (which she did) it  would be as if no period of sobriety had happened.  I accepted that she and I had three choices...sobriety/serenity...insanity and death.  We were doing insanity in spades.  Control was an illusion no matter how strongly we tried to convince ourselves.  I didn't know and I didn't know that I didn't know about alcohlism the disease.   I had no control.

One of the phenominums of getting drunk is an increase in anger (no matter where it is directed).  The presence of anger and the demonstration of it proves loss of control and no matter how much the drinker attempts to maintain control they struggle and don't get there and they get angry at not getting there.  Everyone is a target for the anger...don't take it personally you're just a substitute for any available target...He's angry at not having control and he knows it.   In his head his Dr.Jekyll is scolding "why can't you get this right...why can't you drink without getting whacked out".  That pisses him off because he knows the root cause is the booze which has the control no matter what.  By the way I am also a recovering alcoholic...this information is personal...first hand.  I spent more time than most alcoholics I know trying to drink without getting drunk and in the end I was overdosing and turning green (literally...yellowish-green...liver/kidney argument).

He is an alcoholic because his drinking affects you negatively.  You don't get better after first saying "I'd rather do it my way...because of course your way isn't/hasn't worked".  Having a Higher Power greater than youself isn't a Christian thing...it is an acknowledgement that I actually need more power than I have used or exercised up until now.   In hindsight I have become a great analyzer or is that a reporter?   

I was 9 years alcohol free in the Al-Anon Family Groups and a BHT at a large hospital based recovery program plus, plus before I did my own assessment for alcoholism (as a result of doing many more for others) and then had it reviewed by the staff nurse on the adult section of the program.  I still didn't know that I didn't know and so she told me her findings  "Who ever belongs to this assessment needs to be in in-patient care immediately of the next time they drink they die.  I already had learned about the control issue plus I learned that alcoholics are "risk takers" and much more and I surrendered one more time and got into AA.  I have no control even over the phenomenom of relapse.  Nothing to analyze...just accept and then do what is suggested by others who have been here before me who are in many cases my Higher Powers.  They know more and have the answers.

First meeting not being a good fit?  I destroyed my first two Al-Anon meetings with my insanity loss of control and fear.  

He ain't bad he's sick and you can't fix him and as long as he decides to drink he won't attempt to go get fixed with others who know and what to do.  You're not bad you've got the symptoms of the disease and you're out of control and afraid of lots of things still.  What I did under those conditions was followed the directions...come in, sit down, listen, learn, practice practice practice.  When you have a positive breakthru...duplicate it.

Oh and maybe you heard this at the end of your last meeting..."If you keep and open mind...you will find help".

Keep coming back...this does work when you work it.   ((((hugs)))) 

-- Edited by Jerry F on Tuesday 16th of July 2013 07:22:41 PM

Hey , read your post and yes....."power play"  and that is manipulation no matter what he wants to flavor it with

as to meets?? I go online....worked for me....hardly any alanon meets for me around here..they all broke up so I go online

If I were you, I would just focus on me and my alanon and getting me healthier so I don't even be attracted to this kind of relationship

I had to go waaay back in my past and do family of origin work to find out why I kept picking losers....It was b/c I thought I was a loser   AND it was "familiar"   people are afraid of the different, even tho its much better

alanon helped me break that cycle

nomoretalkin wrote:

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Thanks Nesh. You're right, I really DO want to take good care of myself. Hence the hard work in the self-awareness and family of origin issues department. I do NOT want to mislabel my dad drinking issues and my own personal control issues (the 2 of course are related) as "BF is an alcoholic and I'm the victim." That's what I'm trying to sort out now. Sounds like from what you've read of my posts you're squarely in the "yes the bf is a A" department." I'm not quite sure yet but I so appreciate your insight. I'm going to start looking around at the online groups since I think that will be the best fit for me too.

