supporting partner through alcohol recovery

[poorlybear]

That's it really, my dh long term drinker is now into his fourth week of sobriety

Does anyone want to join me for mutual support?

I know tipping drink down the sink is pointless. It's just that if I find half a bottle of vodka that he's hidden, I can't help myself. I certainly couldn't give it back to him!

I would really like to go to Al-Anon. From what I've already read on here I know it won't give me the answer to how I can stop DH drinking but I like the idea of being shown a way of speaking to DH which might be more effective than the way I speak to him now.

After reading the 1 in 20 statistics yesterday I felt quite despondent about the whole thing. In some ways it's easier when he's drinking - then I know I have to get out of this relationship. When he's sober, I just feel like I'm waiting for it to happen again. He took me by surprise last week, drinking after 3 weeks sober, but I guess now I'm just waiting for it to all kick off again.

"It's just that if I find half a bottle of vodka that he's hidden, I can't help myself. I certainly couldn't give it back to him!"

Why not? It is his bottle, after all.

I hope you don't mind me banging on about this but it's a sign of how much this is having an effect on you.

You've become embroiled in a battle of wills against an addiction and, as a consequence, are losing touch with both what's normal and also what's realistic. This is one of the big issues with being in a relationship with an alcoholic - you have to actively work very hard to keep your feet on the ground and not get swept away by the repeated crises and drama.

Addictions are not amenable to reason. You can't win against his addiction because it is not in your power to do that. All you can do is decide what is, and is not, acceptable behaviour from someone you are choosing to spend your life with.

By doing things like pouring his booze down the sink you are turning what is his problem into a battle between you and him. You are doing senseless, pointless things because you can't help yourself. Now do you understand why people call alcoholism a family disease? The craziness is infective. You feel driven to do them because you have become so embroiled in his drinking that you have lost track of where you end and he begins.

I was in that position. It drove me nuts. Seriously. I became obsessed with my ex's drinking, I kept copious notes of how much she drank and on which days, I checked through the recycling and counted the wine bottles, I poured it down the sink and I rooted through the house to find the hidden stashes. It was insane behaviour that absolutely dominated my life. I ended up in A&E on more than one occasion because the stress got so great that I thought I was having a heart attack.

Al-Anon will help you to let go of attempting to control his drinking. The tools they will show you won't be about talking to him more "effectively", it will be about how to stop his problems from continuing to dominate your life.

Well I did go to my 1st Al-Anon meeting this morning. It wasn't what I expected I have to say but everyone was really very friendly & welcoming. I think it will take a few weeks of going for me to get used to the format and start to see the benefits. I'm really looking forward to being able to let go Snorbs as my life feels like chaos a lot of the time.

halfcalf and anjelika howdie - good to see you and everyone else is still around

We are still sober [cautiousyayemoticon] after ten years of drink and drunk. Dh finds AA helps though he does not admit this, but I know he does, he is a very quiet man but my impression is that the meetings are like stepping stones in his week and markers for the future.

We do role plays of what he will do on the next City drink/social event - beer X? And what he will say 'I don't drink/ a coke etc...

I am supporting him by trying to be kinder. he has been physically very unwell and mentally getting over the drink, pains, sweats, paranoia claustrophobia but it is getting better now

I booked him for a massage which I think helped. I don't moan about him being out at meetings or at the suana or swim pool

I am feeding him a low GI diet when I remember as I read somewhere it can help to stabilise blood sugar and help with the cravings. generally trying to make sure we have a nutrient rich diet

I do not have drink in the house and I occasionally go out he is cool with me drinking but I want this to work and I know how hard it is to resist tempting food when I am on a diet

A re getting your dh to go to AA. What I said to my dh was somehting along the lines of I am not going to fight the drink anymore. I am weary of it I am not winning. If taht is waht you want, I will still love you and help you in your life but I will not live with you. We need to find you somewhere to live, we need to be friends for us and for the children. I can only live with you if you go to AA and stop drinking but you have to want to do this. You have to know when the meetings are, you have to get yourself there. If you ask me I will help you beat the drink but it is your battle not mine.
Something like that. he may not want help and he may not want to stop drinking. He has to make that choice.

