The material presented
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I have never been on a chat room of any type before and I am trying to think of how to summarize the story of the devastation my family has been through over the past two years. For whatever reason, TODAY was the day I was inspired to start researching alanon? Don't know why today...but here I am. I welcome feedback, thoughts, ideas, brutal honesty, and objectivism. MY story starts long ago but I am currently going to focus on the past 2 years. Prioe to those two years, my husband of now 25 years and I frequently talked about drinking and my concerns...he has never had any concerns and always justified, I can do what I want in my own home. "I'm not driving". "Who can judge if someone has a problem", etc etc etc. and of course I constantly heard how controlling I am and of course found myself doing the classic monitoring of consumption all the time. So, was I being controlling? I guess yes. I was trying to control and stop the chance of his drinking becoming a problem. Over the past years, he began hiding liquor bottles that actually the kids would find and the Saturday "lawn" day would last ALL day and end in smelling like alcohol and cut grass but never seeing him consume an ounce of alcohol because of course if I did see him I would question how many he had? Also if he only drank beer, he didn't have a drinking problem.....and again he can do what he wants in his own home! I have 4 absolutely amazing children now, 10,14,16,and 18. They are probably wiser than I am and are truly insightful and well adjusted despite..our story.......Arriving one evening after a long day at work, i was sitting with my children, then 2 years younger, and M approached me and said "being married to you is worse than Cancer. The kids were mortified and I just walked away from the situation but was followed with intense perserveration which always got worse when he was drinking , but according to him he had never had a drink and i must be delusional His perseveration quickly escalated to him saying "I might as well put a gun to my head and put bullets between my eyes" .yes in front of children....again, i walked away and there were a barrage of other suicidal threats and the final one was "and if you think i won't do it, just watch me". and I was told the blood would be on my hands? I called the police out of fear of what he may do and I didn't know if he had a gun because for months he had been withdrawn and secretive. The police came, he fought them and was tazed and taken to emergency department and was hospitalized psychiatrically but discharged with a benign diagnosis ( i truly think based on my fear combined with good insurance). Needless to say, our lives that had been deteriorating ,were changed forever!! Let me mention that the disease knows no discrimination. M and I lived the classic perfect family lifestyle for years and are dedicated to our professions and very successful. He refused to see me in the hospital and reached ou to his family with whom he was never close...They have now become his greatest fans!!! They have completely shunned us. I was now the devil for calling the police and how could i ever do that to my husband if i loved him. He owned NONE OF IT. His family didn't even believe he would say such a thing and think i made it up. If it werent for the kids having heard it, I would truly think I was crazy. He moved out and we separated. He came back to the home for a period of time but during that time refused counselling because he hadn't done anything. Well, our poor children were truly traumitized. During his time back at home he was withdrawn and still not talking to me or the children and without informing anyone he purchased a handgun (I cant tell you how atypical this was for someone like M) TOTALLY out of character....I had seen the ammunition hidden in the garage. I was at a lacrosse game watching my sons play lax and M was home acting strangely per my oldest daughter and thenshe heard him playing with what sounded like a gun in the den. she said she knew the sound as a result of her love for lifetime movies. She got her sister and left the house adn called me in hysterics.....we went to hotel for night and I asked him to take the gun and vacate the home until we could get into therapy and begin a therapeutic separation. He has never returned......I filed for divorce...he begged me to dismiss charges and he would start paying child support and going to therapy for reunification but at the same time could never come home due to the embarassment he experienced with 12 cop cars in front of our home in our tightly knit neighborhood....as you can imapgine we have been the talk of the neighborhood I am sure. I chalked it up to a medication reaction with the neighbors although he left in handcuffs and seen by neighbors...again this is a man who was loving kind and gentle and immediately loved by anyone that met him. He changed drastically over the past several years. but as he still says "Never missed a day of work" I dismissed