Alcoholism

[lozzapaloozza]

It’s 2am here and it may sound random to everyone here but all of a sudden I just can’t understand something. November 2019 was the last time I saw my mum before she died in January 2020. It was my boyfriends birthday and she was “fine”, as in she was leaving the house to come see us and could talk to us. And then not even 2 months later she’s gone it’s just mindblowing how quick things can change. I hate going to sleep because it’s always night time when I start to think about horrible stuff and then can’t sleep so end up going on my phone to take my mind off it. I don’t even know what the point of this ramble was but here it is!

 

[Rose28454]

Sorry guys its me again. I try to not air the "dirty laundry" on here, but I do need to vent. My husband is an alcoholic in recovery. Hidden alcohol around the house etc, all mentioned before. He religiously goes to his AA meetings and I am (were) proud of him. A few months ago he started taking weed to sleep at night. Since then i think it has become a problem (cross addiction). At least i don't get the nasty, horrible side of him resulting from alcohol. Last night i asked him did you take weed, he looked straight into my eyes and said no. His behaviour clearly showed me that he is stoned. This morning i confronted him about it and said i am upset because i thought he stopped lying to me and he said he didnt - he just forgot that he had weed. I dont have in me to deal with his addiction any longer. It has been 10 years of tears, of secrecy and me not sharing it with any of my friends or family. Driving to work this morning, i just started crying, but had to control myself as i have an important meeting and didn't want my client to see that i am a wreck. I have begged, i tried tough love, i have forgiven and supported, i dont know what else to do. We have such a beautiful love story and a lifestyle that i am very greatfull for but this ONE thing just F*cks everything up. In my heart i know i no longer trust or respect him. Its like i am living my life holding my breath waiting for the next big incident to happen and that is no life.

I just saw your post and thought it might help to hear my story. Hubby we always a social drinker but in 2000 he was moved with his job as a postman to a posting on our home town which seemed great but it led to a spiral downward as he had trouble at work with various people as he was senior to them and it caused a problem. His drinking and blood pressure increased and eventually he was pensioned off on sick leave. He got a really nice job in a nearby public school
As a steward but again the drinking killed it. After a few agency jobs he started blacking out and vomiting up blood. We had a large mortgage and a lot of debt. In 2008 I finally had enough and moved out with my teenage daughter to my sisters and told him to sort himself out or that was it. With my help we found him a flat nearby and he moved out. He joined AA and never drank again. Was scary at first wondering if he would relapse but maybe because I wasn’t in his ear nagging him he stuck with it. He moved into a small cottage and gradually rebuilt his relationship with his children and his parents ( he looked after both of them brilliantly for a few years before they passed way )
Fast forward to 2017 and he moved back in with me ( he has a man cave with all mod cons - his inheritance paid for it and we have seperate bedrooms)
We have no debt and get along fine. He realises that if he did lapse he would not see his children or grandchildren again. Even losing his parents and brother in quick succession did not phase him. He is very careful not to take anything stronger than a paracetamol as he doesn’t want a new problem . However he has a strong sugar addiction !!
It might seem insurmountable but you have to just think of yourself . I realised I enabled him for years and have a lot of guilt for my children
Please take care and I hope it gets better

 

[Definitelyme]

Thanks all
It’s so sad we all have this shared experience
How can I help someone that won’t even help themselves is the perpetual question.
if he was falling around drunk or abusive all the time I would know I needed to leave but often I think no one would notice he was drunkeven when he is
It makes me such a horrible person, sometimes I think I wish he’d just die. I don’t know how I can even think that- it’s awful but that’s how it makes me feel sometimes
I’ve never said that to anyone before, I’m so glad I found this thread.
so much for tattle being this horrible place hey!

Do not feel horrible at all, you are not alone. Sometimes I’ve thought that the only way out for me, the only way it won’t be weighing in my mind and affecting my mental health, is when my mum dies. And that it’ll even bit somewhat of a relief when she does, so that it’s finally all over.

 

[Happyvalley]

I think that's probably the only thing that you can do. Keep strong though.

Does anyone have any thoughts about alcoholism being in the genes? My parents weren't alcoholics - my mother was virtually tee-total and my father drank maybe a bottle of wine a week. My brothers and sisters are all total alcoholics though - as in the two bottles of wine a night category. It affects my relationship with them as I don't like to get in touch with them after 7pm, as I know they will all be in their respective houses, drunk as lords.

As for myself - I try to drink only at certain times, christmas, on holiday, birthdays etc. I find though that when I do have a few drinks I can't stop and would polish off everything I could get my hands on. I'm guessing this would give me an alcohol dependency issue but I've never really checked. I don't need to drink and don't feel the need to drink - until I've had a couple and then I can't stop.

