Support group for those affected by someone else's drinking thread 6

[pointythings]

A new thread so that the conversations can continue overnight. We have sadly been very active lately, so I thought it best to be proactive.

These threads are for everyone who has an alcoholic in their life: partner/husband/wife, sibling, child, parent. This is a safe space where you can vent and say all the things you can't say out loud in real life.

The people on these threads have all been there or are still on their journey. We will share what we have learned, crack dark jokes and offer a shoulder to cry on. Welcome to the club nobody wants to be in.

Link to previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/alcohol_support/5515006-support-group-for-those-affected-by-someone-elses-drinking-thread-5?page=40&reply=153683715

@AcrossthePond55 omg mine is exactly the same in that he wants exact dates of when things are going to happen .

They say the first step to recovery is admitting the issue but mine has never really 100% admitted that he is alcohol dependent. So I know he won’t seek help , because that will mean admitting it which is doubtful

Mine did too. He wanted me to press DC (15 and 17 at the time) for a time when they would see him again. I said no. He spammed their phones. They blocked him; I told them it was their choice and I would back them.

@AcrossthePond55 how weird. Do you think he fell on something when drunk

@Harddaysnight1 well done on your mum. Seems crazy all your family have issues with booze

@TheThingOnTheIce I’m suprised school didn’t know if dad’s drinking issues. They weee the first people I told when I kicked him out. As I knew I had to for safe guarding and if dd said daddy drinks vodka etc it would be a red flag

they need to be over a good year and for you to breath test anytime you want.

this is why dd is never alone with ex now as I just can’t trust him. Sad as she adores him as a toddler but now she sees and smells him as a drunk

a letter. Rofl. That’s ok then. He must be sober 🙄

thing is they lie so convincingly even myself and his elder dd have thought , has he drunk or not - are they old bottles - even tho we knew weren’t - he lies so convincingly that we doubt ourselves

gas lightening at its best !!

the blood test will show he hasn’t drunk recently. My friends dh had to do that to get licence back. But he is sober. 5yrs. The only one success story I personally know

yep till they admit to theirselves there is a problem they will never recovery

and mine lies all the time and did say wasn’t drinking. Now says it’s one drink now.

yeah one bottle a day when has money

How strange @AcrossthePond55, I wonder how he did that. It would be good if he was admitted a while to treat it. Definitely make v clear to nurses about his domestic situation and inability to care for himself.

@Harddaysnight1 That sounds absolutely awful. It’s really good you have told school what is going on. They made various social service referrals in my Ex’s case (as his Ex wife would report to school incidents that happened on his contact time) which created evidence of risk which his first wife relied on heavily in child contact arrangements.

From Ex’s experience, there is hair strand testing that combined with blood tests (peTH test) that can establish a pattern of alcohol abuse over 3 to 6 months. They are really accurate and the reports are detailed. Family courts can and do order them as part of child arrangement order applications.

You could first send in writing to your Ex (or get a solicitor to do so) something along the lines of: Following this situation on xx date (give detail about the car crash, his inebriation, his mum having to bring your son home, how your son is characterising it to adults - Daddy tried to kill me), you are required to safeguard your child as his primary responsible
parent. Therefore, until he has proven six months abstinence of alcohol and drugs through hair strand testing, supplemented by a peTH test, you are removing contact to protect your child’s physical and mental safety. Upon receipt of this evidence, which you require to take place with a ‘chain of custody’ certified testing centre, you are happy to discuss resuming child contact on a graduated timetable and with the necessary safeguards. (For eg I would ask for: first phone/ video contact, then supervised contact with a trusted supervisor with a breathalyser before and after contact, then progressing to unsupervised contact after supervised contact has proved successful etc).

hope that helps. Generally I find that they likely won’t go through the stages of actually applying for a child arrangement order or will they will make the application but drop out once the CAFCAS check comes back with safeguarding concerns and proceeds to a more detailed safeguarding report.

