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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Alcoholic husband

7 replies

burningfirefly · 29/09/2017 11:01

My husband is an alcoholic. He won't admit it but will go as far as to say he has an alcohol dependency. I hate it and I hate him when he is drinking.

I need him to make some proper steps to ridding our family of this as I have had enough. I'm going to leave him if he doesn't get it sorted.

Has anyone been in this position and come out the other side. What did you do. What help did he get?

OP posts:
Isetan · 29/09/2017 11:09

If he's arguing about semantics then he's nowhere near tackling the problem. You need to stop waiting for him to 'sort himself' and start, sorting yourself.

The bottom line is that alcohol is his priority and not your relationship and you don't get a say if/when that will be different.

mindutopia · 29/09/2017 12:49

What about speaking with an interventionist and planning an intervention? Does he have friends and family who would be willing to be involved who see it as a problem too?

AttilaTheMeerkat · 29/09/2017 13:22

HE has to be the one who wants to seek help and stop drinking; familial coercion and interventions (and he will see it as such) will not work. You cannot help someone who does not want to be helped and like many alcoholics he is mired in denial.

You are also playing out roles here in his alcoholism; those of enabler, adjuster and provoker. You cannot help him but you can certainly help your own self; attending Al-anon meetings would be a good start and at the very least read their literature. Your own recovery from his alcoholism will only properly start when you are completely away from him, it will not happen before that stage.

hellsbellsmelons · 29/09/2017 13:22

See if you can get support from Al-Anon.
The face he won't admit it means he's not ready to face it or tackle it.
So this is your decision now.
Ultimatum time.
He gets help from GP and AA and he does it now or you separate.
You'll soon find out where you are on his list of priorities.

Offred · 29/09/2017 15:30

I think ultimatums are generally really pointless TBH. I know how easy it is to get sucked into issuing them, usually because someone just isn't understanding something important or because they are continuing to do something, saying they don't mean it then doing it again....

I got into a similar cycle with my (horrendous) x where he would keep treating me like shit, I'd get desperate and break up with him and he would desperately pressure me by promising the world, I'd feel trapped into staying with him, he'd continue doing the thing, I'd get desperate and break up with him etc

I think if you issue an ultimatum it must be because you mean it, because you really need it for you to feel able to leave rather than because you expect them to heed it and you must follow through on it.

The nature of it being an ultimatum must be secondary to the fact you are expressing that you cannot continue in the same vein IYSWIM? The point has to be if x continues I will y, not to coerce the person into stopping x....

Also, I think where addiction is concerned ultimatums often just provide a focus for the addict to continue indulging their addiction - 'you saying x makes me feel stressed so I drink, if you stopped stressing me I would drink less' etc etc.

For an addict that hasn't acknowledged they are an addict what you are doing when you challenge them to reduce their using is basically, as they see it, saying 'this thing you rely on to cope? I demand that you stop doing it'. This causes panic.

Addicts are often addicts because they haven't developed skills that they need to cope with life. The addiction is a maladaptive coping mechanism and without it they feel they will not be able to cope in order to give it up they need to know it is a maladaptive coping mechanism and develop healthy tools for coping to replace it (separate from the physical addiction).

I think you would do well to focus entirely on yourself and any DC. Do you want this life? Do you want him in your life? Him how he is not how you would like him to be...

123976535ng · 30/09/2017 16:31

I would strongly advise you to leave. I know it may be hard to hear as there is always hope that the person will give up drinking. But more often than not they don't and the years spent hoping and begging them to stop are years that you have wasted. Alcoholics are not just ill themselves but make everyone around them ill too and the longer you stay, the more it will affect you. Leaving my ex partner was the best thing I ever did - the thought of leaving, selling the house, etc seemed so huge that I stayed longer than I should. But as time went on, his drinking got worse and we almost went bankrupt as he was using equity from the house to run his business, while not actually making enough money to replace it. Living with an alocholic is hell - I would say run, don't walk, run.

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