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.
Apologies for the length of this post. I've been married to my alcoholic husband for almost 5 years. When we met, he drank, but nothing like now. He has anxiety, panic disorder, and a host of physical problems (fatty liver, chronic and bloody diarrhea, possible colitis, etc). He's a stay at home father to our 4-year old son, and has been since our son was 3 months old. A few years ago, my husband's anxiety became overwhelming. He was doing shots in the morning and afternoon in order to try to get through the day. I had to stay home from work, or leave work early, a number of times because he either had horrible stomach pains, or he was just so anxious that he was unable to cope. I was then laid off from my job of 9 years (May 2012). It was then that life really started to spiral downward.
He started drinking even more. He went on anti-anxiety medicine, which he was not supposed to drink on, but he did anyway. He was arrested twice, once for brandishing a firearm and once for verbally assaulting a pharmacy worker. He wrecked both of our cars in the very same night, a few hours apart. He would go to the liquor store in the morning and come home at 1pm, completely wasted and falling over (this was definitely due to the combo effect of drinking and the meds). He often would just go to bed between 4pm and 7pm every night. I was pretty much a single parent to our then 2-year old.
I don't know why he did not go to rehab then. We had insurance for about 6 months after I was laid off, and it would have been an ideal situation for him to leave for a month while I was home so he could get sober and start his recovery. But it wasn't really talked about. In fact, I don't think we talked much during those 9 months I was laid off.
The following January I got a job. He knew he had to pull it together so he could watch our son. I was very proud of him because he cut way back on the liquor and went of the meds. He still drank every night, but he waited until I got home, at least. Fast-forward a year and a half and things are very bad. He is ok for most of the day, but mid-afternoon he's back to doing shots of vodka or that damn cinnamon whiskey. His health is deteriorating quickly. He spends most of the day in bed because he feels terrible, and when he's not in bed, he's in the bathroom with horrible cramps and blood. For some reason he's refused to make an appointment...well, I know why - because he's scared. Instead, he blames me for not going to the doctor, because apparently good wives make dr. appts for their husbands. I have made appointments for him before, but all the important ones he cancels.
Every night we have horrible fights. We can't have a conversation for longer than 15 minutes without it turning into a fight or an argument. He says that I "won't let" him go to rehab. This couldn't be further from the truth. I want him to get help so badly. For him, us, our son. What I did tell him is that I cannot take off of work for 4 weeks so he can go to rehab for 30 days. I asked him to try it for 2 weeks, the max amount of time I can take off, and then we would reassess and see if I need to ask his mom for help in watching our son (her job security is not good, either, however, so I have been wary to talk to her....plus, he had been lying to his parents, telling them that he is off the liquor). He refuses to even try it for 2 weeks. He said that he won't even "be over the shakes" in 2 weeks. So I am apparently stopping him from going to rehab. :/
I don't know what to do. We are in dire financial straits. I admit that I have a lot of resentment towards him because, before I met him, I had great credit. Now I couldn't even qualify for a $100 loan. He spends half of our mortgage payment on liquor every month. He yells at me and is verbally abusive towards me in front of our 4-year old. I don't want my son to grow up like this....and even sadder, I don't want him to grow up to be like his dad. :( That breaks my heart. I want him to get help, but I have a responsibility to our son, too. I can't lose the ONLY valuable asset we have (our house), which will happen if I get fired. I am trying to hold our lives together, but I can't help but feel that he's unraveling the threads faster than I can repair them. Please let me know if you have any thoughts, guidance, advice, etc. I am desperate.
Welcome! You've come to the right place. Others will respond to you, too. First off - alcoholism is a progressive disease that it appears from the symptoms you have described are damaging your husband and affecting you adversely. I've been through some of what you are describing and Al-Anon has been a very big help to me. I first went to help my husband and I stayed to help myself. I can't give you advice on any of the things you are describing, but I can say that going to Al-Anon meetings to learn more about the disease, spend time listening to others' stories, learning how to work and apply the steps to you and your life and obtaining the literature can make a huge difference for you. If you keep an open mind, you will find help in the Al-Anon rooms and the things that are baffling you now will no longer hold a lot of power over you. You will learn how to deal with the issues at hand and you won't be alone. Keep coming back here, too.