Hi again guys, poorlybear it is great to hear things are still going well for you. We have had a bad day today and I fear we are sliding back into old territory. He's had the odd glass (after 2 weeks teeototal) which I tried not to make a big deal about, but not been drunk.
We had a really nice day yesterday, both of work and went out for a lovely lunch, but he casually ordered himself a glass of red. I didn't comment. He didn't drink any more and the rest of the day and evening was quite pleasant. Today has been the first big test - it's the first time he's been left at home on his own while I was out most of the day ferrying dc here and there & shopping for dd's birthday party. Got in at 3:20pm to find him with those tell-tale heavy-lidded eyes, wonky gait and familiar mannerisms. He absolutely denied having a drink. I asked him to re-read my letter, asked him if there was anyone he could call for help...it was all pretty pointless really. It's very disheartening and the timing is so awful as dd could tell immediately too, and she was dismayed as she had friends coming over for her birthday and he has really embarassed her in the past. He did have a go at her and shout that she was 'taking the piss' in front of one of her friends. Anyway she has managed to have a lovely evening. My mum is here too as we are all going to Thorpe Park tomorrow - she noticed something was up although she doesn't spot the signs so easily.
I'll be on the futon in ds's room tonight, as mum is in the spare room and dd's friends are in the bunk...will keep you posted after tomorrow. I will need to get him to read my letter again (the ultimatum I wrote him before) and tell him that still stands...I had no time today to get him out before dd's friends arrived but would have packed his bag and got him a taxi if I had had the chance. Will be pretty impossible to speak to him tomorrow too. :(

Hi again
Have had more stern words with dh, after he went off and had a sneaky drink at Thorpe Park, then continued secret drinking when we got home.

I feel like this is one of the hardest points so far - he has admitted he has a problem, started trying to do something about it, and now seems to think he has it under control and can drink again, which is even more infuriating than when I thought there was no hope of any change and we were heading for inevitable breakdown of our marriage. (Like you Anjelika ). All my carefully developed detachment seems to have gone out the window and I just feel like punching him! I still have not had a proper opportunity to talk to him when I know he has not had a drink and the dc are not around. As long as he is busy at work he doesn't drink much but the first day off is the danger time. I think getting him to a health club for sauna/massage is a great idea PB.

Halfcaff - really sorry to hear that it all seems to be going wrong again. I know exactly what you mean about wanting to punch him - I think that when you have sampled a few weeks of "normal" life, it makes the drinking again really hard to deal with and makes you incredibly angry. The "heavy-lidded eyes" made me really feel for you as that's usually the first sign for me too if he is sitting down (as opposed to staggering around) when I come in. Has he been to any AA meetings since you got back from holiday?

I haven't been on the thread for over a week as things went really really bad for us the back end of the week before last. DH finally saw a doctor last Tuesday and went to an appointment at an alcohol recovery place the same day - he starts counselling there tonight. Inevitably he has been very very low but I can cope with that easier than with the constant drinking - it had got unbelievably bad again. I am still extremely anxious about the future as I just can't see DH accepting a future that doesn't feature drinking in any shape, way or form but I guess we both need to take it one day at a time.

Poorlybear - glad to hear that things are going OK in your household. I have been trying to be kind too - in fact I have been doing just about all the childcare for the past 10 days so that DH can concentrate on getting himself fit. The tablets the doctor gave him made him very lethargic plus he was going through the usual sweats, insomnia, depression etc that he always experiences when he stops drinking. Any tips at all on helpng keep him sober would be much appreciated as I'm not really sure what I should be doing.

