DH extreme stress - acting like he’s drunk.

[Levithecat]

I’m hoping someone can bring some perspective or insight.

DH was an alcoholic - secret drinker - I found out just over a year ago and it was awful. We nearly broke up. His excessive drinking started when our first child was born 7 years ago. He stopped when I found out and insists he hasn’t drunk since.

However, he occasionally (varies from twice a week to twice a month) has ‘episodes’ where he is stumbling, incoherent, not there. Can’t be trusted with the kids, argues with me. Basically drunk behaviour. He suffers from anxiety and stress (was off work for six months this year) and his GP and counsellor have decided that it’s some kind of dissociative state.

I am really struggling - part of me feels, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck. However, we have had countless discussions, including me accusing him outright, and he insists it’s not alcohol (or anything else). He has been working hard on his mental health and is getting an assessment for dyslexia as I think this is a major factor in his anxiety, but clearly something else needs to happen. It’s got to the point that I’m considering leaving.

I’d love to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this? And if so, was it / how was it resolved?

@Levithecat I’m sorry but I think you are being horrifyingly casual about this. Even if you no longer love him HOW can you ignore these episodes and just “take the children away”. Bloody Hell! If he’s drinking he needs help, if it’s epilepsy he needs help, if it’s stroke he needs help. The reality is you think he’s drunk but are spinning some MH fairytale so you can do fuck all about it. This is the father of your children!! Find out what on Earth is going on and help him find treatment. I’m truly shocked.

What medication is he on?
Has he had any neurological investigations? Have they been suggested?

Hi op, look up korsakoff syndrome. I'm not sure if your dh was drinking enough to have perhaps ended up with it but my df had it and it could make him seem still drunk (actually he usually was also still drunk if the truth be known). Other than that maybe he's having blackouts? I wouldn't say they necessarily present as being drunk in those though, but definitely dissasociated. Also peripheral neurosis is another one which can make a recovered alcoholic present as physically unstable / wobbly. Again with that one i would say you'd be talking years of hardened drinking to get to.

Sounds to me like he has hit the vodka on his way home from work....;
Sorry. When he is behaving like this, make him do a breathalyzer ... if he refuses, deflects, gets angry, it's all you need to know.

Denial is really powerful.

This times a thousand. I witnessed my mum refusing to see her husband's alcoholism for about 30 years. I don't think it was consciously deliberate, a lot of the time, just such deep, unimaginable denial. Because the truth was, she didn't want to leave him, or stop going on lovely holidays, or have to move house, or stop social drinking herself, or be alone in her old age - and if she acknowledged his alcoholism she would have to take some sort of action and she preferred what she knew to the scary unknown.

It’s quite simple really as PP has said.

It’s either alcohol or a v serious issue undiagnosed health issue.

First can be determined by simple spontaneous breathalyser test when he next has an episode.

If positive you have your answer if negative he needs to get to A&E.

But I suspect you know the answer but don’t want it proven. That is your choice of course but you do have to them take full responsibility for exposing your DCs to the detrimental impact on their emotional development of being brought up in an alcoholic home which will likely leave them with their own chronic MH issues as teenagers. You say you know little about alcoholism - but you need to educate yourself how this has impacted your DCs to date and what their future prospects will be - because you are the only person in this situation who can positively change the trajectory of their lives. Have a look at the website Adult Children of Alcoholics if you want to see what’s in store for them.

He will lie to you when there is literally a bottle in his hand and alcohol spilling down his chin. It's what they do.

He'll go ballistic (or histrionic, sobbing, wailing and shrieking) about you not trusting him. Because he knows he's not to be trusted. Or he'll fake the behaviour so that he blows sober twice and then makes you feel so bad about thinking so little of him that you'll never ask again. And if he blows red, he'll then proclaim dramatically that of course he did, you've driven him to it with all your false accusations and abusive control/suspicion and questioning of him.

By the way, he's using the vape to hide the smell of booze/ketones from having drunk the previous day. Sweets are another tactic, along with loads of body spray and a sudden interest in cleaning his teeth or using mouthwash, particularly if it smells rather like vodka.

Does it matter whether he is drinking or not, his episodes are unpleasant/ ?scary enough that you can say you find it too stressful to live with. The erraticness of them is very stressing I would think. Having grown up with an alcoholic, you can't relax as you don't know when the next binge will happen, with its ensuing fall out and upset.

I would tell him that you can't go on with this and it's very bad for the children.