As you read the messages on these boards you might see that our stories are incredibly similar - sometimes right down to what is being said by the As in our lives! For a long time I was heartbroken that my husband thought that 'I wasn't there for him.' I had tried so hard to support him and I could not understand why he was saying it. Then I found this site and I saw at least five other people who apparently hadn't been there for their husbands either (and their stories showed that they had!). That made me feel so much better because I realised that it was the drink talking and it was not about me at all.
We also racked up some big debts and we had to move - I felt so guilty about it and I took on far too much of the responsibility for that situation. (for info, we rented our apartment out and that helped to pay off some of the debt without loosing the asset). I thought that I was helping my husband but in fact I did not help him at all by allowing him to be abusive towards me. And those resentments that I built up led to me being abusive towards him as well (although not nearly as abusive as I would have liked to have been thank goodness!!! )
When I went to my first Alanon meeting I was welcomed with love. In a very rare occurrence the meeting had been held up by someone's inebriated spouse making a fuss. It was funny really because someone was very kind and kept me out of the room and entertained while it was going on because I was a newbie. They protected me from something that I actually lived with day to day!!! When I met the rest of the group I recognised myself in their tiredness and exhaustion and I admired their loving capacity and ability to get on and enjoy life despite the crazy behaviour of others. I knew that I didn't want to be tired and exhausted any more. I wanted to enjoy life and to stop feeling sorry for myself!
I'm so sorry that you are having to go through this. I hope that you can get to an alanon meeting in your area, it really can change your life. Your post shows a lot of awareness about where the problems are. You can not make your husband get better - only he can. But you can draw a line about what role you will tolerate him having in your life and the life of your son. PS. Actions speak louder than words in my experience.
Welcome vakick ,
Glad that you reached out and connected. As the others have indicated, you are not alone and have found a safe haven . Living with the disease of alcoholism is destructive to everyone and we become irritable, unreasonable,and lost in the misery of trying to force solutions and solve problems that are not ours to solve,
Alanon and this Board are a fellowship of people who meet in order to solve our common problems and you will find much support from those who truly understand. Alanon was founded by the wife of the founder of AA and the tools suggested helped me to regain my self esteem, as I learned to keep the focus on myself , live one day at a time, trusting a power greater than myself .
There is hope so please keep coming back here as well.
Welcome to MIP....you have received great responses and guidance and will receive more. You are not responsible for any of what your husband is claiming. Accepting we are powerless over this disease is the first step to sanity. You are not powerless over your response to it and that will become clear to you through al anon. Your husband may or may not seek help, but that has to be his choice for him. Your responsibility lies in caring for you and your son. I am concerned about the safety of your son in your husbands care. The only thing an alcoholic cares about is feeding the addiction...anything and everything takes a backseat, even the care of their children. If something would happen to your child, you would then be responsible for putting him in harms way by leaving him with an alcoholic that is as steeped in the disease as your husband is. I know this sounds harsh, I don't mince words when children are involved. I also acknowledge that the pervasiveness of this disease may be new to you, so no need to feel any guilt over choices that have been made. Proceed with care and protect you and your child. You will find us to be a loving community even when we are direct. (((Hugs)))
-- Edited by PP on Thursday 12th of June 2014 07:24:16 AM
Al-anon face to face meetings, finding my sponsor and MIP have saved my sanity and taught me a new way to focus my life. Keep coming back, read al-anon literature and keep coming back! Sending you love and support on your journey!
__________________
Sending you love and support on your journey always! BreakingFree
Al-Anon/Alateen Family Group Headquarters, Inc. 800-344-2666
" Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
"Serenity is when your body and mind are in the same place."
I have found that what alcoholics (not just the one I lived with for 7 years but others as well) what they "say" has little to do with the truth or anything I ever did SAID OR MEANT, and trying to explain what I really meant to say only frustrates me and gives them fuel to frustrate me more.... it's just what they think meets their needs. the problem for me is I really really started to believe and take to heart what was said. I began to believe I was so incredibly broken..so insecure (even though I had great success in business and parenthood prior to meeting this alcoholic)????.
after plently of time to just relax and get to know myself again,,,I am now in a non alcoholic, non crazy relationship... no one is making me second think my statements or wonder if I'm the one that is crazy... It's so nice...just to be normal and not have to try to "figure so much out". a normal relationship is so great I can not believe I put so much effort into a sinking ship!!!
