Alcoholic husband - I can't do this anymore

[binkyblinky]

Hi ladies I need some advice or some support because I don't know what to do.

My husband has always been a heavy drinker from his days in the army. When we met I didn't realise how heavy he drunk until we moved in together about two years later. I had two small children when we met who were six months and 20 months old.

He drinks every night and never in front of the children. Mid week it will be 4 to 8 cans of Fosters and at the weekend this can increase to 12 cans sometimes more. There have been various large incidents in our relationship caused by his drinking, sometimes he will stay in bed all day and he is in A terrible mood until he has a drink.

I would like to add importantly he has never been violent or aggressive with me or the children, I would not stand for that. He is a fantastic dad to the children generally.

We have been married for 3 1/2 years and we now have a son of our own. When I became pregnant he decided that it was time to change his drinking Waze and changed to a different drink with lower alcohol content and also wouldn't drink every day however this lockdown has made me realise the problem is still very much there and I don't know what to do about it.

He has been buying his alcohol in bulk and then drinking it straight away so it doesn't last. This morning I came downstairs to say he had drank over half a bottle of gin as well as 12 cans of Fosters. He was passed out on the sofa all the lights were on and the front door was unlocked. I told him to go upstairs because I didn't want our baby to smell or see him like this (18 months)

I have attended Al-Anon family meetings before. It makes me feel so sad to see my husband and such a wonderful hard-working man battling this addiction/illness. I am torn as I know it is an illness being addicted to alcohol, but I don't know how much more I can take seeing him in these states. I don't want my children to grow up around this.

He has tried to stop drinking before and been unsuccessful. I want to tell him to leave and come back when he sort himself out but this isn't going to go away is it, what do I do to protect my children? Can anyone advise me or has anyone been in the same situation as I find myself in.

It isn't as easy as just get up and leave and I feel so very sad.

@CodenameVillanelle So if a father for example spend all summer teaching a child to swim and an hour each day supervising homework, made sure that their needs are always looked after no matter what but they a some drinks when the child is not even aware of things as they are asleep that means they are a bad parent?

You're not describing the actual behaviour of an alcoholic. Your imaginary alcoholic good parent doesn't exist. It's an oxymoron.

i’m a recovering alcoholic, 6 years sober. i was as rock-bottom as it gets. it very nearly killed me.

i deeply regret the awful things i did in drink. i’m still dealing with the fallout 6 years on.

in early sobriety a met a man, fell in love and after 18 months we moved in together. it soon became obvious that the man i’d been seeing had been spending the nights he wasn’t with me getting absolutely shitfaced. it was my fault - i knew in my heart of hearts that there was a problem but i thought i could save him.

even with my experience of getting sober and working the 12 steps of AA, i stupidly thought he would change one day. i thought he would come to me saying he wanted to stop drinking (he started his mornings with a beer at 8 and drank all day, hiding booze and lying to me) and that i could help him.

and it was ‘only’ carlsberg. but it’s not what you drink, it’s your behaviours and consequences that matter. alcohol gets you drunk. it’s just science. if you drink heavily, you will be drunk, whether it’s fosters or special brew.

i left him last year. he is continuing to drink himself to death, but i don’t have to live with him while he’s doing it. i loved him very
much, but the man i fell in love with left the building a long time ago.

OP, have you ever talked to him about his drinking? not once he’s started - an alcoholic will always promise to stop while they have a drink in their hand and more in the fridge. it’s easy. ‘i’ll make tonight the last night’ is the best excuse in the world for getting hammered. my ex would have a beer in his hand 2 days later and claim he’d totally forgotten he was supposed to have stopped, it would only be for today, he’d stop tomorrow.

rinse and repeat. this is your life, OP, if you don’t start making tough decisions. i was born to an alcoholic mother and raised by her and my alcoholic stepfather. i first got pass-out drunk at 8. your children will be affected by this. it destroys children’s lives - as a previous poster said: they are unable to remove themselves from the environment.

at the moment you’re not protecting them. you’re helping your husband protect his drinking. talk to him when he’s sober. make it very clear that you are setting boundaries. he stops, or he leaves. or you leave.

this will never stop until he decides to stop. in the absence of that, you need to be the one making the decisions.

@CodenameVillanelle There are functioning alcoholics that do pass the day completely normal my own farher was like that. Yes he drank at night did not stop him taking me to swimming from 10-2 teaching me to swim till I was ready for my swimming tests or working on my spelling with me every night

The problem is that alcoholics are only functioning until they aren't. We have seen this in our family. Person in question always drank too much but was lovely and adored their children. Until they started drinking a bit in the day too. Then one day they called into the pub with their grandchild and didn't notice when the toddler went out of the door and into the road outside.