Oh and the therapist letter will be bullshit. Ex was amazing at manipulating therapists. Mine has a letter/ report saying that he reports he mis-used alcohol as a result of domestic abuse by his first wife and second partner but is working hard at sobriety.

hair strand test, blood test, evidence of engagement with drug and alcohol services, psychiatric report? Nope, couldn’t get any of them!

Excellent advice /wording

Good evening everyone on the thread no-one wants to be on, I popped in on thread 4 but ohhhhh boy, it's been a doozy since then.

So the, now in the process of stbxh - I call him many names in my head but h will work here - decided in his infinite wisdom to add cannabis to his alcohol issues.

Given that he had previously been sectioned 3 times for entering clinical psychosis for this as soon as I found evidence I decided I was at my "no more" point and said I was going to apply for a divorce (we have a 16yo dd)

Cue the total DARVO, he's not got a problem, I have a problem, I AM the problem etc until a week later he tried to push me down the stairs with dd and a neighbour as witnesses.

Lo and behold he then got sectioned for a 4th time and I have spent most of the last 10 weeks trying to get non mol etc in place.

Emergency non-mol filed independently on his surprise! discharge was fine, gave me two weeks but today was the full hearing.

Separate entrances at court, yeah? .........no I had to sneak past him as he hovered at the entrance chain smoking and was in a panic attack by the time I was through the doors.

After that was fine, sequestered in an off corridor office to wait for new to me solicitor, screens in court, older, experienced family court judge with take no shit air.

So for the very first time in our 36 years together he admitted he had an issue.......but it's only because his so called friends bought him drink, nothing to do with his choices, decisions or actions at all, oh no not him!

Be strong everyone. I hit my "no more" and as hard as it is there is no way back for him with us.

Sending love and hugs and support to everyone x

@Penguinsandspaniels @Nogoodusername

If I was to say what I think looks like, I'd say it looks like a knife 'slash' wound. It is a completely straight cut with no jagged edges, probably 8 or so inches horizontally. It's wide, but that could be due to swelling & infection. There's nothing in the house that is that sharp to fall against to give so straight a cut. At this point he's admitted to me he has no idea how he did it. He's sticking to his 'fell against the workbench story' but I don't think anyone believes him.

I did speak to the nurse and she agrees that he needs to go to a facility. They're putting a wound-vac on it and there's no way he'll be able to manage that at the house.

@TheThingOnTheIce Yep, they want to know exactly how long they're going to have to stay sober. Goes along with the usual "I will stay sober forever" that soon morphs into "at some point I'll maybe have a glass of champagne at Christmas or a special occasion" 🙄. My DH will sometimes admit that he 'has a problem with alcohol' but it's extremely rare and even rarer that he uses the word 'alcoholic'. Most of the time it's "I drink beer. Alcoholics drink booze" or especially "My drinking hasn't changed from when we married 38 years ago". Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

@pawsedforthought you've made the decision. You're out. You hit YOUR rock bottom and that's it. Well done, now just keep putting one foot in front of another until you're out on the other side. Your DD is 16 so you don't have to worry about contact - she's old enough to make her own choices, and I imagine after seeing her mother shoved down the stairs that won't be hard.

Keep posting here, keep venting, keep going. We're all rooting for you.

Missy is so incredibly brave, she tried to intervene when he went back for a second attempt after I grabbed the bannister and stopped my "fall" but I will take the memory of her screams to my grave - and should I ever waver after decades of coercive control they will give me the strength to get freedom for both of us 💖

@pawsedforthought

'Congratulations' isn't exactly the right word for us to use when one has their 'epiphany', but I'm glad you've taken the steps to keep him away from you. Upwards and onwards. You've got this!

