Do you know an alcoholic? What has happened to them?

[BottleDown]

My partner of 5 years is an alcoholic. We have a young child. I am making plans to leave, but it’s absolutely heartbreaking.

If there’s an alcoholic in your life, what has happened to them?

Friend 13 years sober and doing great. Attends AA weekly and really became part of the meetings and credits that with his success.

An old work colleague of mine.

She started drinking heavily in her mid-20s, and is late 30s now. She's just about holding down a minimum wage job, but finds it very hard.

I met up with her for a lunch over the summer, and she looked pretty unwell. Very bloated, and much more unkempt than she was even 18 months ago when I last saw her.
She's had a whole host of pretty serious health conditions, including a deep vein thrombosis that almost killed her fairly recently.

She still lives at home with her mum (who it seems is at a similar level of alcoholic), and has never had any sort of relationship beyond fairly surface level friendships.

I don't think there is one size fits all. Which you can tell from the responses.

Average lifespan maybe is about 60.

But there are alcoholics and alcoholics. Someone drinking a bottle of wine a day might be described as an alcoholic, but the amount of alcohol they are consuming is a lot less than someone on a bottle of gin a day, and the damage that is done to them physically is a lot different.

Plus genes have a significant effect. Some people are better at processing the stuff than others and do less damage to themselves for the same quantity.

People are far more likely to remember and tell stories about Jim the guy who drank himself to death age 40 and died in a unusual fashion rather than Bill the functioning alcoholic who popped off the mortal coil aged 80.

That said, it clearly isn't a recipe for a longer lifespan - but that is true of a lot of lifestyles - eg being very overweight or smoking a lot of weed.

I know several. My dad..still alive and drinking aged 73. Bad tremor and memory playing up. Has had a few heart-related scares. Dads brothers, both dead before reaching their 50s. A best friends exh. Had a stroke in his 40s. Now unable to run his business and work. Ex bil. Died by suicide aged 41. All have had wives/children and caused a lot of suffering to them along the way. Good luck with your plans to leave ❤️ Don't delay it any longer than necessary.

My Dad, who died from it aged 52, and also me, sober nearly 7 years thanks to AA. I'm so sorry that you are going through such a horrible time. All I can say is prioritise yourself, and your child. X

Was there for them through their first 2 or 3 attempts at rehab but eventually you have nothing left to give. They are still alive but in very poor health and family and friends are either no or low contact. Their life is very limited and depressing. I hear they are still having times when they claim to be sober and lie about it, they just drink less because of the medication.

Also know a couple of people who are very alcohol dependent but still functioning. You cant stop people drinking, only decide if you want to be around them.

Honestly all you can do is leave and hope that makes them chose to abstain.

I have a positive story

Ex H is an alcoholic, went to a month long residential rehab, as far as I know he’s been sober for 7 years now (we split after 2) but I know ex MIL would tell me if he was drinking again to protect DC. He was in a very lucky situation as he had the money to pay for the private rehab. Does your partner have health insurance via work, as I know a lot of them actually cover rehab too (which I was quite surprised to learn at the time!)

We don’t get on now, but one thing I will say for him, is he worked bloody hard to get sober and stay sober and is very committed to AA.

would recommend Al Anon groups for support for you, I found them very helpful.

lots of love. It’s such a hard situation to be in ❤️

edit to say; it took him hitting absolute rock bottom to realise he had a problem and needed help. Lost his job, driving licence and ended up with a criminal conviction. I asked him to sort it millions of times and it never worked; it has to come from them.
Maybe you leaving would be that reality check for him, but obviously it’s not guaranteed that it will.

I've known many over the years and most of them are dead now: heart failure and liver damage.

However I do know a handful who have become and remain sober. A former colleague really hit rock bottom - lost his job, had a breakdown, but got into rehab and rebuilt his life. He's doing great now.

My dad - he died when he was 47 from liver failure, my youngest sibling was 10.

My husband's dad - divorced, became a hoarder and a hermit and now has Korsakoff's and is in a care home.

My husband is an alcoholic. He went into rehab 6 years ago after I’d had enough and threw him out (to cut a long story short). He found losing me, our life together etc to be his personal rock bottom. It doesn’t always have to be living on the streets! He arranged the rehab himself, not expecting (but hoping I think) it to lead to us reconciling. Aside from a brief lapse 3 years ago, he hasn’t drunk since and life has been great.

