Could really do with some help - Dh, depression and alcoholism

[Ozziegirly]

This may be long. I have been bottling it up for ages and have no one to talk to about this.

I have been married for 5 years, with DH for 10. He has always been a heavy drinker, but things came to a head last year and he started going to AA. He has been on and off alcohol now for 5 months.

He has also had some "issues" with depression, although has only self medicated with St John's Wort (and alcohol).

He knows that the two go together. He gets depressed, then drinks, which makes him depressed.

He also had a mini breakdown about 8 weeks ago and is now on Esipram for anxiety. The anxiety is directly linked to his job (he has an a**hole boss and is doing a demanding job that he has had no training for).

Anyway. Since we have been together these issues have always been lurking. We emigrated to Aus from the UK in Nov 2007 and since we have been here it seems in some ways worse and in some better (in that he is going to AA).

I think it seems worse as I have none of my friends around to take my mind off it. I feel very alone here.

Over the past few months he seems to have really started being properly depressed - AA is so good in some ways but also I feel that it kind of "legitimises" him drinking as it gives him an excuse to say "I just couldn't help it, it's stronger than me".

But to be honest, it's the depression that's making things so hard. He is so negative about everything, which I sympathise with, but it does make me want to scream a lot of the time. We are young, healthy (apart from this), he has a good job, we have families and friends and yet he ALWAYS sees the doom in things. I try to be light and breezy but honestly I feel like I can't take much more.

I am on the verge of asking him to move back to the UK, as although I like our life here, I just feel like I cannot cope with this depression and misery without my close friends and family to relieve some of the pressure.

We used to have such fun and I find myself looking at us laughing in our wedding photos and just weeping for what we have seem to have lost.

I want to help him, I love him so much and the hardest thing is watching him go through this.

Please, does anyone have any suggestions for me?

ABD, how awful for your friend.

I don't know that I can really advise, my DH's trigger to start AA was when I went away for a weekend and he basically spent the whole weekend drinking.

But to be fair, i had sen AA come up on the internet searches before, so it wasn't as if he was oblivious. Nowadays i don't think anyone out of uni can drink that much and not be aware that perhaps it's not a great idea.

How would he respond to you taking him quietly to one side and just simply saying that you've noticed he's been drinking a lot, and is he doing ok? Not mentioning the word "alcoholic" which might make him run for the hills.

I would strongly suspect that he and his wife have argued about it a lot - as partners of alcoholics we're not really keen on airing our dirty linen, it is still a bit of a stigma attached to saying "my husband has a drink problem", even though we know there's nothing to be ashamed about.

I would normally give the advice of Al-Anon although I found it worse than useless, but maybe I was unlucky, others swear by it.

Good luck though.

And MIFLAW - I think maybe I'll just play it cool - I'm sure it will happen when the time is right! Thanks so much for your messages, it's been so helpful to speak to someone about this.

MIFLAW - thank you for that advice. I think I have felt quite tentative in labelling my friend as an alcoholic for a long time because I also feel "that quantities are a bit of a red herring and it's your relationship with the drink that's the important thing".

He handles the drink quite well, is not violent or morose, he never misses work and actually to some extent gets better for having had a drink. I have never seen him vomit or pass out. That said, every time I see him he routinely drinks 30 - 50 units over a 5 - 6 hour period.

Ozziegirly - Interesting you think there was a trigger for your husband.

I hear you loud and clear about avoiding a confrontation and making him 'run for the hills'. Yes he and his wife have argued a lot about it - she has told me. Problem is she also tries to shame him by mocking him about it in front of me and my wife and then drinks quite a bit herself while still being genuinely worried. She si not consistent. AA is the obvious answer of course but like you I am wondering if it is the right route.

One thought I did have about your situation is that coming back from Australia might not only be good for you to get support, as you suggest, but also be the change of environment might just be the right 'trigger event' to create an acceptance by your DH for a real change.

Anyway, I will not bother you further as I feel I am hijacking your thread. Thank you for your thoughtful response.

ABetaDad, I know you have said you are leaving the thread, but I just wanted to let you know in all the time that my DH was drinking, I never saw him vomit, pass out, act drunk or any of the typical behaviours. In fact, when he told me that he thought he was an alcoholic, I laughed because I thought he was drinking far less than he had done previously. Of course, he was drinking more, and the evidence was hidden in our shed and garage. He actually managed his drink very well, and the only thing in hindsight that I noticed was a tendency to become very emotional. He also started to become rather obsessive about things, and I remember him using a spirit level to straighten all of the pictures in the house. He was never, ever nasty.

I'm a true believer that an alcoholic will only start to get better when he or she admits that he is powerless over alcohol and chooses to get better. Telling them they have a problem is unlikely to prompt a change. Sadly, I suspect my mother has a similar problem and I am currently keeping a log of the problems that her drinking has caused so that when the time is right, I can talk her through the problems rather than telling her she is drinking too much. I also believe that the units consumed are a red herring.

I'm a big AA fan, it has helped our family enormously. For my DH, it has been, and continues to be, a lifeline. I've mentioned this before, but an NHS alcohol agency counsellor tried to convince DH to be a "social drinker" and not give up drinking forever. This was a ridiculous notion for DH, and even he admits that it just minimised his problem and gave him the excuse he needed to continue.

llareggub - you have an interesting perspective. I think my friend's wife has tried to persuade her DH to be a 'social drinker' along with her but TBH he cannot do that. He just cannot. I think he really has to stop completely and this thread I think has convinced me of that.

