"honestly is rather deal with the drinking drink than the dry drunk." Ain't that the truth! Horrific dealing with dry drunks.
They're angry, bitter and resentful and take it out on everyone around them never taking responsibility for their own actions is my experience.
"He genuinely does want to change," if that were true he'd have sought help without your persuasion.
"to be clear he was maybe drinking 3/4 pints a day on most days - enough to stop him achieving much but not enough to actually get drunk" extremely unlikely he was only drinking what you knew about or when you knew about. Addicts are master con artists especially when it comes to hiding their addiction. Unless you are literally on their shoulder 24/7 you cannot know. It's one reason why many rehab centres have comprehensive cctv coverage and regular searches. You'd be shocked the lengths addicts will go to.
"He’s been very clear all along that giving up is something he wants to do for himself" so why did it take you saying something? what help has he asked for and used? Aa? Dr? Therapy? Religion? Exercise? Medication?
"His friends didn’t see what the big deal was, they were like ‘oh well, he’s just having a night off’ and couldn’t understand why I was so upset." Highly likely they're also addicts - that's why addicts are often advised to completely change their hobbies, social groups etc addicts hang out together in an effort to normalise abnormal behaviour or even to minimise their own as compared to a "worse" addict "well I don't drink as much as my friend X so therefore I'm not really an addict" "all my friends do it so it must be normal" without acknowledging they've CHOSEN to be friends with fellow addicts.
"Generally speaking, he’s the kindest, most considerate man I’ve ever known" nobody is all bad. My violent abusive alcoholic father is also generous, intelligent, funny, thoughtful and extremely talented in his trade. Doesn't make him any less an abusive alcoholic.
"but they still haven’t got back to him about ongoing sessions" even with the cuts that's extremely unlikely.
I suspect he's anti AA because they advocate total abstinence as the only true way to heal and I agree with them. Not just because you can't trust an addict, but because there's strong evidence ESPECIALLY with substance addiction that the brain and brain chemistry is permanently changed as a result and so "just one drink" never stays "just one drink"
You need to learn the "3 c's"
You didn't CAUSE it
You cannot CONTROL it
You cannot CURE it
The ONLY person that can do that is him, and only when he TRULY wants to. I strongly recommend you contact al anon and similar and read up on addiction from a loved ones perspective.
I must admit I like Russell brand on this, whatever else you say about the guy he doesn't pull his punches on this, he doesn't really hold with effectively making addicts cross addicted eg to methadone it's just substituting one addiction for another. He advocates abstinence focused recovery and thinks we should be taking a medical rather than criminal approach to addicts and I agree.
Not because addicts can't be shitty people who do shitty things when in the grip of the addiction but because the current approach of demonising addicts clearly isn't working. It's filling prisons with addicts who are repeat offending continually, it's filling the country and the world with the victims of addicts but it's not solving the problem.
If your man was serious he'd be contacting anyone and everyone including AA, his GP, his family etc for help.
The addicts I'm close to THAT is when I have noticed that they MEANT it when they wanted to quit - when they were willing to try anything and everything to stop and kept asking for help till they got it and were willing to do things like taking Antabuse and cut off their enabling/addict friends. It's a very obvious change in their attitude. The ones that were like this are the ones that got clean and sober and have so far stayed that way. They also accepted they would always be addicts and KEPT doing whatever worked for them, whether that be AA or church, or therapy or taking antabuse or top up hypnotherapy...
The ones that did it half hearted and kept making excuses, relapsed regularly and the ones who later got sorted admit they were like this at points too and it was because they weren't ready to quit.
Even if he does quit he will ALWAYS be an addict. That can be problematic in many ways, it's not just alcohol, it makes him more vulnerable to becoming addicted to certain meds too. There's ALWAYS that risk.
I've seen people relapse 5, 10 even over 25 years later from getting sober.
I'm guessing you're both quite young too and this person could potentially be fathering your children? You need to consider the genetic factor too, if you had children with him they are more vulnerable than others to becoming addicts too. I've been resisting it my whole life, it's why I've never even tried a cigarette let alone street drugs, I tolerate analgesics and anaesthesia FAR too well, as in they have little effect on me and I have to take stronger doses than others, I've had to explain to anaesthetists and I've had anaesthetists who didn't listen get caught out by my almost coming round.
I have other mh issues which are very similar in nature in my opinion (and that's starting to be recognised by scientists) and for which I've yet to find a treatment that works. I very occasionally need to take things like diazepam and they feel lovely but I can absolutely see how my body and mind could very easily become addicted to them, not least because again for any effect I need a higher dose. So i only take them if I really need to.
Excess alcohol consumption can also affect sperm quality and quantity, it was previously thought this was recoverable but they're now starting to realise that quantity can improve with quitting but not always quality.