My lovely Dad. He’s dead now ( not really caused by alcohol.) He had a very good job a d earned alot of money but had lost everything except his grown up kids by the time he died sadly My grandmother dead of cancer six weeks after diagnosis at 83

Yeah my dad. He died of alcoholic liver disease.

A family member of mine. She's now 64, has no contact with her 3 kids (who are all now parents themselves, so obviously she's never met her grandchildren or even knows anything about them), lost all her teeth, hasn't worked for over 30 years and now has a partner who is on the verge of alcoholism himself.

I am 23 years sober and in 12 step recovery. My ex is not. He thank f lives in another country. I was fortunate to get off the merry go round early.

To be honest the future isn't good for him. A person has to want to get well for themselves.

I've been around recovery so long and I've seen a lot. I've seen people drink themselves into the grave denying they are alcoholic.

Alcoholism is a complex medical disability. A few lines here cannot sum it up.

My advice to you is click this box below and get to Al-Anon. It is for the families of those who have someone in their lives whose drinking is causing problems (alive or dead, estranged, divorced, parents, family, child, in partner etc) It doesn't matter if the person is sober or not to go. It is a family illness as it affects everyone around the drinker

Please read this. I have dual membership to Al Anon as well as AA as the ex is alcoholic. I know how how useful the Al Anon program is too. There are also online meetings too if you can't get out to meetings. Good luck

https://al-anonuk.org.uk/

My brother is a vetran and had complex PTSD, he turned to drink. We lost him Sunday 12th October 💔 forever 41

One of my best friends is an alcoholic. He stopped drinking when he was hit by a car walking home from the pub. He realised the gravity of the situation when he woke up in hospital with no memory of even leaving the pub let alone being hit by a car. He is in his 50s now and has been sober for 20 years. He was also recently diagnosed with ASD and thinks that he used alcohol as a way to emotionally regulate and then became dependent unfortunately. He is doing well but has some ongoing health issues including horrendously bad teeth and he is very overweight as he snacks on sweet stuff all the time, which is probably a replacement for the alcohol. At least he can function better than when he was drinking though so that is a positive.

I personally know 2 who both died. One from stomach cancer at 59 (was more low-grade alcoholic- but this type of cancer is known as the drinker’s cancer) and the other fell down stairs and choked to death on vomit. They both made everyone around them miserable.

my stepchild’s mother is an alcoholic and it’s only a matter of time before something untoward happens to her because of it. 3 out of 4 kids are no contact with her. The other is too young to make that decision. It’s hell for everyone involved. Social services are involved as are the police.

You need to get away. This is going nowhere positive.

Both dead young. One left a 5 year old with one parent and the other drunk himself to death deliberately. People always ask why I’m boring and avoid alcohol and pubs. Don’t allow it in my home nore so I allow my kids anywhere near a person drinking it.

Two uncles died from liver failure.

My sister died in her mid 30s leaving a young child. She actually killed herself but it was because she had been told that her body was fucked and her ex has got social services involved.

My step dad died early 70s of liver problems.

My mum is early 70s and began drinking heavily in her 50s. She now has Korsikoffs and looks like she’s in her 90s. She’s bitter and blames everyone else for her situation. She has broken her hip twice after falling.

Yeah, my Dad. He'll outlive us all. Drank from teens to early 60s, hardcore drinking too. Late 80s now, normal age related health stuff.

Yes. Her were children were recently removed by social services and to be honest they should have been removed a good year before it finally happened. She considers this the greatest of injustices, because she loves her children. I'm sure she does love them. No-one doubts that. Not enough to stop drinking though. I doubt she'll recover, I think she will die from it. Incredibly, her liver is apparently still holding up, but it can't forever. Or she'll walk into traffic or something. Maybe this sounds very defeatist and who knows, maybe she'll surprise us all, but you have to understand how long this has been going on.

NC.

So sorry for what you're dealing with @BottleDown but well done for taking steps to exit the relationship. I'm sure you know about alcoholism being a family disease - it's something that children really shouldn't be exposed to. The damage is immense. I have some idea of how hard what you're going through is but please, please follow through on making that break, for you and your child's sakes.

