Anyone with experience in alcoholism? Questions re: codependency and husband wanting to stop drinking

[pollycazalet]

DH has been drinking a lot over the last few months. At least a bottle of wine a night, sometimes more.

He has depression and is on medication for it. The drinking is linked to this - he uses it to self medicate, which obviously cancels out some of the effects of the anti-ds!

He has now said he thinks he is an alcoholic and accepts that his drinking is having a negative effect on our relationship.

Our relationship has been up and down over the last three years since he had a breakdown which led to the depression diagnosis. I think he has had depression for a long time and alcohol has been one of his ways of coping. I have enabled his drinking to some extent by drinking with him on an (often) daily basis.

He has said that he wants to stop drinking with the aim ultimately of improving his mental health and coming off the anti-ds. He has asked me to help him by not drinking myself at home and not having alcohol in the house. It has been a week now.

I have never managed his drinking or tried to control it. I am not sure whether this puts me now in that position, in that I cannot have a drink myself at home. He feels he cannot control himself around drink - ie if it's here he will drink it. And what happens when we are out socially? Whilst DH can control his home environment he needs to be able to be around drink without needing to drink himself.

Is it common to have a dry house and is this helping DH or not, in the long term?

I don't really understand what codependence means - what I want to do is help him but I realise that he has to do this himself.

Any advice or insight welcome.

Polly

It may be a sweeping statement but only around 4% of alcoholics get to AA.

What concrete actions has he done to address his alcoholism?. How serious is he about wanting to recover or are his words just that, words. Words are cheap and in the meantime you're all coping the fallout.

ATM, I'm interested that you recommend accompanying a dh to the GP - how does this fit with not taking responsibility for his actions? I offered to do this but he has not taken me up on it, as he knows I would tell the truth!

If you went to the GP with him, you would then know that he has indeed gone there. That's all.

AA don't even keep figures Attila. How would anyone know that only 4% of alcoholics ever get there? And anyway, so what? It's like saying only 4% of fat people ever get to Weight Watchers.

Like I said, it's not the only way.

Polly, I really hope your DH is successful and it all works out for you both.

I will leave the thread now as I find Attila's comments quite hard to take.

"Hear hear, familycircus. Polly if you read the other thread I mentioned you will see there is a lot of 'recycling' on this one from a particular poster"

I don't think that the above is a very nice thing to write. You would not like that said of you for instance.

Anyway would like to wish you all the very best of luck and I mean that most sincerely.

In addition, if you went with him to his GP/therapists or contacted them separately, you could make sure they were aware how much he was drinking as from experience that is often not fully disclosed. I would recommend doing this.

Familycircus - I think that's what he has a number for. I don't think it's particularly contentious to suggest that not everyone finds the AA approach helpful - what you did sounds better suited to DH.

Sorry you're leaving the thread - you've been very helpful.

Zoo - in my DH's case he wouldn't really know the amount. I would have to tell him exactly how much I had drunk as he would think we'd drunk the same amount out of the bottle.

I had no idea about amounts, we stopped drinking at home years ago because I got so fed up. But I could tell his GP and then psychiatrist how often, how severe, his patterns of behaviour, and what impact this had on him and his family. I found this was not information that he disclosed himself properly until after I interfered. I feel it helped both him realise what he was doing and the professionals in being able to have all the information they needed to help him. It definately also made me feel a lot better.

Never underestimate how drinking will affect the children regardless of when he does it. My 14 year old cant really remember his dad when he was drinking at his worse yet he will tell you that alcohol smells like 'unhappy' he hates the smell of it.

I went with dh years ago to the gp who took tests on his liver etc the tests came back fine which didnt help cause i think he thought he could carry on then. He wouldnt go to AA either. In fact i think he just done it to stop us walking out the door. Which is why we find empties now hidden all over the house. Im at the end of the line with it all now so prob not the best person to listen to. I really hope it works out for you.