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 Hey, U sound like you are focused and I know that you will come up with  a  "gotta take good care of me"  regimen...I'm telling you, this program literally saved my life...my childhood was sooo bad, it was a miracle I survived it so I had issues galore, and one big manefestation of my family of origin issues is that I kept picking losers....why???   b/c I didn't love me enough to demand better..........I was programmed to fail b/c I was TOLD I was a jerk and useless..............I grew up with substance abuse, so why not marry it to stay in my ugly, sick "comfort zone"...

Unless an alkie is real active in an AA program , and I mean working it hard....there is not much of a chance that the guy can offer any more than misery,  drunken episodes, fights, abandonment, financial problems,  I mean its baaaad....But I know you know that

I respect your up front honesty and your desire to take care of and do whats right by you

We are cheering for ya........on line meets are gr8...I love them b/c I don't have to get out of my PJ's to attend one and if i have to go to restroom?? I can walk 10 feet to my restroom from bedroom computer and GO.....AND I can eat and not have to share my goodies, LOL

 

I'm sorry your local meeting isn't a good fit.  I am an atheist myself and what I've learned to do is to look for the commonalities in what we all experience when we are involved with alcoholics.  My A (alcoholic) had Asperger's too.  One thing I started to look at was why I was willing to stay in a relationship with someone who was giving me so little of what I needed.  I didn't grow up in an alcoholic family but my mother did have Asperger's.  So the deprivation felt strangely familiar.  In a way it was comfortable/familiar (that is, the deprivation wasn't comfortable, but the familiarity was comfortable).  In another way, it was a chance for me to "win" at last -- get that attention and responsiveness I needed so much -- except that I never did "win."  And there was also the fear that nothing better was out there.  And then the anger I developed distracted me from my feelings of grief and sadness.  The anger got so overwhelming I couldn't feel anything else.  But nothing good happened if I expressed it, so I was left burning with anger and yet nothing changed and I couldn't even express what was really going on with me.  A recipe for misery.

Of course there will be other consequences for the A, but the denial is so strong that they may never see them.  You see alcoholics in jail, having lost everything, and they're still in denial.  But if explaining all this did any good, there wouldn't be any alcoholics left in the world.  It may be that your A hasn't progressed far enough down the path that the consequences are huge yet.  (But he will.  Alcoholism is progressive.)  Or it may be that his denial is such that he turns a blind eye to the consequences.  It doesn't really matter.  The consequences are between himself and his conscience.  There's nothing other people can do except leave them to experience the consequences themselves.  It seems wrong and infuriating that we can't affect the process -- but it's true.  What we can do is get out of the way and take care of ourselves.

I hope you'll keep coming back.

Mattie wrote:

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I am an atheist myself and what I've learned to do is to look for the commonalities in what we all experience when we are involved with alcoholics.   One thing I started to look at was why I was willing to stay in a relationship with someone who was giving me so little of what I needed.  I didn't grow up in an alcoholic family but my mother did have Asperger's.  So the deprivation felt strangely familiar.  In a way it was comfortable/familiar (that is, the deprivation wasn't comfortable, but the familiarity was comfortable).   And there was also the fear that nothing better was out there.  And then the anger I developed distracted me from my feelings of grief and sadness.  The anger got so overwhelming I couldn't feel anything else.  But nothing good happened if I expressed it, so I was left burning with anger and yet nothing changed and I couldn't even express what was really going on with me.  A recipe for misery.

  It seems wrong and infuriating that we can't affect the process -- but it's true.  What we can do is get out of the way and take care of ourselves.

 

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 WOW, Mattie, reading your post was really enlightening......I am kinda "agnostic" , I mean I believe in Creator and Christ, but I am agnostic about his/her/their INVOLVEMENT in my life....Like I am on my own....Right now I am trying to network on my facebook all these homeless and beautiful, adoptable horses from all over the country and I want one again, sooo bad, but I dont' have enough income to save 1 or 2...so I share them on my board, and people keep asking me   "Oh pray"  and I CANT..I  just CANT pray anymore....I don't feel like anyone is home, and I think that was part of my anger when I first came here...all those bible promises that I read that I never saw....Never got recompensed what the locust took away from me...It was like another betrayal....