Hi have just come back on MN after a few days without internet...things are a bit better here at the mo; he made a huge effort for Mother's Day (which has been a sad occasion several times in past years...) and when I said I didn't want a glass of 'fizz' in the evening after the dc were in bed, he didn't have on either and made me a cup of tea.
He has also made a GP appt on Friday - haven't asked him yet if he wants me to come, or decided whether i actually want to...
I am giving him lots of praise and thnking him for every positive step. He has been to a couple of meetings and said the last one was good...but then later that day went out to collect a takeaway and came back late and slightly drunk, causing hysterical (not funny) situation with dc.
So all we can say is one day at a time, at the moment.

Best wishes to all of you x

Hi there, I am in a very similar situation in that my dh is an alcoholic, admits there is a problem, is trying to do something about it at times, but then drinking again blah blah. I feel for you both.
At the moment we seem to have reached a point where he drinks once or twice a week but he is now telling me he can't fight it, needs to drink and takes himself off in a taxi to drink in his office away from home (self employed).
I worry about him when he is gone, but it is so much easier to detatch when not dealing with him drunk, but I worry ultimately he'll just find the struggle too much and fall in the bottle for good one day....

Hi bobble. There must be more of us out there. Have you found anything that seems to help prolong the sobriety, in a positive way, i.e. not hiding/pouring away booze, or getting into confrontations?

Hi guys.
Anj what I can remember about the physical phase was that it was very hard, keep him fed and his fluids up. Let him rest. Keep him occupied. Just guessing an expert will probably be along.

Bobble would your dh try AA?

Hello halfcalf

Dh is still sober but he is so depressed and sooo physically exhausted. He finds work like swimming in treacle. I am beginning to feel I am losing the will to battle on - I want some stoicism from him. His personality has always been depressive but it is so grim at the moment. He is on AD's. Our circs are very tricky at the moment too. I just need to have a moan. I am a bit down tonight. I am wondering if the drink was masking the reality that in fact we have no relationship

halfcalf just read your earlier posts, I am sorry things sound very hard for you. Hugs.

Gosh, we seem to be growing in number. Bobblehead - although your situation is not ideal, your DH does at least seem to be taking your feelings into consideration to some extent by removing himself from the home when he decides to drink.

Poorlybear - my DH has been knocked out by the tablets he got from the doctor. He went upstairs to empty all the bins at teatime yesterday and when I finally went in search of him half an hour later, he was lying on our bed, almost asleep. I can sympathise with you wondering whether you actually still have a relationship. I think it takes time to adjust to having them around again - I had got very used to doing what I wanted in the evenings as DH was always asleep. I got used to having my dinner alone doing the crossword or watching TV and now I have to get used to having dinner with someone again and making conversation. With him being quite down, it's a bit of a struggle.

Halfcaff - good news that your DH has made an appointment to see the doctor. Mine wanted me to go with him last week, which suited me as I knew that way he couldn't underplay the problem. The doctor was fine - he congratulated DH on actually going along and admitting to a problem then spoke to the local Alcohol team before coming up with a prescription for him. He has also arranged for blood tests this week.

Again as Bobblehead asked - if anyone has any more tips on prolonging the sobriety, please share! Mine is doing as Poorlybear suggests - but eating copious amounts of chocolate, which is really not like him! Does anyone have any thoughts on Alcohol free lager? My DH is shifting about 3 bottles of Becks Blue a night. Obviously it's better than the real thing but do you think it's a bad sign? I have often drunk them - when pregnant or driving - prefer them to "traditional" soft drink when out so it's not like we're completely new to them.

Sorry you're all having to go through this. I was in a similar position a few years ago and remember well the confusion, frustration and soul-sapping that comes with the territory.

Just out of interest, are all of your partners on the net asking the same questions about their recovery? Do they know as much about alcoholism and the reasons that they drink and the efforts that they need to make as you all do? Are they worn out, stressed out and dominated by thoughts of the effects of the situation on you? A very wise person once told me to put as much effort into my own recovery as I wished that he would put into his. So I got myself off to Al-anon, bought Codependent No More, joined an on-line support group for friends and families of alcoholics, got myself some counselling and took the focus of him and put it on me and my situation.

