She drinks moderately one night a week and feels awkward if I don’t join her. OTOH she doesn’t like the bingeing I do alone in the basement. In fact it appears this morning she located and confiscated my stash. Can’t wait to find out what I did last night to provoke the search & seizure. :smack:
This could be a good thing. If she becomes alarmed or upset, she might now understand what you are going through. For the best chance of success at stopping drinking, you need her support.
No doubt it’s a good thing, as it will keep me from drinking tonight. As to whether it is going to change her mind, or whether it’s a strong long-term strategy, I wouldn’t rely on it.
How old are your kids?
Edited: Sorry, I see you said above that they are 3.
I didn’t intend to just leave that hanging. Got called away.
Anyway, a thing to consider is that, at this point, you have the choice of making sure that your kids never remember seeing you drunk. Never have to pretend that they believe that Dad has the “flu” again on some important occasion. Never have to avoid bringing a friend home in case it’s one of those nights.
It may seem like a long time until any of those things come up, but it’s not as long as you think.
A very good point, and never far from my mind. In fact that time is almost nigh, as they are almost 6.
A hopefully gentle piece of advice.
This is a problem that you will need help in overcoming. You can get a lot of help from A.A./therapists/etc but you will need your wife in on this with you. This is a big problem and it will likely be pretty rough for a bit.
If you don’t talk to your wife about it, it will make things much harder. If you do bring her in and be honest it will probably help both of you. It will help because, if you really have a problem she certainly knows it. And by being honest with her about it, it opens the door to working through it together.
Every alcoholic I know has had to, as a part of getting and staying sober, work on family relationships. It is just part of the deal.
Slee
Well no one else has said it so I may be wrong but:
Given that you regularly take several other substances too, I strongly suggest you quit all substances and quit them all 100%. It seems to me as if your problems are much larger than just drinking too much on occasion. I think you are relying on all the substances to get through life and I think you need to learn to live without them instead of relying on them.
I hope we can still be friends and talk on Skype… whatever decision you make is yours to make of course…
Talking with my wife is challenging because she is from Japan where heavy drinking is a social norm. I mean, epic heavy drinking. Even when it’s problematic people don’t talk about it, not unless a husband is beating his wife, and maybe not even then. In fact, 10 years ago our situation was reversed… she was the binge drinker and a verbal abuser. Then we both stopped. I’m not sure how. Until I started again 2 years ago.
So the fact that I binge-drink twice a week is nothing to her as long as it’s on Friday or Saturday, provided I’m not too impaired the next day. Which I can’t reliably constrain it to that, hence I get into trouble on occasion.
I have overstated how many other substances I’m on. It’s really just 2 and decreasing. And yes, all our problems are bigger than that, after all if we’re being honest we are all looking into this empty void of existence and trying to figure out what it means. It’s a wonder we aren’t all addicts of some sort.
Well there’s the fact that I’m on Skype right now and you aren’t, dickbucket 
Hey, I’ve been following this thread with interest as another ex-overly-enthusiastic-drinker. Sounds like you’re getting there. The realisation that drinking is not as much fun as it once was is eventually going to end with you quitting drinking, I’d guess. If you’re like me, you probably just need to go through all the rationalisations and attempts at moderation first. Maybe they’ll work for you! AA helped me through the first few weeks or months though I never had a sponsor or did the steps or prayed or had a higher power or had my toes sucked or anything. It just made sense to listen to people who were doing or had done the same thing as I was trying to do, and AA was what was available. And it was amazing how many other problems just vanished once I’d been sober for a short while. Turns out I wasn’t a depressed existentialist loner after all.
I’m just chatting with my friend on facebook and we agree that these AA meetings just make us want to drink more. Updates as they progress.
Serious question. What about A.A. makes you want to drink more? Is it because they talk about booze? Or is it the thought of never drinking again freaks you out so much that you want to drink?
The first couple times I tried to quit the second option was my big stumbling block. Booze was the answer to all of my problems and I was being told I had to give up the only answer I knew.
That is scary.
Slee
It sounds corny, but instead of, “I’m going to give myself two days”, just do the “one day at a time” thing. Set your goals for today. Try and see if you can accomplish “I’m not going to drink today,” first.
And I was not kidding about checking into rehab, or at least, talking to your doctor. See what he/she has to say. Please. I lost a very beloved individual to this disease. The sad thing is, she was just getting sober at the time, but she got sick and her body hadn’t yet healed enough to fight it off. Don’t let that happen to you. Keep fighting the good fight.
Who knows. Seriously, I don’t know. I’m kind of social phobic, so these group meetings kind of put me on edge. And either they are completely anonymous with no social context, or people know each other and there are some prior relationships going on. And then I have to pass a liquor store on the way home, there is topologically no way to avoid it. I don’t know. I can’t explain. There’s nothing to be gained in asking rational questions of a drunk.
Thank you for your concern. I’m not as sick as your friend. Honestly I think this thing could simmer for years and years as it is without getting better or worse. OK, that’s not very reassuring. I appreciate your concern anyhow.
Do you know who doesn’t get enough respect? Paul McCarney in the early 70’s, that’s who.
ETA: he looks like a goddamn chipmunk, but respect.
deleted for irrelevance
I miss my dad.
East coast wusses. Leave me hanging like that.