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AIBU?

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Original poster

To not have said that DH is an alcoholic?

127 replies

upsideup · 06/10/2018 21:50

DH pick up two of DS's friends from school and takes them to a club once a week and has been doing this for about 6 months as their parents can't take them.
The mum took DS out today to say thank you and stayed for a while after she dropped him home, she started talking about alcohol and I mentioned that DH an recovering alcoholic not realising that she didn't already know or that it would be a big deal and her face completely dropped. I said that he hadn't had a drink for 10 years since eldest dc was born but she nearly burst in to tears saying that she couldn't believe she's been letting her children be driven and looked after by an alcoholic and that didn't we think this is the sort of information we should share with people who are leaving their children with us.

Were we actually unreasonable to not have said? Would anyone else be concerned if you found this out someone who had been looking after your children just fine for half a year?

OP posts:
MrsTerryPratchett · 07/10/2018 00:52

I've heard North Americans say "sober for x years" or "in recovery for x years" which possibly sounds better. Recovering alcoholic is used though. I see no issue with it.

Dagsie94 · 07/10/2018 00:56

This reply has been deleted

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NotMyNameButHereForever · 07/10/2018 00:58

TwoBeavers An alcoholic with ten years sober under their belt is patently a wholly different proposition to someone sitting on a bench necking cheap cider and in the throes of active addiction.

Someone pointing that out does not remotely mean they 'don't understand alcoholism' and to suggest so is pretty offensive TBH. I'm genuinely sorry for your family experiences but that doesn't give you a monopoly on understanding the disease of addiction, and nor does it mean that others haven't had that same experience.

TBH suggesting someone in active addiction and someone with hefty recovery under their belt are precisely the same does itself suggest not much medical knowledge of, or objective understanding of, addiction.

NotMyNameButHereForever · 07/10/2018 01:01

Erm. Dagsie, you might be better off starting a thread in chat rather than posting in AIBU/mid another thread. Am sure you'll get a lot of great advice if you do. Good luck!

TwoBeaversAreBetterThanOne · 07/10/2018 01:18

@NotMyNameButHereForever then why even mention it ?

MaluCachu · 07/10/2018 01:22

She needs to get a grip.Reactions like that are not helpful in the recovery process.Does she have her own horizon?

NotMyNameButHereForever · 07/10/2018 01:26

TwoBeavers I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be obtuse but I genuinely don't understand the question. Can you expand a bit?

basquiat · 07/10/2018 01:54

Lots of people are bad drivers even while sober. Do people generally ask other parents giving their child lifts for a history of road traffic accidents and speeding tickets? Cos it would seem to me that that's more relevant than being an alcoholic 10 years ago.

kateandme · 07/10/2018 04:56

TwoBeavers wow offensive match considering what you put I rather think it's you that doesn't understand addiction if you think that someone in active drinking is that the same level of addiction or recovery of someone that has managed to stay off that is stay off alcohol for 10 years of course they're different.

CarolDanvers · 07/10/2018 05:50

She’s an idiot. But if I was your husband I wouldn’t particularly want that information being shared about me. Can’t really understand why you did.

Perfectly1mperfect · 07/10/2018 06:05

I don't think you were unreasonable not to have told her. However you obviously know the full circumstances, trust your husband, know him well etc. She doesn't have that knowledge and was probably just shocked and the instinct to protect her children kicked in.

I would probably talk to her and let her know that you would never put any child in danger.

She may have a reason to be particularly cautious of alcoholics. A member of my family was killed by a drunk driver so I may not be completely comfortable immediately after finding out that a person who had been driving my children around was a recovering alcoholic. I would however, be completely fine with your husbands circumstances.

PyongyangKipperbang · 07/10/2018 06:06

This sounds like such a big reaction that I’d bet she’s had a bad experience around an alcoholic

This sounds more likely to me.

Could be she had a childhood of "Dont worry darling, Daddy promised he wont drink again" or an ex who claimed to be on the wagon and fell off violently. My worry would be if she starts telling people that your DH is an active alcoholic or a drunk.

CarolDanvers · 07/10/2018 06:14

Actually yes that’s really made me think. My ex H is an alcoholic. The chaos and pain he brought to our family was unrelenting for years. Maybe that’s the kid of thing she was referencing when she reacted to your sharing of that information. Keep it to yourself in future. There’s really no need for anyone to know.

BlingLoving · 07/10/2018 12:12

Keeping it to themselves is counterproductive. It makes it a secret, something to be ashamed of and hidden. Most addicts in recovery that I've met need it to be in the open - they acknowledge they have a problem and are open about what they've done/are doing to fix it.

I do understand how it's difficult to look at an addict the same. BIL is an addict. Who relapsed after 7 years. It was very difficult and yes, DH and I did think to ourselves, "was he using that time when he babysat DC?" or whatever. And when he's out of rehab, I suspect it will take a long tim eb before we would trust him again. which is horrible, but it is what it is. However, I hope that if he remains sober for 10 years that we'd have learnt to trust him.

And importantly, I think we'd know the signs - the truth is that with his recent relapse DH spotted it immediately. BIL denied it for another 18 months and it caused loads of family upset as some people believed him and some, like DH, saw what was really happening. He stopped being allowed to be alone with our children at least a year before he actually admitted he was using.

SummerGems · 07/10/2018 14:34

Referring to the other mum in derogatory terms is IMO harsh and unnecessary.