I had no power (or right, actually) to change him. I had, and still have, the power and the right to change myself, my outlook, my means of interaction and my situation. So do all of you. And funnily enough, doing that often causes ripples for the alcoholic that means that they start making the changes that the partner has tried to talk them into for years.

HTH

i think i might join you if thats ok , i just need somewhere to put my little rants ocasionally, DH drinks every night, he is not abusive/aggressive (except verbally if he has had loads). im so tired of it, i cant even talk to him, look at him, i dont know what to say to him. im scared he is going to drink himself to death, is that silly? he is a 'functioning' person ie he goes to work every day but he also must have a hangover every day, weekends he tends to sleep a lot, we never do anything together. sorry, rant over.

i have tried to talk to people about it in real life, they laugh. i dont get it?? why is it funny??

Napolena, My dh before his current sobriety used to drink like that. Every night, pissed ish every night, much more rarely off his head. We were always reeling from hangover to hangover, vom episodes etc... I was very tired of it too, you have my sympathies. I don't know what the answer is. It is no life.
Anj re alcohol free beer, my dh says he could not drink it because it would encourage him to drink but everyone is different - it has to be an improvement. This stage is hard, get him to go to AA if you can. My dh is very unsociable and god knows what went on there but he has had a couple of calls from people he has met offering him support. I am very impressed with it.

Aye I do need to go to Al anon, I have not got mya ct together.

Both of us are pretty depressed at the moment and that feels a seperate thing to the alcohol which was a way of coping with it - iyswim.

Hi Ayerobot and napoleona, and welcome
We've been chatting/ranting/sharing for a couple of months now, and are all very new to this stage, i.e. partner finally acknowledging the problem after months/years of heartache.
I have been going to Al anon for nearly a year and have been doing as much as I can to look after myself, and what prompted his attempt at change was my decision to make the ultimate change to get myself and the dc away from a miserable family situation to which I could see no end. Detachment just wasn't doing it for me or them, although we did manage to have lots of fun without him!
It's this new stage I know nothing about. I can't really carry on the way I was (detaching) when he was drinking, i.e. basically never making plans which included him or relied on him. I need a cautious but subtly different approach.
Lots have people have mentioned that Codependent No More book and I will definitely get it.
My dh is definitely going for sweet stuff which he NEVER did when drinking - has ordered dessert in a restaurant and drinks ginger beer/elderflower cordial with fizzy water in quite a strong mix - too sweet for me! I haven't thought of suggesting alcohol-free lager. He doesn't see the point in decaff tea or coffee, so it probably wouldn't appeal to him!
Napoleona people are probably reacting with laughter as they feel uncomfortable and don't know what to say. There is so much in comedy/media which makes drunkenness a funny subject, it is easy to blur that line.

sorry, just realised this is a thread for support through recovery, i am on a previous stage ie he doesnt see any real problem with his drinking! i know i have to talk to him and tell him just how much it is affecting our relationship/me/dc's. i have been hiding from him for the last couple of nights, not being in same room anyway, i just cant believe he can go out on a satuday night,get absolutley blotto, get home sunday afternoon with a horrendous hangover and then drink a litre of wine before bed on sunday. re people laughing, he has been the 'centre of attention' at many social gatherings, i suppose it is funny to watch on one hand, but my goodness when you live with that person, have to take the spite that comes out of their mouth and somehow get them home in one piece, not so funny! good luck to you all x

I think I'm going to try and arrange some counselling for myself. The alcohol recovery place my DH organised his councilling through (or rather I organised for him) suggested it when we went there last week. At the time I couldn't see the point but I'm now wondering if it would help with my constant anxiety when I'm away from the home (which is almost every day as I am working) and maybe give me some coping strategies for any possible/inevitable? relapses. Halfcaff - my DH wouldn't drink decaff in a month of sundays but he has taken to the alcohol free lagers in a big way. I guess it's whatever works for them at this moment in time.

