Ask the widow of an alcoholic

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m new round here as a member, but have been an avid lurker for years. I’m having some difficulties coming to terms with what has happened in my life, and thought that sharing it here might be therapeutic.

I’ll try and keep it short.

I live in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1984 I met a wonderful man. I was 20, he was 21. He was gorgeous, funny, sexy, a talented musician with a good job. We moved in together, bought a flat together and married in 1987. Ten wonderful years later he started to suffer mental problems - depression, anxiety, panic attacks. We’d always enjoyed a drink, but he started to drink heavily. By 2002 I was close to leaving him but battled on trying to support him. It didn’t work. He lost his job, and his health started to suffer badly. By 2007 he was barely holding down a cleaning job, and was never, ever sober. I have an excellent, well-paid job, which kept him in his bottle of vodka a day habit.

September 2007 and things are getting really bad. I came in one evening to find him so drunk he couldn’t stand, and he’d wrecked half the kitchen and pulled off the bedroom curtains. Next day he was too drunk to go to work, so I went to a lawyer and never looked back.

We had a second/holiday home on one of the Scottish islands. He took the easy route, jacked in his job and moved there. I really, really, really hoped he would use this as a new start and get his life in order. I still loved him, but I just couldn’t share my life with someone that lived like that. The next year was an endless round of worry and hospital stays, and a lot of liaising between his mother and me as to what he was doing and how his health was.

In November I started divorce proceedings. The papers were sent recorded delivery. He never signed for them. I couldn’t get him by phone, so (for the fourth time in a year), sent the police round, expecting him to be in a drunken stupour, or very ill. He wasn’t. He was dead on the kitchen floor.

I knew it was coming. But I’m having a very, very hard time dealing with this.

If I can use my experience to help someone in a similar situation, all well and good. If anyone out there has experiences that I might find helpful, please share.

2

I am so sorry about your situation. I don’t really have any questions to ask, but as my life has been touched far too much by the unpleasantness of alcoholism I thought I would share too. My father is an alcoholic, and my mother is in a very, very similar situation to you (including the living in Edinburgh part).

She separated from my father a year ago, after 37 years of marriage, and many, many ups and downs. Most of the downs were fully due to alcohol. He has been an alcoholic for over 20 years, albeit with a period of sobriety in the middle, and spent most of my childhood permanently drunk. I think until you have lived with someone who is never, *ever *sober, you can’t appreciate the emotional stress of doing so. How my mother held it together, I don’t think I will ever know. I have far too many stories to tell of his behaviour during this time, most of them horribly unpleasant.

He is currently living, on his own, in a flat in the New Town. Because of his circumstances, he is now binge drinking. Sober for a week or so, and then paralytic the rest of the time. We never know if he is not answering his phone because he is passed out or because he is dead. So far, just the former, but to be honest, it is just a matter of time. He is not a well man, and seemingly has nothing to live for.

I don’t know if this helps you at all, but there are those of us that can appreciate what you are going through. Do you have any support at the moment? Anyone you can talk to about what has happened?

If I can tell you anything else that might help you, please ask. I know my mother is having a very hard time dealing with the separation and with the anxiety surrounding whether or not my dad is alive at any given point in time.

3

Look into Al-Anon. You’ll find many people there who went through just what you did. They’ll know how you feel.

Your husband had the disease of alcoholism. Unless it goes into remission, it often ends in premature death. You didn’t cause it, you couldn’t control it, you couldn’t cure it.

4

No questions here, just a general wave and assorted well-being wishes from Glasgow.

5

This is one thing I’m having difficulty with. I really still don’t subscribe to the viewpoint of alcoholism as a disease. I find it offensive to people with real diseases, like cancer.

It’s an illness, a terrible addiction, but ultimately I have difficulty not viewing it as a lifestyle choice. He was repeatedly offered help and just wouldn’t take it. At one point he was hospitalised for seven weeks following a severe gastric bleed and, obviously, never had a drop in all that time. Yet as soon as he was released, despite every promise he made when he was in hospital, he went straight to the pub.

6

I was going to type something else, but this is not a thread where we should be debating the disease model of alcoholism.

Being an alcoholic myself, I am so sorry for what you have gone through. I don’t know how you “normal” spouses and family members do it. In my drinking years, I wet through people like tissues and wreaked havoc everywhere I went. I’m sober now, but it is something that requires commitment and vigilance and most people don’t stick it out.

7

The folks in Al-Anon may be able to help you sort all of this out in a way you can come to terms with.

twicks, yet another recovering alcoholic

8

That’s another one of my issues, I think. I feel like I gave up on him. I reached the point where I couldn’t “do it” any more, so I threw him out knowing there was a very real chance he would be dead in a year. Unfortunately, he didn’t prove me wrong. And that’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.

9

Scougs, the closest alcoholics in my family are, AFAIK (I think Mom doesn’t count, although she shouldn’t touch alcohol and does), an aunt and uncle, but I’m one of the many people here who’ve been in situations of “I have to get away from this person before being with them kills me.”

As one of my parish priests put it, “thou shalt not kill” includes the duty to take care of yourself.

10

I’m sorry for your loss. I had a sister in law who was a 1/2 gallon a day vodka drinker. Her husband bought it for her because she threatened to leave the house and find it on her own (booze was the only thing this agoraphobic would leave for). Each time she did this, it ended up worse than if he bought it for her. He felt that at least he could supervise her somewhat if she drank at home.

Her husband stayed with it because he didn’t want to give up on her. He stuck it out to the point that she found a boyfriend who moved into their home with them. They tried everything. Rehab (5 or 6 times), AA, Al-Anon, prayer, even a two-week coma didn’t convince her that she needed to stop drinking. She died, even though her spouse stuck by her side.