the divorce and we went to therapy but the therapy was just denial that he had any drinking problems (Im still questioning myself, does he?) and I am blamed for every single solitary thing under the sun...absolutely no accountability. He stopped reunification therapy when he was pushed to take accountablity...He said he was angry at the time and would never do that to himself....could not see how any of that trauma affected the kids and said they need to get over it... During therapy with them, he just minimized his threats and didnt own any of his behaviors. He hasnt spoken to his kids in 9 months. They have done nothing. They are scared to death of him and his unpredictability and his trying to lay guilt trips on them in the past. They are the innocent ones ...INNOCENT but they refuse to take any more of his emotional abuse. they want nothing to do with him but of course thats my fault. HIs family 5 sisters in their n40's and 50's and his mom all want nothing to do with us and dont return calls, texts emails. These were my family for 30 YEARS. Despite all this, I have extended the olive branch a thougsand times over, encouraging a retreat, therapy, etc. no child support and home going into foreclosure because he will not communicate with me or the mortgage company. I cannot afford to file for divorce again and he says divorce is against his religion? so now what????? Friends that knew him even thought this change was a brain tumor that the behviors are so unlike him. I would apprecaite any feedback and validation that we are dealing with a problem drinker...why am i still questioning that...or is today the day i made that change. The kids revelaed many times he had a "crazed" look about him when he was homewith tehm on weekends and i was working. He drove with them in the car intoxicated but of course I could never prove that therefore, it was a lie? I dont know how i have stayed sane through all of this . My children and I have become survivors and what doesnt kill us makes it stronger. We do live for each day as today because yesterday is gone and who knows if there will be a tomorrow. I worry about the long term affects on my children as I am a psychologist but i hope that being in a single family healthy home outweighs a dual parent unhealthy home. My kids and i are very very close and lots of open commnication. They have thrived with great grades and well adjusted..talented athletes. I just cannot belive a once dedicated Dad is choosing to miss the lives of 4 amazing children and his family is feeding right into it. 30 years of life dedicated to this marraige and family? His Dad was also an alcoholic per ME, and acknowledged by M in the past and he has told them that "I called his dad an alcoholic". He died 5 years ago. but actually M brought up the concern to me first and asked if I thought he was at risk since his dad drank alot....it goes on and on and on....thanks for reading and sharing. peace and Blessings to all those affected by a disease we did not cause and cannot cure.
First, welcome. Have you ever landed in the right place.
You're right. You can't do anything for him, but you can do for yourself and your children.
First, are you all safe now? Priority one.
You may consider attending face-to-face Al-Anon meetings. They are life savers for people like us. There you will find people like yourself, literature that will help put this in context for you and the knowledge that you are not imagining any of this.
Many areas have Ala-Teen meetings which your older children may benefit from attending.
There are online meetings at Miracles in Progress - info is in a link in the left corner of this page.
Another resource I recommend is "Getting them Sober Vol 1" by Toby Rice Drews.
Read through this site. You will get an idea of what's ahead.
Your story is many of our stories. I second Jill's suggestion to attend Al-Anon meetings for yourself and encouraging your teens to go to Alateen. They probably won't want to go and you can encourage it by going to our 6 suggested meetings and asking them to go to theirs for six weeks, too. At the end of that six week period, you can all then decide if the program is for you. It is an anonymous program. Who you see there and what you hear there stays there. You can also hang your professional hat up outside the door to the Al-Anon room and just slide into your chair with the rest of us who are healing through the effects of alcoholism on us with absolutely no expectations of you. You can speak or not speak. We just ask that you go to the meeting with an open mind and promise that if you do, you will find help and hope. Come back here, too.
-- Edited by grateful2be on Wednesday 3rd of December 2014 06:50:16 PM
I have greatly benefited from the tools and support I have found in Alanon....even managed to find some sanity back :)
I also urge you to try to attend at least 6 face to face Alanon meetings, and also Alateen for the kids that wish to check it out. There are many amongst these boards that understand like no other can. We are here every step of the way.