Now in program, yea, I am less angry at Hp/Creator , and sorta had to grieve , watching myself deconvert to agnosticism re: How much Creator is involved in our lives......I watched the Poseidon Adventure and I loved Gene Hackman as this catholic preacher   he goes

"God is busy...Corporate....too busy on the big scheme to be worried about the individual,  so if you want God, you gotta pray to that part of him/it that is WITHIN you"    and it went on and I thought ya know, maybe that is so, but deep inside, I feel like  God/HP is "hands off" on the physical, wordly planeand only involved in the spiritual plane....and its the physical that I am in....needing to be able to support myself better, wanting to do more things that bring joy, etc....

I dont now what Asperger's is, but I grew up in alkie, abusive, abandoning family...If I was not attacked, then I was abused,  then abandoned.....I used to cry out to Creator and learned early, that I was on my own....Nobody came to rescue me out of my despairing condition...My hopelessness....I just kept running away, trying to get into trouble with the law, via shoplifting to be removed from that house, but he would get me "out of hock" and so I stayed...

My anger was rage for a long time....at Creator....at the ones who hurt me....rage so hot it was red in color.....program got me to work the steps and as I worked the steps and went to meets, etc., I began to actually feel grief and sorrow and I could finally CRY....Now I can feel a range of emotions, your post brought up all kinds of thoughts.

I remember when I went to my first meeting....Had they told me I "had" to have a God or whatever, i wold have walked...

program taught me that it was a higher power "OF my UNDERSTANDING"  that left it open for me....so U being atheist maybe program is your HP,   for me it is my whatever part of the divine that might be WITHIN me.....I don't believe that any OUTside of me diety is gonna hear me....

Sometimes I feel bad about this...I see people who have a good relationship, a loving relationship with their God, and I wonder "how cool that would be"   but I guess I had too many trials and not enough happiness to justify it....and I get really turned off when folks say  something real bad was "god's will"....How do ya love and trust a God that lets prayers for desperate help go unanswered???  How do ya love and trust a God who leaves me to my own devices???   I want to trust, but I CANT...

So I look within me...whatever part of universal power is within me is what I turn to......and like you said, I get out of the way  (I soo hate being powerless b/c that to me means I am screwed...gotta turn it over to WHAT???)  but I know I have to get out of the way if I am not in control  an let what will be be....

I think there is a Creator when I see the beauty of the flowers, and new puppies or foals being born and I can smell their soft, innocent smells....I know man didn't build this beauty in nature that I see....Something bigger than me did,  but to trust it to take care of me, to provide for me, to help me when I am up S*&*ts creek w/out a paddle????  I CANT

I feel like I came her to experience and learn, but I could have learned in a less devastating way, I would think

Sorry to ramble, your post was awesome and brought up some feelings that have been kinda bubbling under neath me and I felt like sharing and letting them go.....

Hope this post made sense and it is totally OFF TOPIC, I know, but I was provoked into really looking in me and wanted to share about it.......

Wow what a lot to digest. First off, Mattie, I feel like I could have typed your post myself. I can related so intimately to what you wrote, especially about the anger. I feel almost drunk with anger sometimes, like I'm so angry I'm not myself. If you don't mind, could you speak a bit more about how you recovered from that? When I was a kid I was known as the "angry little girl" mostly by my emotionally abusive mother. I was angry and hurt then and I'm angry and hurt now. All the therapy I've done and years of soul searching hasn't quite put an end to that. Now I'm living with a (probable) A who I love but also causes me to feel rage. Sometime I lash out at him and think to myself "where the heck did that come from?" I think that brings me to what Jerry said about me being out of control too - clearly I am.

Mattie - you also describe a scenario with your Aspie mom that is eerily familiar to me. Maybe for me I found this other distant soul and I thought that I could gain retribution by "winning" his hard fought attention and genuine affection. Maybe if this person loves me it will make up for the fact that my mom didn't. Perhaps I don't know what it is like to have my love returned to me completely in the way that I give love to my primary attachment figure.

