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.
My first post. Encouraged by my best friend. Hiding from all other friends. And family. We have a quiet midwestern life. College town. Go team! My husband and I were high school sweethearts. We were college athletes. We married. So happy. So easy. 3 kids. Our last with serious health challenges. I stay at home. Raise our kids. Keep our home. Balance our small budget. He is the town hero. Teacher. Coach. Daddy of the little girl who has stolen the hearts of thousands through her courageous story. And he is an alcoholic. I know it. He doesn't. But he has been hiding gatorade bottles mixed with vodka for years. Years. A few times a year they literally fall in my lap. The rest of the times I pretend I don't know. But I know. And he knows I know. But we love our kids to much to cause a rukus. Although now I'm thinking I'm not actually putting my kids first. Perhaps I'm putting the public embarrassment first. Maybe I'm really afraid of what people might say about our perfect, popular little life. Because no matter what I say, I can't get through to him. He still hides his drinking. And he still functions "fully". But he's not really present. I'm lost. You guys. My anonymous sounding board. I need you. Where do I go from here? How do I help him? How do I protect my kids? I'm falling out of love with coach.
Aloha JF and welcome to the board with this more than classic share...Protecting the alcoholic who is protecting his compulsive drinking and who is considered "functioning". I for one do not believe that there is such a thing as a "fully functioning" alcoholic. I am a former therapist; substance abuse and alcoholism and for everyone who could agree that they were a client of mine I would then advise them that the alcoholic or alcoholic/addict was then not "fully functioning"...there was a problem. Last ex-wife that tried to sell me on the idea got me to ask her "If he is fully functioning why are you here alone and angry and venting and talking him, him, him while he is with another lady"? She got it. If the alcoholic isn't taking care of his commitments he isn't fully functioning and one of the consequences is...you are here with us. Yay for you. AA is an anonymous program as is the Al-Anon Family Groups meaning we don't have to name "our alcoholic...or "qualifier" when in the group and we don't even have to say that we are a member of the Al-Anon Family Groups outside of the group. Attending face to face meetings though can get you back your sanity and preserve it. We call that secret you both are keeping the "elephant in the living room" and the bugger is a large one. Since he knows that you know and you both know and know that you know...besides coming here to MIP you might want to see if the hotline number for Al-Anon is in the white pages of your local telephone book. If it is call that number and find out where the next meeting is...the meetings have tons of very very useful and informative Conference Approved Literature (CAL) which you can get and start your learning. We also have meetings twice a day on line which you can check in to...Keep coming back. (((((Hugs)))))
Welcome to our community. What worked for me was going to my first Al-Anon meeting, reading Al-Anon literature, getting a sponsor and asking my HP to guide me. The only person you are in control of is YOU. He's going to keep drinking, what are YOU going to do. Sending you lots of support and we're glad you came here to this board.
Welcome and glad you have found us! I'm so sorry to hear you're going through this.
I bet we've all known someone who is 'fully functioning' which means something like 'keeping up appearances.'
My experience though is that they're not doing it fully. I would wager a huge amount of money that a number of people know your husband's secret. People with that some kind of secret sometimes seem "off" or not fully "there." They disappear for small amounts of time, a couple of minutes or so, at odd times and then reappear without explanation. They're very possessive of their drink bottle, even if it's Gatorade. "Hey Coach, can I have some of your Gatorade?" "No!" I had a prof in college who was very possessive of his coffee. He was high-functioning but we all knew what was going on.
But people don't want to upset the apple cart, and so everyone keeps the silence, except for maybe a few remarks to each other. "Coach has his magic bottle of Gatorade with him."
My point is just that you don't have to keep up appearances. It's okay to say to yourself and to a friend, if you wish, "I'm having a hard time because H is an alcoholic. It hasn't torn our life apart yet, but I'm worried." And that's right and natural.
In Al-Anon we have the Three C's: You didn't Cause it, you can't Cure it, you can't Control it. That's the bad news. No one can help him but himself, and no amount of convincing will convince him. He has to want it on his own schedule, and sadly, many of them never do.
The good news is that life can change and get much better. Our own thoughts and actions get distorted by the drinking and the secrecy, and we benefit from recovery too.
I hope you'll read through the threads here, find a local face-to-face meeting (no one will judge, it will be truly anonymous), get the literature, find a sponsor, and keep coming back.
My AH is a FA as well, whatever that means. Oh, he works. Cool. But, his family is anything but functional.
I live in that same scenerio. We are homeschoolers, Christians. He works for a Christitan non-profit org that promotes homeschool and family values. He is the proud Christian husband and homeschool dad that encourages others to follow this lifestyle for all its benefits. And he drinks, and has drinken for a long time. Those I have confided at his business think it is a marrage problem, and "will pray for us." He tells them I am angry and he doessn't know what to do to please me, he has tried everything and I just get angry. They feel sorry for him. We didn't just have an argument that will blow over. He has all illness, a disease that he is in complete dential about. I stopped hiding behind the mask, his mask. And I will be leaving as soon as I can navigate my way through the very tough divorce law in this state I live in. And he loves it. Just today he started, "since you are the one who is leaving...." That is what he needed, from the onset and has been his goal for years... that I leave so his perfect image is held in his mind. When I am out of the limelight he will have to sink or swim on his own.