We all tried to help them, but they didn't see it as a problem. The family cut them off in the end, their children don't see them and they haven't seen their grandchildren in years. It is very sad.

The first step is getting your husband to admit there is a problem and agreeing to get help. If he won't then you will need to separate from him.

@BarbedBloom He needs help I just don't think telling OP to leave right away is the way forward either. And as long as functioning it is possible to still be a good parent

@lovepicklesandlime As I said, first step is to try and get him to acknowledge the problem and get help. That was what we tried in our family, involving doctors and trying to get them to attend meetings. I didn't mean go immediately to leaving, but if he won't engage or change then I do think she should separate.

Being passed out and stinking of booze in the morning in an area where his children could find him is not good parenting. He is unwell and needs help, but that is the simple truth. Of course there are some alcoholics who do manage, but there does come a point where many of them don't. Some will thankfully then realise they need help, but some won't, as in my family and they will choose booze over everything.

Many people on this thread have talked about the damage caused by living with an alcoholic parent.

Sorry, @lovepickledlimes

@BarbedBloom I do agree that once it gets to a stage where the children notice, are effected or put in danger at a frequent basis when left in their care things really need to change

How did you know he was an alcoholic @lovepickledlimes?

I don't doubt your memories of your childhood but I also don't accept that you weren't impacted by his alcoholism. I don't want to discuss my own childhood but I have many many happy memories - that doesn't change the fact that alcoholism affected me. For one thing I chose an alcoholic husband myself.

if your toddler wandered out early one morning through that open door you'd have Social Services involved.

@CodenameVillanelle Well neighbours saying they can smell it, my mother telling me and later as a teen his tone would drop a lot more pained sad and melancholy, he would grow a bit more distant in his replies. My mum said he was very functioning and she only knew because the empty bottles

No one is trying to make out that he is 'bad'. He is in an addiction, he is ill.

BUT, how is the dad regularly being in bed all day with a hangover being a good parent? It's not. And addictions spiral, how long before its afternoon drinking or 'just one in the day?'. People need to be honest enough to see that actions have consequences and alcoholism has emotional consequences for children. They won't understand now but they will.

He wont change until he wants to, and if that takes years and years....

You just cannot imagine the sadness that comes with having an alcoholic parent. He might be the best dad on the planet, but that in a way is even worse and his kids who love him will have to watch him slowly killing himself. That's abusive.

My Dad is an alcoholic, I lived with it until I was 18 when my mum finally kicked him out, I have bad memories of my childhood because of him, don't let that happen to your kids. I now see my kids with their Dad and see what real fatherhood looks like.

This used to happen regularly (every weekend) but it stopped when I became pregnant.

I'm trying to read all the posts - also feeling sick with nerves for when he wakes up

@binkyblinky can you give us what a weeks alcohol consumption looks like? Sometimes it helps to look at the situation factually and take the emotion away from the situation. It might help you gauge the severity of the issue.

Your original post reads to me (in the nicest way) that you're in denial a little bit about his drinking. If you're in denial, you're not seeing or addressing the situation as it actually is which might lead to enabling behaviour unknowingly.

I hope it doesnt read like people are bashing you. It must be so difficult.

Also, he is still in bed? Midday with three kids?

I think you definitely need to speak with him about how you feel, tell him he needs to stop drinking or he will risk loosing his family. Obviously he won't be able to stop on his own as you recognise he is an alcoholic, but tell him you'll sit down together and work out a plan, find some agencies that can help, even with the lockdown many agencies have tailored their support accordingly.

This will give you an indication of what you're dealing with. I appreciate you calling women's aid etc. But this is going to blindside him, as he's been drinking most nights and so far it hasn't been a problem in his eyes. So yeah, I would definitely start with a conversation between the two of you and go from there.

You sound very sad, and that you desperately want your marriage to work out! I have everything crossed for you 🤞 there are success stories, hopefully your husband will be one of them ❤️

@Ilovethekittehs weekly before lockdown

4-8 bottles or cans of bud light a night. At weekend might add in another 4 cans of regular strength bud.

Before I became pregnant two years ago it was 8 cans of fosters minimum

Fosters 1.8 units a can
Bud light 1.1 units a can

When baby arrived, he tried so hard and mixed in bud light with no alcohol

After lockdown

8-12 cans a night of whatever he's been able to buy. When he does the weekly food shop he buys crates of it and stores it in the shed.