As others have said, only the drinker can stop drinking. No one expects a person’s patience and efforts to go on indefinitely. You do what you can until you no longer can. I hope you can find someone to help you sort through your emotions with regard to this unfortunate event. Best of luck to you.

11

From another veteran of a drunk ex, don’t take on baggage that isn’t rightfully yours to carry. Qadgop was quite right: you didn’t cause his drinking, you could never control it and you could never cure it. It wasn’t a case of ‘giving up on him’. You just faced the very hard reality that had absolutely no power or control over the situation.

If it helps, I earnestly paid for my drunk (and cheating) ex through three rounds of in-patient rehab, with extensive follow-up counseling. Though I equally earnestly loathed him by the end, I somehow reasoned that I had to get him sober, or at least somewhat functional, before I could kick him the hell out. No, it didn’t make a lick of sense; in fact, it was flat-out stupid, not to mention harmful though it seemed both moral and sensible at the time. He could and did stay drunk because I took care of everything, including him. Why change?

Here’s the sad truth about alcholics: nothing is more important that the next drink. People on the outside can offer help but the alcoholic is the ONLY one who can change whether or not they drink.

My ex is still alive, though I don’t know how or why. He was diagnosed with pancreatitis years ago, his liver was shot and he’s had a cocktail of STDs. He looks (and smells) like week-old roadkill. At one time he was a bright, well educated professional who was notoriously fussy about his appearance. When any of my friends mention seeing him their reaction is always, “I can’t believe he’s still alive!” Could that steep downward spiral been halted along the way? Damned if I know.

BTW, I smiled grimly at your account of the divorce. It took 3 years for my divorce (after I kicked him out) because my ex wouldn’t respond to court notices, show up at hearings, etc. Hey, he didn’t want to bother with it. If he thought about it at all, his reaction was to call and demand money for booze as his “settlement”. Since I’d supported both of us for years I guess he had reason to think the gravy train would never stop. Finally a judge, bless him, got fed up with runaround and ended the dreary mess.

I guess we’re different in that you still loved your husband, or at least remember something about him that was worth loving. That looks to me like a double-edged blessing. Pity and grief for the life he threw away? Yeah, that resonates, as the buzzspeak goes. But only so long as you reject any guilt for the sad fact that he did throw it away. The priest Nava quoted was wise, and absolutely right. Since you never had the slightest power over your husband’s choices anyway maybe the most respectful thing you can do now is grant him the responsiblity for his life–and death.

I’m sorry as hell you had to go through all that, Scougs.

12

My mother is struggling with this exact same issue at the moment. We know that there is nothing we can do to change my father’s behaviour, but you still feel responsible if you can’t save them from themselves.

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The thing I keep reminding myself of, though, is that by getting my dad to leave, we have given him a chance to sort himself out, and we don’t get dragged down in the process. We have tried to be supportive before, and none of us benefited. Our lives were made miserable, day after day, and his behaviour didn’t change.

Rehab didn’t make him change. In-patient and out-patient programmmes didn’t help. Alcohol counselling didn’t work. Begging and pleading didn’t work. Getting picked up on numerous occasions by the police, losing his licence and his job didn’t work. Almost killing himself in a car crash, caused by drinking, didn’t make a difference. There was nothing else we could do.

You did everything you could. You just did. Just as we did. Your husband did not make it, but it is not your fault. If my dad doesn’t make it, I am not sure how I will feel, but I am telling myself now that there is nothing more we could have done, after 20 years, that we hadn’t tried before.

It is just a damn fucking waste.

13

I do have a question: do you drink?

My dad had several years of heavy drinking that impacted me. I’d say he was a functioning alcoholic. It has made me VERY WARY of drinking, and in my early 20s I found myself out partying and drinking a lot, and could easily see myself spiraling out of control. So I very rarely drink. And I think it was seeing him that made me decide that. So I’m curious if you’ve been through similar.

14

Yes, I do. But I like to think I know the difference between normal, social drinking - a couple of pints in my local pub, a glass of wine with the girls - and sitting necking a bottle of vodka on my own at ten in the morning. I am wary of my own drinking, though, and definitely drink far less than when we were together.

To all the other posters:

Thank you. I now know I made the right decision sharing my story on here. Your kind words, shared experiences and food for thought have been very, very helpful already.

Keep it coming.

15

Not to answer for the OP, but my husband and one SIL don’t drink a drop that I’m aware of (save for communion wine). The other SIL does drink, but apparently not much. Her roommate said that he usually finishes her drinks for her. He suspects that it’s her way of conquering her father’s addiction, by proving that she can drink alcohol without going overboard.

Scougs, my heart goes out to you. The damage that an alcoholic does to those around them is heartbreaking. I know that the decision to leave must have been hard, but as I tell my husband, you need to make sure you’re taken care of before you can take care of others. Doing what was needed for your own well-being was the best choice you could make.

16

I just wanted to welcome you to our boards and hope you stick around!

17

Do you have any children? I am so sorry for your loss.

18

There are many mental/behavioral diseases. Having one such does not diminish people with the more physical diseases. I treat people with both physical and mental diseases.

Having a mental disease often diminishes one’s capacity to make rational choices. This does not excuse the behavior, but such behavior is both common and predictable in these disease entities.

19

I have nothing to ask - but wanted to give you my sincere condolences. Nothing I can say will make it easier, so I will just send you supporting thoughts.

20

I just wanted to pop back to say that I was having a conversation with my mum about this, and if you would like to email her about this, or maybe even meet up, she would be willing. This is a hard road to walk, and to me, one of the the things that can be invaluable, is being able to talk honestly with someone who has been where you have been. I’m not sure whether this helps or not, but the offer is there.

She lives on the southside, is (a young!) 60 years old, and good company.

I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in how you are feeling. Send me a PM if you think it might help.