My cousin's wife drank from being a teenager. He had no idea how much she drank until she was about 25/26. Yes, she had a bit too much at parties or on holiday but the reality was she was drinking all day and he didn't know. She had a good job, was funny, bright, good company, popular, kind- and constantly topped up with vodka.
It came to light when she was pregnant- she even drank then. They had a baby who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. By the time he was at school she had been in detox several times but always went back to alcohol.
My cousin tried every way he could think of to support her not drinking but she always went back to it. She was hospitalised several times after falling down the stairs drunk (found by their son twice when he arrived home from school), crashing the car into a tree (quite seriously injured and lost her license, luckily no one else was hurt), falling in the street , falling down a metal staircase at work.
It was really shocking to watch it happening. My cousin would search the whole house every week and always found hidden vodka bottles or bottles she had poured vodka into- in cupboards, drawers, amongst clothes, in the garage, in the loo cistern, in the spare wheel of the car, up high on shelves in the utility room behind other things, behind the bath panel.
She went into detox and then lived in a unit where vulnerable people lived in their own bedsit room but there were communal facilities for meals and support from workers. She was there 6 months and then moved into her own flat- a council flat. Within a fortnight she was drunk continually, locking herself out, her support worker found her unconscious. By then she had liver disease, skin problems, her teeth were falling out, her face was red and bloated. The police were called to a hotel where she was going dressed up at lunchtime, sitting at the bar and prostituting herself to businessmen to get money for alcohol. She was becoming aggressive to businessmen who weren't interested. My cousin had to re-furbish a lot of their house- new sofa, new carpets, new bed and bedding.
For several years my cousin-they were living separately- visited her at her flat, did her food shopping, her washing and ironing, supported her financially, went to medical appointments with her, sorted out all her business matters, cleaned up after her but eventually he stopped. He described a filthy bed, urine soaked carpets, a filthy bathroom, she was vomiting blood- it was horrible. She started fires in the flat.He walked away. The council cleared the flat and her belongings when she eventually left- there were complaints about the smell and they had to replace all the flooring in the bathroom, bedroom and sitting room.
She refused to let her parents into her flat or to see them and they both died over the next few years- she never saw them. She developed really bad liver disease and a kind of dementia and just got worse. She died in a home last year, alone, at 52. Their son had refused to see her for a number of years- he has been developmentally delayed by the FAS and although has caught up a lot will never catch up fully.
Really sad and very shocking to see someone we knew turn into what she dud but she could not be helped. She was on a path to self-destruction. Interestingly, she was adopted at birth but it turned out her birthparents were both alcoholics- her adoptive parents did not drink and my cousin rarely had a drink and stopped altogether when he first discovered the extent she was drinking.
It's a terrible, terrible thing- incredibly destructive.