Napoleona - we all know what you're going through. Getting wasted on a Sat night then drinking a bottle of wine on the Sunday sounds like my DH in his better days - he certainly got a lot worse! I hope your DH can nip it in the bud now, unlike mine ever did.

Hi again, asked dh lastnight if he would like me to come to the GP appointment - seemed baffled as to why I would want to! Also it is at 8:30 which I hadn't realised, so I will have to do the school run.
Anyway that conversation didn't go very well, he was tired and I think he had had a drink on the train, so we ended up going round in circles and I was not at all reassured that he is out of the denial stage and doing any of this for himself. He asked me to tell him what I wanted him to say to the GP. I said just the whole truth, and for him to think about what he wants to get from it. (Is he looking for something to help with cravings, sleep, therapy/counselling, anti-depressants..?) He says he has been too busy and stressed at work to think about these things. Well, I'm not going to mention it again, just see how it goes and what he feels like telling me after the appointment.

Halfcaff - I can understand how you're feeling. I guess you have to go with the positive - which is that he has made an appointment to see the GP. That in itself was a very big step for my DH and he would never have agreed to it whilst he was still holding things together. He only agreed to it after an incident whilst he was drinking which resulted in me having a visit from the police and social services. I think at that point he realised just how low he had sunk.

I was relieved he wanted me to go to the GP with him because, like you probably want to, I wanted to make sure he told the whole truth. I think if I was in your shoes, I'd want to make a list of the things I'd like him to talk to the doctor about - could you offer to do this together the night before, saying that it's easy to forget things once you get in front of the doctor? There's no guarantee he'll even refer to it though when he's in there. Like I said, just going in there is a step in the right direction. I would say that you'll have quite a good idea by what's prescribed as to how much & what he's told the doctor. If your DH is working then chances are he's not drinking as much as my DH was as he can only start in the evenings - in which case I don't know whether he'd be given drugs to help him with stopping drinking. My DH has had to have blood tests to check out his liver etc and has to take Vitamin B1 and another vitamin (both wereon prescription) for 6 months. Our GP would not give my DH anything to help with the insomnia he always experiences when he stops drinking but the drugs he did prescribe did in the end make him sleep like a log, but only after about 2 nights.

Hi to all on this path. As a recovering alcoholic it all sounds so familiar! The great news is that many people come through this hell and out the other side. Even reading the updates from some that have been posting for a while, progress is taking place. It does get easier....

On Alcohol-free beer, the issue isn't so much the drink itself, more the connotations and habit that is extends. Living sober is all about changing habits and behaviours. The risk is that it is so easy to slip from the NA version to the real thing. I drink it now and enjoy it, but I had to have a good few months where I got my head around only having soft drinks with my meals. Still, so much better than the shit life I had when I was drinking.

This takes so much courage and support from DPs...keep going because I have a lovely life today that I only got to appreciate by going through hell

Thanks, LearningSlowly and Anjelika. I have forgone my Al Anon meeting tonight as dh was willing to attend AA while I stay home with the dc. (I mean I said "Is one of us going to a meeting tonight?" and he pretty much volunteered, so I am quite happy about that. ) GP tomorrow, wonder what he will say afterwards and how much he will disclose?
He had blood tests about 4 years ago after the optician suggested he might have high cholesterol - never went back even though the doctor phoned when he was out and told ME she was concerned about some of the results including his liver function! He must have done a lot more damage since then, as his drinking has steadily increased until just recently, so I would think he is probably quite scared about that bit.
I am still finding this quite a bit harder than when I just knew what to expect - scared of things going back to that, being let down again, and feeling that I once again have to be much more inclusive and less detached. I even suggested we go out tomorrow evening - I have refused to go out with him since last August when he got drunk and my birthday meal got cancelled. Can't find a babysitter though!
The children are going to stay at my parents' for a few days next week - as they were last August - so maybe we can have a rematch then, depending on what happens in between, of course...

Oh God, he's come back from the 'meeting' pissed as a fart and lying to my face about it. Arsehole!