I am sorry to hear this, but am glad that she has agreed to get the help that she so desperately needs. I had a few family members who grappled with addiction, and my late wife refused to seek therapy for serious issues that stemmed from serious childhood issues which manifested in some difficult behavior which impacted our relationship.
As has already been suggested by others with whom I am in agreement, it may be helpful to seek some counseling for yourself since this kind of situation can be very difficult on a spouse who is just trying to hold everything together and look out for his mate.
The thing is, going to detox and then to rehab is only the first step on the alcoholic’s long and arduous path that, frankly, few are successful at. In movies, the last scene where the alcoholic goes to his first AA meeting and admits s/he has a problem is often presented as The Happy Ending, as though it will be smooth sailing from now on.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The first step is indeed admitting that s/he has a problem. Nothing happens until that happens. But once it DOES happen, progressively more difficult steps follow–thousands of them. That’s why recovering alcoholics take it “one day at a time,” because to look down the road toward the horizon and see all the steps ahead… it would be overwhelming.
Because now the alcoholic will still have ALL the same problems s/he had-- work, family, relationships, anger, fear, despair-- but WITHOUT the medication that has helped him/her *marginally *cope up to now.
And the spouse has to learn a whole new way of relating to the recovering alcoholic, including a whole new way of reacting when and if the alcoholic starts drinking again, whether for the long or short term. When I went to alanon and they told me, “The alcoholic’s drinking is none of your business,” I completely flipped out! What do you mean none of my business– it directly affects me! I had a lot to learn.
To the OP: I recommend the boards at www.soberrecovery.com in the friends and family section. You’ll find a lot of company there, a lot of very helpful stickies, people who really understand what YOU’RE going through. It’s a great place.
Don’t even worry about paid help yet– find an alanon meeting and go there today or tomorrow. It’s free.
“Hey guys, I decided I’ve been spewing my wife’s and my personal issues across the internet far too much, so I’m going to stop. By the way, here’s seven more paragraphs about the private details of my wife’s life.”
Dude, if you’re going to stop, then just stop. If you’re not going to stop, don’t say you will and then go on to contradict yourself.
And it can’t be doing your wife any good for you to spill every micro-detail of her private life to strangers. What if she sees this shit someday?
As he wrote in another post elsewhere Ghost was returned to the shelter in hopes of at least a painless death and was adopted by others who are hopefully better prepared to be pet owners.
And hopefully he doesn’t come back, for his sake, and his wife’s. Not to be insulting, he said himself it’s a personal matter. The best thing he can do for both of them is to work on fixing their problems without spilling the details to a group of strangers on the internet. Good luck to them both.
Weird If I asked Alcoholics Anonymous for information about someone else, I would expect to be told it’s none of my business, even if the person I’m asking about is very close to me - I guess I assume that would be part of the ‘anonymous’ bit.
Been there, done that. I was an addict and alcoholic, but I never stole to buy alcohol. I guess that I had a high moral standard, but I learned early on you don’t fuck with other people’s time, other people’s people and other people’s money in order to avoid about 80% of life’s problems.
No, no, it has nothing to do with “anonymity.” The meaning of that statement is that you cannot make the other person stop drinking, and to believe/behave as if you can is futile. If you get between the alcoholic and his [using male pronoun throughout for faster typing on my kindle] booze, he will correctly see YOU as the problem.
“I don’t have a drinking problem. It’s only a problem because YOU say it’s a problem. If you got off my back, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
You have to get out from between the alcoholic and the booze and leave him alone with it. You get to lay down the burden of managing his relationship with alcohol. No nagging, no pleading, no monitoring, no pouring booze down the sink, no calling in “sick” for him, no making excuses, no scraping him off the front lawn when he passes out there or on the living room floor, and ultimately no bailing him out of jail when you get that 2am phone call. No cover-up. You have to allow him to experience the consequences of his drinking directly without you there to blame, deflect, or distract.
How do you manage this? By getting support for yourself–the easiest and cheapest way is at alanon. I dreaded going there because I thought I’d hear a litany of stories like mine, stories of nights, events, discussions ruined by my boyfriend’s drunkenness. But that’s not at all what I heard. I heard stories of people taking charge of their own lives and no longer being distressed and dragged down by the alcoholic they loved and still lived with. Once they relieved themselves of the responsibility of managing their loved one’s drinking, they were free to live. Some had loved ones in AA; some didn’t. I never spoke up at meetings; I only listened. But every time I went (and for a while it was 3X per week), I felt buoyed up on an ocean of love.
Eventually my boyfriend did go to AA, and there, much to his surprise, he found “his tribe.” It was a group of men who knew him through and through the first time they met him. He was home. He never told me about the meetings except to say that, and that made me very happy.
The first group you try may not click, so shop around. Most communities of any size have many groups. Big cities have hundreds. Check out the link I posted above.
As for the “God” stuff that puts some people off, they have a saying, “Take what you like and leave the rest.” I’m Jewish and I used to slip out before the Lord’s Prayer at the end. No big deal.
P.S. We broke up anyway-- that was 10 years ago, but he’s been sober now for 13 years.
I have been going through this with someone for the past 22 years. I gave up, I live my life and just take the attitude that it will be whatever the hell it will be. Don’t get your hopes up too high about the recovery program, their long term success rate is not extremely high. If you ever need to talk and don’t want to put it on line send me a message and I will give you my number.
Ah, OK - thank you for the explanation - and I think I see the sense in it. A little help for problem that is serious in nature can sometimes just allow the hole to be dug a little deeper.
The very best to all of you!