Someone actually supports me sometimes, In my case everything was said and done in order to determine what would allow him to drink .... ( I"m not saying they know they are doing this or that they do not know...just that for me that appeared to be what it was...all about how can I continue to drink and not be blamed in any way for our messed up life!
I found our on my own, I am NOT insecure, I am not jealous, I am not a victum, I am not less than.... I am a pretty nice lady, who is often motivated, fun and happy!!! I just listened to a lot of poop...that was not about me but about HIM!!
OH and by the way trying to explain or convince them of any of this only makes it worse it had to be all about me and my view of myself (the most difficult part to reprogram myself tos and for me I found out I could NOT be my best self or even a good self and be in a relationship with him, I had to give up the " oh but I feel so sorry for his disease, or I love him, or he had a horrible childhood, all were true but all meant I had to destroy myself and my relationship with my children and grand children and parents and friends to allow him in my life, I could not be happy or normal with all that crazy. ... I have to remember my reality is 100 % about what I think of me.. and CAN NOT ever be about what others think about me or else it is misinformed!!! cuz they don't know me like I know me they are basing their ideas on their life,,, good or bad only ME (AND MY HIGHER POWER) know ME!!!!
-- Edited by glad on Thursday 12th of June 2014 10:50:31 AM
I'm glad you have found us. I hope you can also find a face-to-face meeting too, because the support is invaluable. They say to try six because they're all different. There are also meetings online here. And many face-to-face meetings have childcare -- look in the Yellow Pages under Al-Anon and you can see if there's one near you that does.
You say that he didn't go into rehab when you had insurance because he was scared. From my experience, they don't go into rehab because they don't want to stop drinking. It feels good to them and their judgment is so distorted by the alcohol that they think they can pull off having an adequate life. I think probably most of us have tried to explain the truth till we're blue in the face, but until they hit bottom (if they do), it's denial all the way. So they keep drinking because they refuse to look at how they're destroying things -- they have a deep compulsion to keep going.
He may well believe his reasons about the 2-week program not being adequate. And truth to tell, he's probably right. If I knew for sure that my A would stick with all four weeks of a 4-week rehab and stay sober afterwards, I'd move heaven and earth to give him the chance. The sad thing is that the relapse rate is high, and even a 4-week stint can't guarantee anything. And of course it's an easy excuse as to why he won't start, to say he needs 4 weeks or nothing. You could always say, "Do two weeks, and then you get an extension," I suppose. I'd guess he'd have some reason why that wouldn't work too. When they're not ready, they have every excuse in the world.
But there's something I want to mention that could be important. It sounds as if your husband loves your little boy and would never intentionally hurt him. My husband was just as dedicated to our little boy. But what went on when I was out of the house and he was taking care of him was dangerous and insane. I even thought my AH was sober -- he said he'd give up drinking, and he appeared sober every evening. But then one night I came home at an unexpected time and found out the truth. My AH had passed out on the floor, leaving our toddler in diapers that clearly hadn't been changed since the night before -- and leaving him near a window that reached down to the ground, that was three stories above ground level, and that he had left OPEN. It was only by the grace of God that our son didn't toddle out that window and fall to his death. After I took in this scene of horror, I found the huge stash of beer cans he had been hiding from me. That's when I knew that I couldn't trust him to look after our child, not for five minutes, let alone a day.
It sounds as if you are in a similar situation. Your H spends most of the day in bed, and you have a two-year old wandering through the house unsupervised? That is very worrying. I too thought that if my AH loved our son enough, he wouldn't put him in danger -- but when they are drinking, they are not themselves. Everything else falls by the wayside.
So there is the fact that your son may be in danger, and you want to do everything you can to prevent a tragic ending. The other thing is that if someone else, even a neighbor, realizes what's going on, they could call Child Protective Services, and I'm afraid you would be culpable too, for leaving your son in a dangerous situation, even though your AH is the immediate endangerer. That would be a sad outcome too.
What I did was to arrange childcare just as if I were a single parent (which, actually, I soon was). Or as if my husband were working. Because care by an alcoholic is not care. It's just coincidentally having a warm body in the same house.
So I guess I'm saying that your husband might be free to try the 4-week rehab after all, if you make moves to protect your son. Then you could see whether he'll put his money where his mouth is on the rehab.
I hope you'll read through the threads on this site, get the literature, find a meeting and ultimately a sponsor, and keep coming back. I know how hard it all is. Hugs.