Jerry - I think I'm hiding out in my analytical brain and the letters behind my name. It's easier sometimes to feel like the knowledge I possess about mental health and substance abuse gives me the upper hand and some semblance of control. What a load of you know what. It's easier to talk about "the problem" and the "identified patient - the A" then it is to be really honest and focus inward. I'm so grateful I found this space. I am trying to keep an open mind about the hp thing, I really don't think for a second I can keep doing what I've been doing and find peace. The meeting I went was a little too overtly Christian for me to feel comfortable right now. Also given my profession, I've gotta be sort of careful about running into people in the community. Thanks again everyone.

I agree grateful. Unfortunately it's a "catch 22" for me. As a helping professional I want to set an example and help to remove the negative stigma often associated with seeking help. However there could be negative professional repercussions for me if it was made known that I was attending. (my work place and boss is really screwed up - I work in a school system) Looks like the online version might be the best option for me. Well off to do some EMDR around drinking... After all this great "discussion" I think my therapist and I will have a lot talk about at my session tonight.

lgnutah wrote:

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I have never been to a Face to Face meeting yet but come here and read the posts and also sometimes go to the MIP group that meets twice daily and have found them both very, very helpful.

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 Ya know?? I had such bad luck w/fac2fac meets either going belly up or becomming power struggles between "hostesses" or "hosts"  who were not servents to the program, but using the meetings for their own agendas.....so I moved around....."surfed"  the alanon places....in desperation for a f2f meet, I even when to open AA meets and they were cool...really good, but 1 by 1 they kinda quit that concept and they began to "close them"

I finally just tossed up my hands and got on line and been there since.....I get a lot out of them...no u can't see them, but so what??  it still is a soul u r communicating with and the chat room "after meet" sessions were kinda fun....

so I do the online thingy at it works fine for me........I just decided to do what I gotta do 2 recover, and like I always tell people if the back door is locked??? walk in the front door.....On line is fine!!!!  

Just my take!!! 

I am a counselor too. My insights into others never helped me in relationships until I got into recovery. And I am also not christian either and never found that a problem. I listen for the meaning of the prayers and don't balk at the word "God." I have heard others share about Jesus but NEVER saw it in AA or alanon literature only "God" and even that is often rephrased as "higher power."

So...In prior relationships before recovery, I would "figure out" a person's pathology and somehow think that because I was educated and "right" about the assessment that this obligated them to listen to me or to change for the benefit of us being a couple. I also would diagnose and rip myself about my perceived issues rather than seek out help or a loving and consistent program of change that the 12 steps has been for me.

Currently, I do not diagnose my partner. Past attempts in previous relationships were not appreciated and I usually was told "stop the psychobabble" and "don't diagnose me!" Since being in recovery, I know more who I am. I have healed quite a bit and am spiritually centered much more. I don't sweat other people's problems in my personal life so much. That's my job - not my homelife. In relationships, I just want to enjoy time together. I just want to have fun and love my partner and friends and family to the best of my ability a day at a time.

Yes - I am aware that my partner is an ACOA and he has some CoDA traits but I could give a rat's butt because I love him fully and wouldn't change a thing about him. Prior to recovery, I was so willfull and used my psychology knowledge to rationalize and try and turn Mr. Wrong into Mr. Right. I'm not God. I can't do that. People also have the right to carry on with whatever issues they have and many of them don't want or care about my input.

I don't know if this relationship is for you or not. It does sound like you know the score in terms of his behavior and what might be symptoms of alcoholism or at the very least, an emotionally underdeveloped person. Alanon is about you though...Once you really focus on recovery and getting spiritually centered and feeling grounded with who you are and also feeling okay with your past and what that means, then you will approach dating and relationships with a healthy spirit and not just a keen mind for picking out psychopathology. That will attract healthier people to you and you won't have ongoing relationships with people you keep noticing are busted on the inside - cuz you will not be one of those people.