"Anyone can become addicted if they drink enough for long enough," Anne told news.com.au. Her husband certainly did.

"He had a miserable Irish childhood, a father who was a raging alcoholic and, most importantly, he is visually impaired," she said.

"He chose to drown his sorrows as a way of coping with his life because the social culture makes it an easy way out."

Anne's husband suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, which causes tunnel vision and night blindness, among other symptoms. The condition is degenerative and currently incurable.

His impairment inspired the title of Anne's recently released book, Blind Drunk, in which she describes the struggle of living with an alcoholic and recounts her partner's counterintuitive path to sobriety.

"Drinking alcohol is such a major part of our social culture. It's legal, it's fun and it makes us feel good," Anne said. "But we tend to conveniently forget that it is a drug."

As a professional relationship counsellor, Anne believed she could help her partner overcome his alcoholism, but her interference only made the situation worse. For half a decade Anne was "addicted to the addict," attempting to control his drinking to the point where her own life crumbled.

"I became obsessed with monitoring his drinking, where he was and what he was doing in the same way he was obsessed with the drug," Anne said.

"Over five years, I became someone I didn't recognise, as if my spirit was locked away and shrivelled."

Anne stopped accepting invitations to social events, as nobody wanted to invite her partner and she didn't have the energy to attend. Eventually the invitations dried up.

"If anyone asked me how I was, I told them how he was."

"I'm lucky I still have any friends, being so boring and uninterested in life."

Anne's experience is not unusual. She says there is more of a focus on drinkers and their difficulties than on those who have to cope with them, and any attention loved ones do get is generally negative.

"Alcoholism is a family disease and those not afflicted don't really understand," she said. "There still seems to be a stigma attached to having an addiction problem in the family."

"It is far easier to try to keep it under wraps and manage it within the unit, continuing the denial and containing the shame."

Anne's life became increasingly insular as she obsessed over her partner's addiction. Her efforts to help all failed.

"I made two classic mistakes, both quite arrogant. One, that I knew all there was to know about alcohol and the other, particularly as a counsellor, that if he examined the reasons behind his need to drink, understood them, he could then choose to stop," she said.

"I started to try and control his drinking, even thinking I could cure it if I racked my brains enough."

"We were both like Jekyll and Hyde in that he was often contrite and promised to cut down and of course, I felt guilty because of outside circumstances and so encouraged him, reasoned with him, believed him and was nurturing only to feel very angry and resentful and criticise, reproach and nag him when, yet again, he was staggering about, wetting the bed and obviously completely sozzled."

"My compulsion was to change him and his compulsion was to drink."

Eventually, Anne and her husband were driven to seek outside help, but even that failed to improve the situation. She says rehab didn't work because her partner hadn't taken responsibility for his drinking, and she hadn't let him.

"We talked openly about his drinking problem and him getting help. He went into the psychiatric hospital to be dried out. His drinking went much more underground in that he hid bottles, and consumed spirits more," Anne said.

"The worst part for me was the level of deception and lying, always managing to convince me that I was wrong in what I thought I saw, enough to make me feel I was going mad."

"On several occasions I said I didn't want to carry on living like this, but reneged on it every time. Fearing being alone, I guess, and guilty in rejecting him."

As hopeless as the situation seemed, Anne did find a solution to her husband's alcoholism, and it was completely counterintuitive.

Instead of focusing her energy on attempting to cure her partner, Anne had to become more selfish; she needed to start prioritising her own health and well-being. She now calls this process "compassionate detachment".

"Eventually, through information gained at rehab centres, I was focused enough to start to unglue myself from him and to detach, forcing him to be responsible and me to change my ingrained habits," Anne said.

"At last, I told him I cared about him, but didn't want to see him or talk to him until he had decided to stop drinking."

Anne knew it was a risk, that her husband might not be able to stop and could end up dead from a blind action or organ failure.

"It was the right decision and the only possible one if I wanted to recover my own well-being and my life," she said.

"It was no coincidence that when I finally managed to stop trying to stop him drinking, he stopped."

"The only way a drinker can recover is total abstinence," Anne now says. She acknowledges that detachment goes against every instinct of a loving partner, but the evidence from her experience is clear.

Given a choice between living with alcohol or his partner, Anne's husband finally kicked the habit. He has now been sober for eight years.

"In a close relationship, detaching goes against the grain, giving the impression one doesn't care about the other and there is a feeling of guilt," Anne said. "The drinker certainly won't like it."

"The well known phrase 'one day at a time' really does help."

"By staying in the present we can react to reality better than we can in our imaginings. We ground ourselves, and life becomes more manageable."

She also advises people to seek help from someone who understands the dilemma.

"It is of paramount importance to ask for help, to talk to someone in the same boat," she said. "Often friends mean well but do not help. It's good to know one is not alone and isolated."

Blind Drunk isn't a book about alcoholics. It explores the effects of alcoholism on those who are close to the drinker, and the mistakes loved ones make while attempting to help.

"I wrote the book because of my problem. I displayed ingrained traits, belonging to me and my upbringing, which enabled him to carry on drinking and get progressively worse," Anne said.

"I am not alone in this behaviour. Most family members do the same in the mistaken hope that they are helping when actually they are hindering the possible recovery of the addict."

(hope you enjoyed reading this...John)