Nobody knows what her own experiences are or even her lack of experience. Reality is that alcoholics can and do relapse after many years, and because this mum doesn’t really know the man in question she is possibly thinking bigger picture rather than just “recovering” alcoholic i.e. what kind of person is he/was he before he admitted to having a problem. How many lives did he destroy? Most alcoholics aren’t wino’s sitting on park benches getting smashed while the rest of society looks on, most alcoholics are functional members of society, and often people around them don’t know they’re alcoholics rather than just heavy drinkers for instance. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not and that their family and friends aren’t paying the price for their addiction.

I wouldn’t personally have an issue with being told that someone has a problem with alcohol and sought help for it. However I would assume that being an alcoholic didn’t happen in isolation and that there were character traits and behaviours which might have come to the fore during their non sober times which meant that as well as being alcoholic they weren’t very nice people.

I know of alcoholics who used to beat up their wives when drunk, never when sober. Who would go around picking up women and cheating on their partners, never when sober. But it’s likely that those same partners would now talk of them being sober but not talk about them not coming home to beat the shit out of them any more because those were the drunk days, etc.

I wouldn’t necessarily judge the recovering alcoholic as unfit to look after my children now but I would be wondering what their friends and family had had to go through at their hands so to speak, and I wouldn’t want to feel that the OP could speak openly about her husband’s addiction and subsequent sobriety but was minimising the impact it had on her own life.

CarolDanvers · 07/10/2018 14:38

Keeping it to themselves is counterproductive. It makes it a secret, something to be ashamed of and hidden. Most addicts in recovery that I've met need it to be in the open - they acknowledge they have a problem and are open about what they've done/are doing to fix it.

Certainly to close friends and family. Not acquaintances you barely know.

ForalltheSaints · 07/10/2018 14:49

I do think that the person who reacted may have had some bad experience with someone else who was an alcoholic or had a drink problem.

Ohyesiam · 07/10/2018 14:51

She doesn’t understand what recovery is, or she is a judge dickhead with narrow life experience.

MissConductUS · 07/10/2018 15:11

I would assume that being an alcoholic didn’t happen in isolation and that there were character traits and behaviours which might have come to the fore during their non sober times which meant that as well as being alcoholic they weren’t very nice people.

It's a progressive disease, not a character flaw.

Molecular basis of alcoholism

The people I've met in recovery are no different from anyone else. Some are lovely, some are knobs. It's an equal opportunity disease.

Keeping it to themselves is counterproductive. It makes it a secret, something to be ashamed of and hidden. Most addicts in recovery that I've met need it to be in the open - they acknowledge they have a problem and are open about what they've done/are doing to fix it.

Utter rubbish. My family, very close friends and medical service providers know I'm in remission. Random school mums, patients and people I work with have absolutely no need to know and I have absolutely no desire to tell them.

YeTalkShiteHen · 07/10/2018 15:15

Well done to your DH for being 10 years sober, that’s a really big achievement.

I also see no issue with using recovering alcoholic.

However, you don’t know how alcohol has impacted on the other Mum, so while her reaction may seem OTT (and it is if alcohol has never had a negative affect on her life), it may not be if she has been hurt or impacted by alcohol or an alcoholic in the past.

RandomMess · 07/10/2018 15:15

Irony is that her DC are probably safer in your DH care because he is now teetotal... I hope she gets a grip and realised that she totally overreacted.

SummerGems · 07/10/2018 15:17

It's a progressive disease, not a character flaw. but it’s still a disease which brings character flaws to the fore. Plenty of lovely people are aggressive drunks, for instance. Plenty of alcoholics talk about losing their inhibitions when drunk hence why they continued to drink. The addiction may be a disease point which people reach, but the alcohol itself has its own influencing factors which is why some people drink in the first place.

UserHistory · 07/10/2018 15:24

She’s entitled to make her own decisions based on her own knowledge.

Personally, I wouldn’t go around describing anyone as a “recovered alcoholic”: it’s a relapse waiting to happen, imo describing someone like that.

He’s sober 10 years... why did you mention it? Is it an ever present issue? That’s what I would think... unless you think he should get a medal for being sober, and while I understand his choice not to drink is an achievement, he’s not the only person who’s sober driving a car around with kids in it in the world.

Is he gasping for a drink and wrestling alcohol craving demons each moment? That’s what I’d pick up from your bizarre oversharing comment.
Just put it behind you.

I used to be anorexic, I don’t mention it. My DH used to be addicted to tobacco, he doesn’t mention that.

Just move on. The past doesn’t define you, so why bring it up?

Are you worried about a relapse?
Sounds to me like you are, in which case that mother’s cautious reaction was entirely understandable.

SummerGems · 07/10/2018 15:25

And just to clarify, I don’t think that the OP was in the wrong for not having told people that her DH is a recovering alcoholic, Whatever that journey has been it is their business.

However now that she has told someone she cannot control what those people think about him/whether they potentially view him in a different light now.

When you disclose something about yourself people will judge according to their own thoughts. Sometimes those judgements happen based on personal experiences. I don’t think the other mother was reasonable either to have expected the OP to have told everyone before allowing her DH to drive their children, but neither do I think she is necessarily unreasonable for drawing her own conclusions about him now that she does know.

MissConductUS · 07/10/2018 15:25

The addiction may be a disease point which people reach, but the alcohol itself has its own influencing factors which is why some people drink in the first place.

I have no idea what this means. Alcohol is a drug that in some people causes neurochemical changes that express as addiction. See the article I linked.

What other "influencing factors" does ethanol possess?