DP has admitted he's an alcoholic - any advice?

[BemusedMum]

I have name changed because DP knows my usual name, and I'd rather he doesn't know about this thread yet...

I've been concerned by DP's drinking since Christmas. I was reading another thread on MN about another poster's alcoholic DH, my DP read it over my shoulder and it seemed to strike a chord with him. During a long discussion he said he did think he was dependant on alcohol, that he was scared and embarrassed. He realised he had to get 'on top' of his drinking, hoping to keep away from drink for a couple of weeks then only drinking a little every now and then. He didn't last three days. We are both quite shocked (I thought he had better self control, and neither of us realised drink had such a hold over him!) This was last night. We don't live together. I left his home a few hours ago and I am really hoping that he is sticking to his resolve not to drink.

I would like to support his recovery, but after last night I am not so certain I can. Iwas so cross and disappointed with him I almost called it a day then. I am worried I could waste the next few months/years of my life, only to end up in misery. He isn't a nasty drunk, but his hangovers can be uncomfortable to be around. I find the most frustrating thing to be that he is unable to do anything in the evening, or the morning! I do worry that there is a possibility of him becoming a nasty drunk.

There are so many thoughts and worrys running around my head, I just don't know where to start! I feel terribly sad.

AA isn't the only answer though, and a person who has the perception of it as being 'not for them' is best advised to seek help from his/her GP or elsewhere first. People can and do have very negative experiences with AA, and just because a person is specifically refusing that particular method of treatment doesn't necessarily mean the person is refusing to address his/her alcohol problem.

honestly - I'ld say run for the hills. He won't go to AA, he won't speak to his GP about it. And he thinks that a drink after a stressful day doesn't count. And you are already having to tread on eggshells, having to find the "right" time to discuss it. And it's you, not him, who is keen to look into the various alternatives such as Rational Recovery.

BM, if things stay like this I'm afraid you'll have to take TC's advice ...

I don't think anyone has equated refusing AA with denial, SGB. However, the tool is there and BM's partner is refusing to even consider it. There's a difference between deciding against AA after going to several different meetings, and deciding against it on principle. He also chose not to mention drinking concerns to his GP - and his reasons for that look suspiciously like shame, which is the addict's worst enemy.

There are loads of private therapists specialising in addiction.

OTOH, he might have become inadvertently addicted through too-frequent use. If he's not been using the drink to cover up deeper issues, he might be able to break it by knocking off the booze for six months. Be that as it may, BM, you're already teetering over the edge of 'caretaking' him. Doing that will hurt you. Please be careful!

Have you posted in the Addicts thread yet?

SGB

Most GPs fall into one of three camps.

One camp will advise AA; or else they will give you a phone number of a local helpline who, when faced with a hardcore problem drinker, will advise AA.

The second camp will prescribe Antabuse or something similar. Antabuse is fantastic and works very well - but a real alcoholic will often find excuses not to take it so he or she can drink with impunity, "just this once."

The third camp does not understand alcoholism (which, as I never tire of saying, is a recognised illness) and will advise moderation. (Scratch the surface of such doctors and you will often find an individual who himself is uncomfortable with the idea of a drink-free life ...) It is in the nature of alcoholism that moderation does not work. If the alcoholic doesn't die trying, he or she now ends up seeking a doctor in the first two camps ...

AA is far from being the only solution - but it is a solution which works for many. More importantly, the idea that a visit to the GP is an alternative to some more lasting treatment, rather than just a route into it, is a fallacy. Alcoholics who do not like AA need something else of equal "weight" and endurance and no GP has it in his power to "prescribe" that.

Grace, did you have to attend meetings for the rest of your life?

Does anyone have any idea how many people who go to AA die from either suicide or binge drinking?

Is it true that if you go to AA you have to recruit new members?

What practical help does AA give people? Do you have to say you are alcoholic? Isn't the disease theory of addiction going the way of the war on drugs, ie towards harm reduction?

(I am addicted to nicotine, so I do feel a bit sorry for addicts.) I used to have an ex who drank for England and I had no idea what was going on at all but I got the feeling that he had a great time leading his parents a merry dance. I got the feeling that as long as he had the label, he could drink whatever and whenever he wanted. He had a cannabis dealer who doubled as a cab driver and once, when I took a cab, the dealer gave me an enormous lecture about how crap my boyf was and how I had to leave him before he ruined my life. And I did and every time I think of him I bless that drug dealer.

My point is that I think that the label alcoholic was very unhelpful to those around him, but manna from heaven for him.

(Haven't seen him for 15 years and I assume he is dead).

I don't think that there is a consensus that alcoholism is a disease. At least, there is a lot of debate about it. My personal opinion is that it is not a disease, but it is helpful and useful for some people to believe that it is and, as long as we can check everything out on the net, it's best those people are humoured.