Welcome chatz. It certainly sounds as if you have been dealing and coping with the disease insidious, baffling disease of alcoholism. The AMA has labeled alcoholism a chronic, incurable progressive disease that can be arrested but never cured. The acting out and other symptoms that you have described are familiar to many of us. Attempting to cope with the insanity of this disease alone forces us to take the focus of our own lives and attempt unsuccessfully to control or fix the alcoholic.
In Al-Anon I learned that I didn't cause this disease, cannot control it and cannot cure it. The best I can do is to learn new tools to live by so that there is one healthy parent in the family using constructive thoughts and actions. Al-Anon has face-to-face meetings in most communities and the hotline number is listed in the white pages. It is here that I learned to live one day at a time, focused on myself and my life, not to react but to act, and to allow the alcoholic to live his life as he chose.
Breaking the isolation caused by this disease and receiving the support of others who are living by these principles is crucial. I urge you to check out the Al-Anon meetings in your community and attend there is hope and help available. I know you say that your children are well-adjusted and successful but if it anytime you feel that they could use some support ther are also alaten meetings available. Keep coming back here as well You are not alone
Hey Chatz , welcome and glad you showed up...I agree with grateful and all the other good posters here....are there any meets in your area??? for you and the kids??? whether we want to see it or not, we do get impacted by this disease that permeats the entire family.....Its tough to deal with...Impossible, in my opinion, without alanon....
I do hope you can find a meet in your area and give it a shot b/c the only person you can help is you....he has to walk his own path b/c you are 100% powerless over his drinking....once i accepted that as i have drinking in my family and a few close friends, once i accepted that i can only work on and take care of me, it helped me disconnect from the drama, chaos and just focus on me........IN SUPPORT
__________________
Live and let live and do it with peace and goodwill to all!!!!
Why am i still questioning that...or is today the day i made that change.
If you go to an Al Anon meeting, you might just pray the serenity prayer with them.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.
It sounds to me like you are very courageous, you have been making a lot of changes! Go to that meeting and you will find out more about changes others have made, and also find out why you are notcrazy!
I am so incredibly grateful for all the feedback and will continue to share and gain support. The big , yet small thing in the scheme of life , that i forgot to include, is as a result of this devastation we are foreclosing on our home....the only safety and security net my children have left in a safe and supportive neighborhood in their community and school district and as a result i have no credit to rent a place for us????. M does not care and wont even sign the property ( which has no value) over to me so i can get a modification. I teach my children to live by live for today !! Yesterday is gone and can never be changed...learn and move forward and gain strength....and we never know if there will be a tomorrow. Life is now and each day a gift.....can definitely be challenging. I know it seems no one wants to give advice throughout the AA philosophy but does anyone relate or understand why we are shunned from an entire family system????? I know i cant change it but i just want to understand....i would rather them curse me out then just not respond for a year when we have done nothing!!! Thank you
I am sorry for the difficult time that you are now facing and will try to answer your question regarding the reaction of his family. If I read your share correctly, your husband's dad was a heavy drinker. If this is so then the family dynamics are the result of living with the disease of alcoholism going way back. That is the reason for the dysfunction.
Alcoholism is a cunning baffling, and powerful disease so that those who live with it develop negative coping skills and belief systems. Anyone (You) who threatens the fantasy belief system is immediately ignored and ostracized.
Keeping the focus on yourself and attending alanon meetings will provide you with the positive enriching support system that you deserve.
Aloha Chatz and welcome to the board. Yeppers things seem so impossible and I remember the losing the home days and then the marriage and the job and all of that stuff that kinda told me that my life was coming to an end. It was right...my life in alcoholism was coming to an end and little did I know then and it was what was necessary. I was also suicidal and learned an interesting twist on that in Al-Anon. When I got into the program the suggestion wasn't go to 6 meetings they suggested that I do 90 meetings in 90 days and while I knew that the suggestion was about learning new habits I did it anyway and just kept going. In the psych world Al-Anon is considered "social model" therapy or those who have been changed by it helping others to change from it. I really works when you work it. Ours is a step and tradition program which is about repatterning our lives and how we live it. It does work wonders to those who accept and practice it on a daily basis. Alateen is part of the Al-Anon Family Groups thou conducted by teens, with teens for teens. I sponsored Alateen for 6 years and I loved watching the teens grow in leaps and bounds.