His problem is that once he starts, he can't stop. So just keeps going until he is completely out of it.

This happened last weekend and he said he knows he has a problem. So said he was going to stop. Lasted 24 hours.

This is why you need to attend Al Anon. The downside about posting online is that you will get comments like those of @Chootchoot and @limpbizkit which will not help you, your husband or your children at all.

Some hope for her and DH

Hope will keep you and your children trapped. The person who needs to do the heavy lifting in this situation (your DH) is the person least equipped to recognise and undertake that heavy lifting. You need to see actions from your DH. Do not look to hope. The sad reality is that some people never recover and you must be prepared for that outcome @binkyblinky.

I am so sorry you are in this situation.

@binkyblinky a family solicitor might be a helpful place to start, they will be used to complicated family situations and likely to know how to support you with your options and rights.

Health visitors may also be helpful. There are family charities such as Family Matters and Home Start.

I can see you are lost and not sure where to start so perhaps just start with getting some support for yourself or calling a helpline for support. I don’t want to get into his role as a parent but today, if he’s still asleep he’s not a good partner, let alone a good parent. It’s so tough for parents right now you need a partner who is in this with you together. You need an equal partner ready and able to parent alongside you.

www.home-start.org.uk/Pages/Category/things-we-can-help-with

alcoholchange.org.uk/alcohol-facts/fact-sheets/a-guide-to-family-support-services

Ultimately anything you say won’t mean a thing because until he wants to stop any attempts to stop will end with him back drinking

It has to come from him.

Until he has hit the bottom there is no incentive for him to remain sober.

You can threaten to leave and you may walk out but until what he has to lose becomes greater than the bottom of a beer bottle he isn’t going to change.

And if he is serious about changing and can’t do it on his own then he might need medical input.

A few of the people I knew who wanted to stop took pills that made them vomit if they drank alcohol

Alcoholism to me isn’t necessarily a disease. A disease is something that you catch through no fault of your own and I think calling it a disease is transferring the problem as something that can’t be helped

To me having seen a lot of friends succumb I think it is a habit, like chewing your fingernails or sucking your thumb

A night out = drinking because they don’t get out much
A night in= drinking because they had a hard day
Saturday and Sunday = drinking because it’s the weekend.

Funerals, weddings, parties = drinking because it is a funeral, wedding or party

There will always be an excuse to drink

Op you say he tried to stop drinking, but has he ever sought help? Seen his gp, been to rehab, gone to meetings etc,

Because I’d sit him down and tell him he now needs to seek help or leave. That he has to pick between his alcoholism and his family.

And you need to use the word, because until he accepts he’s an alcoholic and seeks proper help, you have no hope.

My friend grew up with an alcoholic mother, it’s impacted her whole life. And clearly not in a good way. She can’t understand how her mother picked booze over her, how her father allowed it to continue. Her mother was never a slurring drunk, more a happy drunk before passing out. Once kids get to a certain age, you can’t hide it, you can’t send them to bed early so they can’t see it.

You have a limited time period here. Right now it will be impacting them, but not as much as it shortly will.

tell him to leave OP and stand by it. If you love him and want to give him the very best chance of going into recovery, put him out. My husband has been sober for over a year now, after I threw him out when I was 20 weeks pregnant. He went into a rehab and has not touched a drop since. He also went onto antidepressants which helped massively. It’s scary doing this as there is a fairly large chance your DH won’t sort himself out but you can’t have it around your kids. Be strong, tell him to go.

OP, my Dsis is with a man like your DH - with one enormous difference. Her DP knows he has no off switch once he starts drinking.

So he doesn't drink. At all. He's struggled, but is 10 years sober. That is what your DH needs to do and you have to have that conversation with him when he is sober.

The binge you describe is frightening. A normal person drinking that much at a sitting would be in hospital or dead. The fact that he can tolerate it should tell you a lot about how serious his drinking really is - he's going to need professional support to stop.

And only he can seek that. I agree that lockdown isn't the time to take drastic action, but you can start the conversation. Your children will notice what is happening and as they get older, it will get worse.

Yes, alcoholism is a disease. Your DH deserves support. But ask yourself - do you and your children deserve to live with an active alcoholic?

I've been there and done that, and it was horrific. My H has been dead almost two years and I used to think like you - that he was a good man and a good dad. And he was, until the day that he wasn't. I let it go on for too long. Don't be me.