It is a very difficult decision and I stand to lose a lot financially, with him being the income in this house, and can make much more than I ever will - but MONEY DOES NOT BUY HAPPINESS. I am miserable, lonely, unloved, unappreciated....... and have been for too many years.
I just got an estimate that it will cost me almost four thousand dollars to move my stuff out of here. I don't have four thousand dollars and he is not going to pay that. It is a very bad place to be, but I will figure this out, somehow.
It is very hard living this existence. My heart goes out to you. My son is grown, so I don't have that added burden, today, but I did for many years while he was growing up and my heart aches for you. Take it one day at a time, and do the best with what you have. That is all that is expected of any of us.
I feel what everyone said is right on. You also may consider an open AA meeting. I went to some of those and it was enlightening. Take care of you is the number one thing to do. Take care and keep coming back.
Hey ilovecoach. I'm so glad you found this board. The people here are wonderfully supportive. Your story sounds so much like mine. I know you want to help him, but you can't. Only he can help himself. You are going to have to let go and let God. I, too, felt I needed to hide my h's drinking. I needed to protect him from himself. I needed to help him get better. My life revolved around my ah's drinking. All of my reactions were based on his actions. I had actually become a slave to his drinking. I would turn down outings with my mom and other family members. I stopped asking family over for fear he would come home drunk. This was not helping my h. All it did was provide him with a safety net. He knew I would be there to pick up the pieces if he screwed up.
I am so thankful for al-anon. I am slowly learning to reshape my thinking. Someone here posted that they wrapped their alcoholic love one in a blanket and handed him to God. This is what I have done with my h. While my h still drinks, I'm getting better. I am breaking the chains that bound me to his drinking. My h is noticing the change in me. As a result, he has been trying to "control" his drinking. I know this isn't going to work, but I don't say anything to him. He has to learn this for himself.
I have started leaving al-anon literature around for him to see. I left one in particular -Alcoholism, a merry go-round of Denial- on the table by his chair. The next day it was laying on our bar face down. I just had to laugh when I saw it. He's definitely in denial.
Go to f2f meetings. Get that support group around you. Take care of YOU.
((hugs)) and am praying for you.
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Look for the rainbow after the storm, and I'm sending you a double dose of HOPE. H-hold O-on P-pain E-ends
Reading through your sincere replies honestly left me paralyzed. Sort of like a harsh realization that THIS THING...it's for real. But I'm still terrified. Right now I don't think I could walk into a meeting. How do you deal with the embarrassment...for you and your loved one. I'm his number one fan. I don't want anyone to pass judgment on him just because I show up at a meeting. You want to know one of the ways I know he's been drinking...he's overly attentive to me. It makes my skin crawl. And then it's so hard for me to stay in the moment with my children. I just shut down. Sometimes I think I should just let it all go and just let him be. He works so hard to support us. We makes ends meet with zero left in the bank. Our daughter is sick. And everyone. I mean EVERYONE loves him. Loves us.
JF...I know what you're saying and maybe thought that way a bit myself before coming into the program and looking back it was justified looking at it thru the filter of fear and suspicion about how others will see it, see her, see me, see us and then I didn't know anything. I didn't know that this was the number one killing disease on the planet and that it predated the life of the Christ by thousands of years. I didn't know. I didn't know that I was born and raised inside of it on both sides of my family and that I was predisposed from birth to it. I didn't know why I was soooo turned on when my grandmother introduced her grandchildren to wine and I didn't know why my mother fought her and lost the battle in trying to stop the introduction. I didn't know why that glass of wine had such a profound affect on my mind and emotions and then later would have a stunning affect on my body. I didn't know.
I didn't know that I would be greeted with understanding, empathy, compassion and unconditional love from the very first meeting I attended which I disrupted with my loss of control emotions. I didn't know that for as much negativity I brought into early program that they would continually tell me to "keep coming back". I just didn't know. In order to gain the real experiences I had to go...walk in and take my seat and just "listen with an open mind". They didn't ask me my full name and didn't ask me to speak. They asked me to go by the literature table and get as much information as interested me and I did that. They asked or suggested that I do 90 meetings in 90 days and I know from my professional experiences that the paradigm was used for changing habits and still I did 102 meetings in that 90 days; there were 439 meeting a month in the tri-valley area and from that I came to understand just how large the problem was.
Alcoholics are children of God, human beings with a life threatening disease. So often they are good people who love and want to be loved in return and still that compulsion of the mind and allergy of the body called alcoholism disrupts and destroys the plan. Alcoholism is a disease...it is not a moral issue though it is easy to blame drunks for what they do under the influence; wet or dry. My eldest son is an elder in his church and has been well liked. He is an excellent craftsman and humorous and he is alcoholic...my son...my alcoholic two distinct, characters and personalities. In order to understand I had to be in the rooms and listen with a wide open mind learning what those who came before me learned and knew and desired to pass on.
Ours is an anonymous program. We do not talk about our alcoholic in the rooms by name. We speak about our actions and reactions to the disease which renders us dysfunctional. It is our dysfunction we wish to be rid of and we need to be willing to get it.
Glad to have you here and trying. Prayers for you and your alcoholic and your family. Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