@Nogoodusername that’s excellent advice thank you very much

my ex has gone suspiciously quiet. I half thought he’d try and pick DS up from school yday but there was chaos on the roads near us so that would have scuppered that plan

@pawsedforthought that’s terrible I’m so sorry . It like they read from a script honestly. I got the whole ‘I don’t have a problem , you have a problem for thinking I’m an alcoholic, you see alcoholics everywhere as you have mummy issues ‘

@AcrossthePond55 my alcoholic mother fell backwards off a chair onto her wine glass when I was about 15 and I had to sterry strip the gash . Might be something similar

@Penguinsandspaniels I didn’t inform the school earlier for a number of reasons. I mean I’m sure we’re all familiar with gaslighting and DARVO from addicts on this thread . When we first split my ex was actually a head of faculty teacher and told me if I said anything he’d tell everyone I was mentally ill . At the time he had a clean record so it was my word against his . He seemed to keep his shenanigans to his child free time and since he remarried to a woman who doesn’t drink I relied on her to keep a check on him . But since the latest incident happened when he wasn’t even driving clearly i can’t do that anymore . Her own child was in the car too and she still stays with him .

Well done @pawsedforthought for hitting your no more

we all get there eventually

@TheThingOnTheIce maybe the new wife will start to releise now

he prob told her it was all you

she has now seen with her own eyes and the fact he was endangering her child as well as there will hopefully start things moving in her mind

but as we all know it takes some of us A lot time to actually reach the point of no more

@Penguinsandspaniels he’d already lost his license and job / career before she married him so unfortunately I think she’ll always stay with him . I don’t care what they do about their relationship but him having someone covering for him and picking up the pieces when he fucks up is enabling him. She was ferrying my son to school when he lost his licence and I was battling to get more custody . I don’t really have anyone so he used to rub his ‘support system’ in my face regularly

There is 100% a gaslighting and DARVO script.

I am completely mortified about the lies I believed about Ex’s first wife and also that I fell for his lies about the extent of his drinking for so long. I mean I have an alcoholic Dad, surely I know better?! It seemed to be his pattern though. For a while his family and friends believed him that he didn’t have a problem and it was just a coercive and abusive wife, but then the cycle continued, and then it was a new excuse and a new excuse and eventually I was one of the excuses too - I was controlling and abusive. Eventually everyone wises up to the nonsense. I used to try and explain myself desperately when he would text or email me post separation telling me how the latest therapist said he had gone from one controlling and abusive relationship to another. Who knows if they even said that, I doubt it, but in the end I was like - well I guess they have to take it on face value that he is telling the truth and we all know that alcoholics are absolutely amazing at lies.

Eventually @TheThingOnTheIce I reckon your Ex’s current wife will wake up to the reality that he does have a problem, but it could take years, and in that time she will enable him like we all did before we left. I am horrified and furious with myself at the ways in which i enabled Ex. I was a pathetic shell of myself. But that is her problem, you are the responsible parent for your child and you absolutely cannot see her as any form of safeguarding protection for your son and contact time.

You could get social services involvement yourself if school haven’t made a safeguarding report? They likely won’t put anything useful on record as it’s often verbal advice, but it starts that evidence paper trail. Let them know that your Ex is an alcoholic with a drink driving conviction (I assume because he lost his licence) and his mother returned your son with him Incapacitated in the car and your son has informed you of a domestic incident in the car where your ex apparently tried to cause a crash in a drunken rage and your son has been characterising it as ‘daddy tried to kill me’. You would like advice and support please as to how to safeguard your child’s physical and emotional wellbeing from an erratic addict father. The challenge with social services is sometimes you get a brilliant social worker and sometimes they won’t say much or put anything in writing (they’ll say you can exercise your parental responsibility to safeguard and remove contact and it then becomes a family law issue) but he becomes known to social services and this comes up in the CAFCAS check should he go ahead and make a child arrangement order application.