Not much help here. It just reminded me of my escape so narrow that it took A DRUG DEALER to give me the Victorian Dad talk.

That boyf used to regularly go to the Priory, or somewhere, and have months of rehab. I hadn't heard of the 12 step thing at that point but I remember that he was very laid back about having to write down all his character faults, Again.

If you were my sister, I would do the Victorian Dad speech on you and TELL you to walk away. I am SO GRATEFUL that someone overstepped good manners and pointed the obvious out to me.

Do you love him more than he loves his drink?

Read the Orange papers yourself (available free online) and then tell him to read them. Then make it clear to him that he either stops, cuts down or joins AA. For cutting down, suggest the government guidelines. They are fairly arbitary but they are a good yardstick. Most people who drink regularly are horrified at how low they are.

www.addiction.org

A good essay on the disease theory of alcoholism. 'Alcoholism is not a disease'.

That said, if it helps people to believe, or even pretend to believe, that they do have a real disease, who are we to disabuse them? As long as they don't go about telling people that pretending to have a disease is the only way to cope.

Thanks for asking, Tripoli. I only kept going for 8 months (my post here) MIFLAW is a better example than I am!

I am hopelessly addicted to cigarettes - forced to choose between baccy and wine (as I often am, sadly), I choose the smoke every time.

3 of my Priory "classmates" were dead within six weeks of leaving. It was heartbreaking. But they were drugs users, not drinkers. I only heard of one drinking death, though I lost touch with them all after a year or so.

Attending an AA meeting would be an eye-opener for anybody who's still fooling themselves about their partner's drinking.

If one kills oneself within weeks of leaving the priory, is one's estate given a refund? What is the general death rate?

Lol @ your question, Antioxidant. The hospital can't prevent anybody going straight to their dealer after leaving! Actually, somebody left halfway through the month - in their dealer's car.

My brother died of a fall whilst on a binge
He was found dead alone at home
He was an alcoholic
He had had 3 rehabs, the last at the priory 3 or 4 years previous to his death
I don't think we got our money back
Alcoholism is a horrendous cycle of binging, abstinence and repentance and falling off the wagon again
He couldn't really do AA, again I think he thought he wasn't like the other people at the groups
He had a hard time believing he was an alcoholic
And I find a lot of people also are like this professionally
It is hard hard hard loving someone who is an alcoholic and I would say as you don't live together and no children together it should be easier for you to disentangle yourself as you are less enmeshed

This might be totally out of place here and sorry if it is - but did you know Marian Keyes is an alcoholic? She has written twice about serious addiction, once about rehab - Rachel's Holiday is the rehab book and This Charming Man, while being primarily about insidious domestic abuse, also includes an alcoholic woman writing from her own POV. Hard reading for "chicklit" but OP you might want to have a look at them both if you haven't already read them.

Darrell, that is awful. I may be very naive, but isn't the Priory making a mint for doing not much? And doesn't it cost a couple of limbs? And if it works it takes the credit and if it doesn't it is the fault of the patient? It reminds me of some travellers (we did used to refer to them as gypsies at the time) near my childhood home who used to charge £25 to tell people the sex of their baby by seeing which way the wedding ring spun. If, by any chance (and that would be one in two, yes well done you at the back) they would give a full refund.

How does that differ from the Priory's business plan.

210 hours of top-class therapy at, say £40/hour + minimum 4 seesions with a psychiatrist + 24-hour specialist nursing care + transport, board & lodging. No, it's not cheap.

Darrell, doesn't the fact that your brother had 3 rehabs prove that it doesn't work? If I paid to have my tv mended somewhere and after the third time it didn't work, I would conclude the mender was useless and should have told me, especially if he is used to failing to mend tvs?

Places like the priory can wheel out the successes but that means squat unless they also inform potential clients about the failures, especially if they are taking money?

Why don't you look it up for yourself?

Tripoli

Yes, there is a consensus that alcoholism is an illness (not sure how that differs from a disease, so apologies if I've missed a fine distinction) insofar as the World Health Organisation and the British Medical Association list it as such.

Kirkers, you keep coming on these threads plugging the Orange Papers but I have yet to see you answer perfectly polite and straightforward questions about your angle on the whole thing, why you trust the Orange Papers over any other uncorroborated "word of mouth" testimony - as, for example, Christians saying they have been visited by the Virgin - and whether you yourself have ever witnessed or been affected by any of these massively generalised "abuses".

And I am willing to guess that, once again, you are going to stay silent.

Pity.

Tripoli

no, you don't have to do anything in AA.

The majority of people who find that AA does them good and improves their life do continue going to meetings. I understand that something similar happens in the Rotary Club and the WI ...