Better place - thanks for your post. That makes perfect sense and is good to hear your success. I am very happy not to have alcohol at home - I want to support DH as much as possible.

do you have anything else more positive / healthy you can use to replace the alcohol? maybe taking up an activity together or getting into planning and preparing healthy meals together. so many people fall into the habit of telly and a drink to "wind down" but actually it's not really winding them down at all.

i'm not an alcoholic but i have been a binge drinker in the past. these days i rarely drink and could easily give it up altogether - the more i think about alcohol the more i think it is a drug like any other and is a waste of time / money / life.

i can barely look at people's party pictures on facebook anymore without feeling i'm looking at a picture of a bunch of drug takers.

regarding codependency....for me it is being as addicted to the addict as the addict is to their drug of choice - making similar excuses as them for non healthy, harmful behaviour (i.e. not caretaking of yourself in order to feed your 'addiction').

it involves putting your own needs and responsibility to yourself low down the list of priorities by absorbing yourself in the needs of others.

a codependent partner will often fail to recognise the need of their partner to make adult choices for themselves. instead they will take on a 'parenting' type role - attempting to micro-manage / heal their partners behaviour as if the partner were a child.

i'd say complying to the expressed wish of a partner to not have alcohol in the house because they have vocalised their own inability to control themselves around alcohol is not particularly co-dependent behaviour. in this case the alcoholic partner has self-expressed a weakness. codependent behaviour would be removing or hiding alcohol the alcoholic has bought or taking measures to restrict the intact of the alcoholic when the alcoholic has expressed not self-desire for this to happen.

Thanks SNM - that's interesting re: codependency. I think there has definitely been some of that behaviour in our relationship but again that's more to do with the depression (which has, at times left DH unable to function at all) rather than the alcohol issue.

I have been thinking about the combination of depression and alcohol and using alcohol to self-medicate. Having spoken to DH last night he said he felt more 'stable' emotionally when not drinking. I wonder if this is the 'lightbulb moment' - that drinking is actually making him feel worse but is a treadmill once you get on it - ie you need to keep drinking to feel the same effects and it's only once you get off you realise that it's doing more harm than good.

He seems to find it so easy to stop I question whether it is more habit than addiction or is this a pointless distinction?

Alcohol addiction, misuse or whatever it is called has so many facets to it - that is what can make it so difficult for people to stop. I really think there is something chemical in some people, almost like an allergy which means they cannot stop after one. They probably become the real alcohol-addicted alcoholics. Then there are binge-drinkers who are more akin to self-harmers, 'right, I've had a shit day, I'm going to get PISSED!' Then there may be people who do tend to just get into a habit of drinking to relieve stress and may one day look at themselves and think 'Wow, I never realised I'd got to that many units per week, actually I don't think the alcohol is helping my mental health'. Hopefully your dh might be in the final category. Even people in that category could 'relapse' after a difficult day, or in a social situation where others are drinking. I think there are some people who do just have to work on sensible drinking, others who can never safely have one drink.

pollycazalet - maybe it's not a physical addiction but more alcohol abuse? in which case he will always have an abusive relationship with alcohol (even when he is not drinking) until he is able to heal that relationship and take better responsibility for his actions around alcohol.

i often think there is not necessarily one lightbulb moment but more a string of fairy lights that may twinkle on and off until you have the full chain on in sequence and can fully make sense of yourself and relationship to the world (as much as any of us can anyway).

regarding the depression it is possible to be codependent in that too. to want to 'help' when infact that may just be letting a little bit of pressure out of the pressure cooker and what really needs to happen is allow that person to build up so much pressure they get to a stage where they do stuff for themselves. depression is quite a broad church. some depressions kick off a genuine chemical imbalances / hormonal or whatever whilst others start as a response to circumstance / negative thought patterns and behaviours which can then become chemical / clinical in nature. it can all be a bit chicken and egg. e.g. the relationship isn't working because i'm depressed or i'm depressed because the relationship isn't working.

sometimes the person trying to help can actually be part of the problem.