You have gotten lots of good input here. As regards your headline question "He says I'm responsible...am I?? ". We in Al Anon are have come to a point where we realize that we have no real control over another human being. This is ture for everyone, but in Al Anon we try to rid ourselves of the illusion of control. In fact, the way that I started thinking of it when I had that questions was very simple. I didn't buy the vodka that my wife would binge. I didn't bring it in from the car. I didn't bend her elbow to put it to her mouth, I didn't make her swallow it, and I didn't make her chug it so that she would drink most of a bottle in 10 minutes or so. She made all of those decisions.
I did make her life harder than it needed to be by poor choices that I made. I was, and still am sometimes, very hard to live with in that I am naturally very passive/aggressive and hard to pin down on any kind of decision. And in Al Anon I have been working to correct those behaviors.
But the ultimate decision to drink was my wife's. She chooses how she responds to her life, of which I am a part.
Therefore, we say that we didn't cause the drinking, can't control the drinking and won't cure the drinking. And we focus on our own recovery and on ourselves and knowing where our real responsibilities lie. My responsibilities lie with my 13 year old son first. My wife can choose to drink or not, I have no control over that, she is an adult, but my son is still growing and needs at least one parent. So I chose recovery for me. Fortunately she has chosen recovery for herself but, again, I have no control over that decision.
Before there were rehabs...people were getting sober in AA. He can go to the ER (which is where he is headed anyhow) and detox there or get referred. From there he can bust his ass in AA and do the work. Holding out for rehab and that blame game is total BS. There is nothing stopping him from attending AA right NOW. He will get good suggestions for detoxing safely if he seeks out help rather than blame and make excuses. Yes. You have a part in this but none of his alcoholism or bullcrap, blaming excuses to avoid recovery have anything to do with you.
Actually that not true. I've heard that and believed it for a while until the program sat me down and got me to see reality. Reality was that as long as she had choices of her own and consequences for those choices it was impossible for me to be responsible. When I stopped owning her addictions and choices and behaviors I found a lot of time to do my own life no matter where she was pointing the finger which wasn't only at me. Alcoholics and addicts find it overwhelming to accept the responsibility for the recovery to their compulsion to drink and use and then suffer the consequences. It wasn't about my job or family or friends or weight and height of the girl friend who left me and such. That stuff doesn't cause fatty liver and the other symptoms he displays and certainly not you. Since alcoholism is a compulsion he has lost the choice about when and how he drinks and that doesn't mean you took that away from him. If he wants to live thru this he will do it in spite of anything you bring to the table. Alcoholism is also a fatal disease...either he gets sober by arresting it with total abstinence or the progressive nature of this disease will turn his liver off completely and the rest of his body including his brain and more. It is impossible that you are responsible for this...you don't have the want or will and you're not holding him down pouring the chemical into his body against his will. His will; not your and not his Gods.
I'm glad you have found us. There are many suggestions which have worked for most of us given to you that will work for you if you take them. You will find change. Keep coming back.
Im sorry your living this way, this is how I lived too. It seemed like such a big mess that I didnt have a clue to tidy it all up or to even know what was right or wrong anymore. I think your husband is in full force self destruct mode, it is part of the disease of alcoholism. He is behaving badly, just as alcoholics who can often do. I learned that I had choices, just as you do. You dont have to live this way, you dont have to live with every aspect of his disease. The immaturity, not taking responsibility for his own actions, blaming others, manipulating you into believing he has all sorts of illnesses, when most likely he has just one, hes an alcoholic, looking for attention and sympathy the way a child would is all part of it in my experience. I have been through it with my ex and my adult son to some extent although it was different.
I learned that all his behaviour is typical nothing really that interesting and all of it was his to own and deal with. The interesting part for me was through alanon learning I had a part to play, my mothering, covering up, sympathising, resenting, getting angry with him was keeping the disease alive in both of us. It didnt take too long for me to change things. I got some confidence, self love, and began saying no, that does not suit me, or no I will not allow this in my home. I took charge of my own life, started living again and 5hings have fellen into place, not perfect of course, never will be, but the people in my life are in a healthy descending order after me and not in a bad way, a kind way. I suggest you take the first step, go to a meeting and soak it all in little by little, in no time, you will be stronger workjng towards a better quality of life for you and your son and maybe even your ex but then again he needs to make that choice for himself. Ps, where I live there is very little rehab facilities, most people see the doctor and go to aa, no time away at all.
) 