From my experience in the disease and with it, it seems to me that maybe your alcoholic husband might be cross addicted meaning alcohol and other chemicals and then that is best discovered with an assessment should he choose to participate in one. If he is presently not up for it then the suggestion is moot. Alcohol is a chemical depressant and causes also paranoia and more...still that is nothing you can cause, control or cure. He is running on his own power and needs to find help.
Your kids are old enough to sit in at Al-Anon meetings for themselves which might be a good idea with you out of the room sometimes. Why? We all play a part in the insanity of this disease and need our own support without family around from time to time. Yes the disease is truly devastating often ending in insanity and/or death.
See if you can negotiate something with the mortgagee who ever that is and see if mentioning that alcoholism is involved will help out. Who knows. At the same time turn the whole situation over to whom ever your Higher Power is if you have one or so. A Power greater than Chatz which she can lean on continuously as you find recovery.
Keep coming back here as often as you will because this MIP family does understand completely what it was like, what we found out and what we have learned to do differently today. (((((hugs)))))
I was shunned in my FOO and my in-laws moved away from my children and I in their minds and hearts and actions. Both families were affected by alcoholism and when one member of the family made a change that no longer kept the problem hidden, it created quite a stir. I divorced my x at a time when divorces were pretty much taboo and if somebody could have put an actual scarlet letter A on my chest they would have done it. The biggest problem for both families was having the image of them being perfect tarnished by my divorce and by the reality that one's son did drugs and drank heavily and beat his wife and the other family had a daughter who was totally demoralized by a damaged man, divorced and raising two small children as a single parent when I should have listened and not married him in the first place although the reason they gave me for not marrying him was that I was smarter than he was and would get bored with him. Bored would have been a gift in my marriage. (Grin)
There can also be a plethora of other reasons and I've learned that looking for the answer to "why" keeps me twisting and turning in a downward spiral that gets me nowhere but depressed and sad. To know that alcoholism is a destroyer and to take steps to take care of myself to the best of my ability according to Al-anon principles and with the help of two really good sponsors throughout the years, I have learned to stop asking the question "why" and changing the question to "now what?" That question gets me out of stuckville and moves me into positivechangeville.
-- Edited by grateful2be on Thursday 4th of December 2014 10:01:03 AM
Their vehement denial and your vehement affirmation of his alcoholism are at odds, and cause what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance. This makes folks uncomfortable, so sometimes they will just entirely rid themselves of one or the other of the ideas. And in this case, their denial won out over your affirmation, and you lose along with the affirmation because you are the carrier of the discomfort in their lives.
Someday they will likely experience a different dissonance when their beloved son/nephew goes further downhill and they have enough contact with him that they have that discomfort that you are so familiar with - irrational behaviors that are at odds with thinking he is a blameless person and can do no wrong. How they solve that dissonance hopefully you won't know because you will hopefully have been long detached by then.