A lot of people who go to AA then stop going to AA and, in doing so, die of suicide or binge drinking. I think it would be unfair to attribute that to AA, any more than you can blame the Royal Marsden for the deaths of people who start smoking again.

You do not have to recruit anyone - AA does not recruit members. I feel I have a moral obligation to tell other usffering alcoholics that AA worked for me. If they don't believe me or if they feel it isn't for them, I will normally ask them if they have a better idea. If they do, fair play to them. The door is always open, and at least talking about it has helped me and kept me grateful. There is no membership fee in AA so there is no money to be made, so the incentive to "recruit" is not there.

What practical help does AA give people? Typically, members will advise the newcomer on what they themselves did to stop drinking. Meetings then provide a safe arena for discussing and defusing the situations which might otherwise lead to drinking. Is that practical? I don't know. It works for me.

Do you have to say you are alcoholic? No you don't. You don't have to say anything at all, in fact.

Isn't the disease theory of addiction going the way of the war on drugs, ie towards harm reduction? Who knows? Most people in AA aren't much interested in theory - after all, we're not doctors. They're mainly interested in not dying in puddles of their own shit, piss and blood or going mad and getting sectioned or going to prison. For many, AA helps achieve that modest goal and it's good enough for us.

How did AA get its (apparent) reputation as a kind of evangelising, pyramid-selling, bible-bashing secret society?? Anybody can go to the meetings, there's at least one rendition of an 'Anonymous' meeting on the telly every night, and it's very unlikely you don't know anyone who goes.

Exasperating! There's only one thing you're asked to do at a meeting, and that is try and "listen for the similarities not the differences". Success takes a small amount of humility: a quality which tends to be a tad short in alcoholics.

Yes
But my brother was always happy to do the intervention, the 'fix', what he couldn't do was the follow up which was heartbreaking
Alcohol is a cruel master

He would believe each time he went that if he got to the root of the problems which were causing him to drink, then that would solve the problem
Whereas alcohol is the primary problem and whatever keeps you from never drinking again is what counts
Admitting that and then finding something, whether that is AA or whatever, that helps you stay stopped is what counts
And of course you can't blame AA for alcohol related deaths and suicides
What about blaming the alcohol?

Grace, I read your link and I think you are very brave to share it. Thanks. (I hope that doesn't sound hackneyed. And thanks for giving the link to it.)

Amway or Aloe Vera flogging (the latter I know a little about) could also be accused of evangelising and pyramid-selling. And the something chef franchise that someone wrote about recently. I don't see anything wrong in that. And if I have a good idea, I do want to share it with people who I think it might help. So if people find that AA is good for them, they are just doing the same. They could still go and buy their tupperware or napkin rings elsewhere if they like. I consider myself to be a Christian but I hate being described as a Christian because I think it sounds as though I am looking to ask people to put down their fishing rods and become fishers of men. I don't feel comfortable with evangelicism of any kind.

The more I think about my ex-boyf who is probably now dead, the more I want to tell op to just turn 180 degrees and walk.

I had no idea and it took me a naive amount of time to realise when I couldn't guage his mood that he was in fact, plastered on vodka hidden inside the fridge in a bottle of acqua libra. I even drank it once and said it tasted off. Now I know a lot more. He also once had a job at an old people's home and said that they stole pills, especially when the old people died. They would take the left over pills.

If you had kids in common I would say, consider trying to help.

I think that for some hardened alcoholics, like my boyfriend, the concerned family are made to be goats. I was luckier than his mum and dad.

Everytime I hear of some stupid woman who wont realise what a dickhead everyone thinks she is for being loyal to that arsehole I remember that I was that woman.

He had friends who, like him, were always going to rehab. They used to all act like they were war veterans, or old boys at an Oxford College, comparing faciities in each rehab, writing down their sins, and doing it all again until next time.

And all of these people were relatively rich, or more accurately, had rich parents.
They treat rehab like finishing school for affluent idiots.

AA started as an offshoot of an evangelising bible-bashing society. See The Oxford Group. Some AA meetings, particularly in the US, can still be very god-heavy. But then a lot of social groups in the US are innately religious due to the local culture. AA (and other 12-Step) meetings in the UK tend to downplay the religious aspects much more. It doesn't make a notable difference to relative success rates.

The basic principles that AA propose these days are not dependent on a belief in god(s). Some of the 12 Steps make more sense if you realise that "Higher Power" was originally meant to be read as "God" but AA's approach can still work for many even if they're non-religious.

Tripoli, I think you're right in that some addicts treat rehab as a means of detoxing for a bit and little more than that. Such people don't (in my admittedly limited experience) have much in the way of a desire to stop drinking/drugging for good. They're still obsessed with the idea that, sooner or later, they'll magically regain the ability to drink "normally".