He's drinking. My relative did the same and was mortally offended by any accusation that they had been drinking. So many wild goose chases, chasing up mental health services that weren't required, occupational health referrals for stress, psychiatric assessments for anxiety. It was all bullshit, just pissed. It was so obvious with hindsight but the outraged denials made us all back off questioning alcohol being the cause

As it lasts 30 minutes and is at a particular time I'd be inclined to believe that he's vaping what he believes to be thc oil but is actually spice. His reactions sound very typical and it could be that it's his first hit of the day but after then tolerance kicks backs in. You say he's secretly vaping, it's easier to hide than drinking and all it takes is a trip to the loo or when you're not in the room.

Everything Mistigri said OP.

Why does he “secretly” vape? What’s in there? This review looks at alcohol vaping and how it is v intense and immediate like binge drinking .... could this be what he is doing?
www.healthline.com/health/vaping-alcohol#impact-on-body

This is all so sad, just feel that you should have some respect for yourself OP. You needn't put up with this.

[quote Sssloou]Why does he “secretly” vape? What’s in there? This review looks at alcohol vaping and how it is v intense and immediate like binge drinking .... could this be what he is doing?
www.healthline.com/health/vaping-alcohol#impact-on-body[/quote]
Good point. Or THC.

Op, my ex was like this, made all sorts of excuses but he definitely was drunk. I even thought he was having a stroke once, it was all drink. I was a fool.

I'm not saying he's not drinking - my dad is an alcoholic and my ex husband a cocaine and porn addict so I know full well the lengths they can go to and the weird behaviours that we find it so hard to explain away. But, I am very physically affected by stress and tiredness, and stress affects my sleep which causes more problems. Just before I left my husband I was suspected to have a heart problem, had problems with my eyesight and a problem with the muscles in my face that I'm still having physio for 2 years on. Sometimes I'm so mentally and physically exhausted that I can't focus, everything swims in front of my eyes, I become really sensitive to noise and light, I somehow do things like the school run with no recollection of it at all, words get scrambled up when I talk. I dont have any MH issues, it's literally just the stress of being a single mum with an ongoing abusive/controlling ex. So... it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it might be something else.

What Hesgonesoft said.

You say his breath smells different, but not of alcohol. Does he have diabetes? It is associated with this rare syndrome: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome

Unlikely as it is so rare - but could also be brought up as a reason for testing his breath.

As someone who suffers from dissociative episodes, they don't make me seem drunk in the slightest. Not even a tiny tiny tiny bit. Obviously everyone is different but it sounds a bit odd.

Is it possible that you're putting off the breathalyser option (which would solve this once and for all), because you don't want to face the truth?

I'm so sorry, OP, but addicts lie. A lot. I grew up around them so I know how horrendous it must be for you, but it would surely be better to know? It isn't you betraying his trust by insisting on testing him, it's him that has caused it by betraying you for all those years.

I'm afraid I'm another who thinks op's husband is drinking. This is based on experience - my dh stopped drinking, and I was so proud of him, until he started slurring and repeating things.... I was convinced he was having a stroke or TIA, making him smile, lift his arms and squeeze my hands. He promised to go to the gp and get checked out, which of course he didn't. I asked him outright if he had been drinking, but he denied doing so.
He had two or three of these 'episodes' before I found him hiding a vodka bottle.....

Of course op, there may be another reason for the episodes your dh is experiencing, but a breathaliser would at least remove one potential reason if it came back clear.

Hello. I am just wondering if you ever got to the bottom of this? I only ask because everything you have written is exactly what I am going through with my DH at the moment

I had this once happened at work out of the blue, colleague rushed me to our GP stayed with me until husband arrived. I couldn't speak properly, walked as if drunk. This went on for six weeks of basically bed rest or surgery.

I went to the dentist wondering if I had a tooth abscess which can have side effects. Dentist said no but gave me antibiotics anyway. After two or three days I was recovering.

I was booked in for an MRI and consultant appointment. It was vestibular neuritis bacterial he diagnosed. Antibiotics would have fixed me up immediately rather than whatever the GP had given me .

A common cold had caused this issue he said.

But I did sound drunk and was terrified that I'd had a stroke.

@Levithecat are you still around?

Hi, yes I am. Now divorced!

Sorry I didn’t update. It took til mid-2021 to actually separate, and yes he had been drinking. He’s now in AA and sober, but only admitted he was an alcoholic last year. It’s been very tough and looking back at this thread I realise how blind id been and how much he’d gaslighted me