I was in a (same-sex) relationship with an alcoholic for two years. I didn't realise she was an addict at the start, having had no exposure to alcoholism in my own lifetime, and being (ironically) tee total myself. We didn't live together which also made it harder to really witness. I worked it out after the first year, spent the second year trying to do all the things I now know from bitter experience to be utterly, utterly pointless - pouring hidden alcohol away when I found it, trying to persuade her to see that she was killing herself, planning days out hoping she'd have something to look froward to which would distract her (only to have them all ruined and cancelled as she'd be drinking again), genuinely thinking that after every big conversation I'd actually got through to her and she'd now finally realised what needed to be done <hollow laughter> Trying to manage and resolve it, basically. I remember when I learnt the 3 C's - you didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it. That was a revelation. Never a truer set of words spoken.

In the end I left (well, actually she threw me out and I just didn't go back.) It took a lot of strength as I had loved her and it was hard to see her destroying herself. In one of our conversations she had admitted: "I know I'm fighting for my life here" so she knew it, which made it harder to leave. But I knew it was the only thing to do. I couldn't help her, she was beyond help, she didn't want help. She wanted to sit in her flat drinking and blaming everyone else. I could choose to get (further) dragged down by her or make a break. My presence wasn't going to change the outcome either way.

She died 6 months later. It was a surprisingly peaceful death, she was very lucky given that by that time she was in a cat and mouse situation of being hospitalised, released and getting herself re-admitted through drinking almost constantly. They were in the process of widening her oesophagus as it was effectively sealing up due to the amount of alcohol she was consuming and the resultant vomiting. She'd had minor tears and effectively died from one leaking slowly but I gather if it had been a major one that had ruptured violently it wouldn't have been a nice way to go. A woman posted on here not so long ago about her brother dying in this way and I recognised what she was discussing. My ex was 51 when she died.

She came from a very disadvantaged background and had risen to be an Oxford don and to work all round the world. Which made it even more tragic somehow.

I'm still supporting her now 85 year old mother who has never got over it.

Some people do recover. One of them is my gardener - after a 25 year addiction he did AA and has been dry and functional for years now. Part of the reason I employ him is because he's kept going winning that battle despite everything life has flung at him and I want to support him. But the truth is that recovery is extraordinarily rare. I'm now in another relationship and my partner used to work in alcohol cessation services (though we met quite randomly.) She's told me the stats on recovery and it's vanishingly low - something like 2% success to 98% failure. Sadly very few alcoholics permanently recover. Please don't waste your life and that of your child waiting/hoping that your partner will be in that minuscule minority. One thing I know - if an alcoholic is determined to recover, they will - without or without support. If an alcoholic hasn't got that determination they'll fail even if every bit of support in the world is made available to them.

There is tons of support for people in your shoes on the Alcohol Support threads. Pointy Things runs a great thread for those in your situation, I'd strongly suggest you look that up.

Sorry for the long post.

All the very best to you and your little one 💐

2 in my husband’s family. One stopped drinking in his 40s, but sadly died a few years later. His poor body was just trashed from the alcohol. Another stopped drinking in his 30s and is now in early 70s. He’s very unwell with a host of different conditions, some of which his doctors attribute to the drink. His life has been fulfilling in a career and family sense, since he gave up alcohol. But he’s never been properly healthy.

I know loads of them. They’re sober and generally doing great. I’m an alcoholic, going on 3 years sober now nearly.

I have a fantastic life, happy marriage, happy well adjusted children. Good mental health, good boundaries and coping mechanisms.

People with drinking problems in my experience who get sober are much more together, successful and functional than the non-alcoholics I know. Because they’re sorting their shit out.

A lot of my friends who aren’t alcoholics have horrible mental health and terrible coping mechanisms. They aren’t drinking every night, but they aren’t functioning great either. The thing about getting sober is that it completely turns your life upside down and if you’re doing it right, you’re going to come out the other side a whole different person put back together in a different way. I can deal with hard stuff when it happens. I have good boundaries. I have a good support system. I take care of myself mentally and physically.

I think there is a tendency to think that everyone who is an alcoholic is doomed to die a sad lonely death drinking alone in a bedsit. It’s just not the case at all. But it’s simply because people have absolutely no idea that the happy put together people in their lives are recovering alcoholics. Other than Dh, no one in my life knows really (though they know I don’t drink anymore). No one else I know who’s sober, with the exception of a few who have very public personas as people in recovery, goes around announcing it, so the stereotype remains because people just don’t realise.

So much sorrow in these posts. I wish alcohol didn't exist.