His perseveration quickly escalated to him saying "I might as well put a gun to my head and put bullets between my eyes" .yes in front of children....again, i walked away and there were a barrage of other suicidal threats and the final one was "and if you think i won't do it, just watch me". and I was told the blood would be on my hands? I called the police out of fear of what he may do and I didn't know if he had a gun because for months he had been withdrawn and secretive. The police came, he fought them and was tazed and taken to emergency department and was hospitalized psychiatrically but discharged with a benign diagnosis ( i truly think based on my fear combined with good insurance). Needless to say, our lives that had been deteriorating ,were changed forever!! Let me mention that the disease knows no discrimination. M and I lived the classic perfect family lifestyle for years and are dedicated to our professions and very successful. He refused to see me in the hospital and reached ou to his family with whom he was never close...They have now become his greatest fans!!! They have completely shunned us. I was now the devil for calling the police and how could i ever do that to my husband if i loved him. He owned NONE OF IT. His family didn't even believe he would say such a thing and think i made it up. If it werent for the kids having heard it, I would truly think I was crazy. He moved out and we separated. He came back to the home for a period of time but during that time refused counselling because he hadn't done anything. Well, our poor children were truly traumitized. During his time back at home he was withdrawn and still not talking to me or the children and without informing anyone he purchased a handgun (I cant tell you how atypical this was for someone like M) TOTALLY out of character....I had seen the ammunition hidden in the garage. I was at a lacrosse game watching my sons play lax and M was home acting strangely per my oldest daughter and thenshe heard him playing with what sounded like a gun in the den. she said she knew the sound as a result of her love for lifetime movies. She got her sister and left the house adn called me in hysterics.....we went to hotel for night and I asked him to take the gun and vacate the home until we could get into therapy and begin a therapeutic separation. He has never returned......I filed for divorce...he begged me to dismiss charges and he would start paying child support and going to therapy for reunification but at the same time could never come home due to the embarassment he experienced with 12 cop cars in front of our home in our tightly knit neighborhood....as you can imapgine we have been the talk of the neighborhood I am sure. I chalked it up to a medication reaction with the neighbors although he left in handcuffs and seen by neighbors...again this is a man who was loving kind and gentle and immediately loved by anyone that met him. He changed drastically over the past several years. but as he still says "Never missed a day of work" I dismissed the divorce and we went to therapy but the therapy was just denial that he had any drinking problems (Im still questioning myself, does he?) and I am blamed for every single solitary thing under the sun...absolutely no accountability. He stopped reunification therapy when he was pushed to take accountablity...He said he was angry at the time and would never do that to himself....could not see how any of that trauma affected the kids and said they need to get over it... During therapy with them, he just minimized his threats and didnt own any of his behaviors. He hasnt spoken to his kids in 9 months. They have done nothing. They are scared to death of him and his unpredictability and his trying to lay guilt trips on them in the past. They are the innocent ones ...INNOCENT but they refuse to take any more of his emotional abuse. they want nothing to do with him but of course thats my fault. HIs family 5 sisters in their n40's and 50's and his mom all want nothing to do with us and dont return calls, texts emails. These were my family for 30 YEARS. Despite all this, I have extended the olive branch a thougsand times over, encouraging a retreat, therapy, etc. no child support and home going into foreclosure because he will not communicate with me or the mortgage company. I cannot afford to file for divorce again and he says divorce is against his religion? so now what????? Friends that knew him even thought this change was a brain tumor that the behviors are so unlike him. I would apprecaite any feedback and validation that we are dealing with a problem drinker...why am i still questioning that...or is today the day i made that change. The kids revelaed many times he had a "crazed" look about him when he was homewith tehm on weekends and i was working. He drove with them in the car intoxicated but of course I could never prove that therefore, it was a lie? I dont know how i have stayed sane through all of this . My children and I have become survivors and what doesnt kill us makes it stronger. We do live for each day as today because yesterday is gone and who knows if there will be a tomorrow. I worry about the long term affects on my children as I am a psychologist but i hope that being in a single family healthy home outweighs a dual parent unhealthy home. My kids and i are very very close and lots of open commnication. They have thrived with great grades and well adjusted..talented athletes. I just cannot belive a once dedicated Dad is choosing to miss the lives of 4 amazing children and his family is feeding right into it. 30 years of life dedicated to this marraige and family? His Dad was also an alcoholic per ME, and acknowledged by M in the past and he has told them that "I called his dad an alcoholic". He died 5 years ago. but actually M brought up the concern to me first and asked if I thought he was at risk since his dad drank alot....it goes on and on and on....thanks for reading and sharing. peace and Blessings to all those affected by a disease we did not cause and cannot cure.