AA might well be the way to go but I hear what other posters say. My wife has an older male ex colleague who she remained friends with for about the last 20 years and he stopped a long time ago. He says the drinking really got out of control as he worked in an environment where lunchtime and after work drinking was an accepted norm. It just got hold of him and he has admitted that being made redundant (for an unrelated reason) saved his marriage and his life. He tried 'cutting back a bit' but it just did not work. He had to stop completely.

Funnily enough, my DH knows someone who had a really stressful job which made him turn to drink. When he retired he told himself that he now wouldn't need to drink anymore, and it would all be fine. Of course, what happened is that he could just drink more because he now didn't need to present a professional and capable image. He could sit and home and drink and drink and drink....

When my DH cut out alcohol there were a few things we needed to do to make sure he did it safely. I've said earlier that cold turkey can be very dangerous, so we had to work to manage his intake while cutting down every day. He took medication to counteract the side effects and drank lots of sugary drinks to replace the alcohol. As the week went on I saw some terrible things, he was sweaty, he slept a lot (and I mean a lot) and was generally like an old man. It was horrible. I would imagine your friend's DW would appreciate warning of this and support.

I tried to convince DH to be a social drinker too, probably because I didn't really believe that he was an alcoholic as I didn't really see his drinking as being so bad. Maybe I didn't want him to be one. I've really changed my perspective on drinking, and I no longer drink either, partly to support DH but partly because our lifestyle is totally different now.

I totally agree - I also couldn't understand why my DH couldn't be a "social drinker". He always managed to keep it under control if we were out having dinner, or out at a party or with parents or whatever.

I also think it's a fallacy to think that alcohoics are ALWAYS out of control. DH would have many evenings where he would drink steadily, but then go to sleep, no problems, no dramas.

I actually think it is sometimes harder for the functioning alcoholic to seek help and accept that they need it. To outsiders, DH and I are perfectly ok - we both have well paid, professional jobs, we have never been arrested, driven drunk, any of those things.

But for DH it's the mental effects that are the strongest, and I really believe that he drinks because he is depressed, and is depressed because he drinks!

Good weekend for us though, he had to work, which is a real "trigger" for him, and although he said he did feel like drinking, he overcame it, which he was really pleased about.

And don't worry about "thread hijacking" - it's useful and interesting to hear other perspectives.

Control's a difficult one and probably does more to support denial than any other single factor.

I would say for me there were two different situations. There was drinking and instantly abdicating all responsibility as to what happened next; and there was "white knuckle" control, which might involve watching the clock and not opening the wine until the stroke of six/seven/whenever; timing my pint to take exactly an hour; sitting at a girl's parents' dinner table waiting to be offered a drink, though internally I was crying out for one; refusing a drink, though I desperately wanted one, because the girl I was with had started to get anno0yed by my drinking ... It wasn't much fun and I kept it to a minimum, but it happened.

But the abdication of responsibility side of things meant I didn't know what would happened. So, believe it or not, I sometimes surprised myself and others by not getting pissed until the appropriate time of the evening; or got pissed but was actually quite good fun on it; or went on somewhere else before I embarrassed myself; or got tired before I got drunk and went home to finish the job ... Again, it didn't happen often, but it did happen.

The point I'm making is that neither of these situations, I just knew, were what "civilians" meant when they talked about controlling drinking, "taking it easy", etc - but, because I kept quiet about what was going on, it must have looked to those same civilians that I COULD and WOULD control my drinking if I wanted. And, whenever the idea that I should cut down or even stop came into my head, I would believe my own hype and comfort myself with the fact that I could control it any time I wanted. "I can take it or leave it," I would say with no irony - "I just usually choose to take it." Only in AA did I realise what control meant, in the sense that I didn't have any.

Incidentally, it took me a while to get the "first drink that does the damage" theory, because I never ever went out with the intention of having just one drink - I was always going to stop after a couple. If someone had suggested we go for one drink only, I wouldn't have bothered putting my coat on.

Forgot to add the biggest one, of course - which is that, once you attain a certain tolerance to alcohol, it takes you quite a while to get properly drunk (though not long to get mad) - sometimes you just run out of evening! Again, I wouldn't call that control - more like training ...

Everyone ok?

Just in case you are still around Ozziegirly. My DH is a recovering alcie and AA is def. what eventually got him through - but only after detox/rehab. I remember him going to AA in the early days and telling me it wsn't for him as those people "really had problems". Of course, in time, he had those problems too and realised it WAS for him. Although he only goes a couple of times a week I am always amazed about the support members give to each other. A guy he had met at a meeting last night rang him earlier today as he was tempted to pick up a drink and my DH was on the phone for an hour to him. But your DH has to want to go. AA will tell him he must not ever drink again and that is a hard thing to hear. And, this must sound really selfish, but it is hard for the partner of the alcie as it really affects our lives too. If you get a chance look at the Getting The Sober series of books (you can buy them on Amazon) and the webset. They were a Godsend to me and I have recommended them to lots of people. Good luck to you both.

Nice message, MO2B.

Have to add, though, that AA will NOT EVER tell him (or anyone)"he must not ever drink again". They will tell him that if he is an alcoholic and he does continue to drink it will make him miserable and eventually will probably kill him or leave him insane or incarcerated - but AA does not tell anyone what they MUST or MUST NOT do. It provides facts borne out of experience for people to act on - and, if those people come to the same conclusion as existing happy members, ie that they would prefer a life without drink to the death, insanity or prison route, then it attempts to help the newcomer make his or her sober life a happy and manageable one.

Might seem a trivial distinction to you but may make all the difference to your husband, especially during the hard times (or even the easy times).