If you want to cover your back and look like you are doing everything necessary to maintain relationship with his father while safeguarding your child, you could offer indirect contact through letters or a call. He’ll go mad most likely but you’ve offered it. It also helps that the law on presumption of contact is changing - can’t remember whether it is law yet but it is being legislated

@Nogoodusername do you not think though that your dad being an alcoholic has sort of desensitised you to this bullshit? My mother was also an alcoholic. That being said if anyone else rocked up unconscious like he did , someone who wasn’t an alcoholic, I’d be absolutely shocked but with him it’s just another day .

I might write a letter to social services but when I tried to ring them I was immediately shut down and told they wouldn’t get involved and it was my responsibility to safeguard him and take ex to court .

Sorry you had a bad experience with social services @TheThingOnTheIce - it’s such a shame it’s the luck of the draw on who answers the phone that day. I suppose the message you can use is that it is your responsibility to safeguard and you have! Unless he proactively tries to remove DC from school, I don’t think you have to be the one to apply for a CAO. Most addicts will rant and rave about taking you to court but ultimately it ends up being too many hoops and too expensive and they give up - while also enjoying the convenient new excuse of ‘I drink because my evil ex won’t let me see my kids’. Bullshit. They can produce 3- 6 months of tests (whatever is your minimum to restart supervised short contact with safeguards) but guess what, they never do.

I still have so much hatred at my Ex for wanting everyone to give him what he wanted without any boundaries or conditions on his side. Me, family, ex wife, clients. Everyone was pawns in the addict universe. He didn’t give a rats arse that as he spiralled further into addiction and became and more erratic, and his DC got older and more aware, that they found him scarey and unnerving. Oh no. He wanted contact with him because he would be sad and lonely otherwise and so that is apparently what should come first - his wants as a grown arse man over the needs of children. FFS.

I think you are right, I have a very skewed sense of normal. Growing up my Dad wet the bed, would be hallucinating snakes, we’d walk home from school and find him on the ‘alcoholic bench’, he stole money from my
purse as a teen, threatened to commit suicide when I challenged him as a young adult. Maybe why I fell for Ex’s ‘functional’ for so long because I had seen unfunctional. Of course Ex’s functional didn’t last either and he was far far worse than my Dad and it still took me about two years of spiral to leave for good.

@Nogoodusername my mother was a senior staff nurse . Some people believe someone is only an alcoholic is they drink EVERY day but she wouldn’t drink on work days . None work days she’d start in the morning and be hammered by lunch time . People she worked with thought she was an angel and her cousin wouldn’t believe a word my uncle said when he told her she was an alcoholic. She used to hide a bottle of Bacardi somewhere in the kitchen and we could never find it, it was probably somewhere behind the wall panelling . I think there’s a a very fine line between ‘functioning’ and non-functioning

100% agree with you on that @TheThingOnTheIce. It’s a very fine line and it doesn’t take much to get from one to the other. My Dad kind of hovered between the two, back and forth, he didn’t drink daily either. Ex was a daily drinker, but with the amount gradually increasing (or more likely the amount I was aware of gradually increasing) until he was entirely physically dependent and would go into withdrawal overnight. It was just one massive spiral with brief moments of sobriety when he did rehab a few times. Hideous. I haven’t seen him in a year, mainly no contact apart from a brief stupid period when his friends begged me to talk to him to try and get him back into treatment, and I still don’t think I have come to terms with the trauma.

A lady on my SMART group really
focused on making the safeguarding lead at her DC’s school an ally. In the end, class teachers were instructed not to release her DC to Dad if he appeared under the influence or erratic at pick up. It happened. He caused a massive scene. Police called. He was breathalysed and arrested. No charges as he hadn’t driven to school but it kicked off a very formal social services investigation as apparently there is an offence for being drunk in charge of a child (under 7 I think) in a public place as well as it being neglect if it’s at home. Again, you are relying on a good police officer with understanding of addiction and its harm on children.

due to ex being an ex teacher he always brown nosing the school using all his buzz words and trying to make himself sound important
he is no longer a teacher as he went into school drunk though that’s not the story he peddles
most people don’t know he lost his job
even his own mother didn’t know he’s not a teacher anymore til I told her