I do believe that genetics and alcoholism being hereditary plays a part. I come from a family of alcoholics. My mum passed away in her 40’s due to alcoholism and so did her brother (my uncle). Their dad (my grandad) was an alcoholic too and they were brought up in a house of chaos, drama and alcohol fuelled violence. I do think that the genes make you more susceptible to being dependant and addicted to certain things, whether it’s alcohol, drugs, shopping etc.

Seeing the damage alcohol has done to my family makes me wary of it but I do still drink a couple of glasses of wine or g & t’s at the weekend. In my twenties I went through a period of drinking heavily and I felt myself starting to crave alcohol daily. At that point I stopped drinking as I’ve seen the damage it does. I’m very sensible now and would never let my children see me drunk (only happens once or twice a year tbf on a girls night out) and one of the reasons I found my husband attractive is that he doesn’t drink. My siblings are very all or nothing, once they have a drink they won’t stop until they pass out and there’s normally a family argument or some kind of drama involved. We all blame our genes when this happens in a jokey way but truthfully I do feel they play a big part.

 

[Definitelyme]

I saw this on BBC News today. Thought some of you may be interested. I am always keen to read anything from the perspective of an alcoholic to try and gain more insight in to the WHY

Alcoholism in the time of coronavirus

Three people share their stories of dealing with alcoholism during and after lockdown.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Definitelyme]

How is everyone? Mine has stopped, I’m finding it very hard. Everyone rallying round him who either didn’t have a clue or didn’t care to notice and I’m sort of left to deal with it. Feel like a bitch for not just being ecstatic but y’know.

I have never found any celebration in sober times, to be honest. I just wait for it to end. I find those times just after stopping very, very difficult - almost more so than times when they are drinking. I am constantly on edge, feel unsettled. It’s A hard time.

 

[Coconut834]

Thank you everyone. Had a particularly difficult day yesterday but do feel a bit brighter today.
I just hate the effect living with an alcoholic has on me. I thought a short while ago wow it’s 1pm on a Sunday and he’s not on drinking that’s brilliant. Well...no that’s not that’s just normal behaviour for most people!

 

[GiftedNotFree]

The constant worry is what gets me too. Expecting a phone call that they have injured themselves, back in hospital again, back on it again, upsetting other family members, not answering messages or calls. Its exhausting. X

Yes, I can relate to it all. I swear my life stopped during this period (for a good few years!) the drinking was just all consuming. There were times at work I was close to disciplinary action because my performance was poor and my time at work was shoddy at best. If I never had the boss I did at that time I definitely would have been close to the chop!

It’s the wondering, the not knowing, the endless worry, the waiting on the phone ringing, the willing it to ring if your person is missing / AWOL, endless vicious circles of police / hospital / ambulances. It’s so so exhausting. I think you lose a bit of yourself to this illness— I feel like I have. Sometimes I can’t remember what I was like before it was a part of my life. it changes you, and everything.

 

[babbling brook]

My husband is a functioning alcoholic, in complete denial. It’s awful. He tells me I’m exaggerating, making the narrative fit my own aims and he’s fine
He drinks minimum 300ml-500ml vodka daily, often more. Mixes drinks. Won’t see any issue with this as holds a very successful job. Feel like no one will ever believe me. Most of time he is fine, drunk but ok but every so often argumentative, horrible and let’s be honest abusive
I feel I’m on a constant merry go round and the worst part is I even doubt myself, am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? Is it me.

I am utterly trapped and it feels like a prison sentence. He really is Jekyll and Hyde

You're not exaggerating it if he is drinking that much. My husband sounds similar in terms of how much and how often he was drinking. It is so frustrating. I really feel for you and know how worried you must be.

I've done a lot of reading online about coping with an alcoholic and everywhere says you have to protect yourself. I did CBT to learn strategies to deal with my reactions to him and it has helped. You can't control your husband but you can control you. One thing that helped me was removing myself from the situation. I go to bed early and watch tv or read, and let him get on with it. I'm not sure if that is the best way of dealing with it, but it's what has worked for me. I didn't have to experience the slurring and obnoxious behaviour if I wasn't in the room. It also meant he couldn't misinterpret anything I said or did as me judging him. His drinking is less frequent now but I still do this when I can see he is having one of those nights.

Abusive behaviour is a different story. You shouldn't have to put up with that.

Edited to add that I once read if it's enough of a problem to make you question it, then it's a problem. It's not in your head.

 

[Annie101]

If i could have told my younger self what to do, I would stop making excuses for him. Put down my boundaries immediately. So much easier to say than do. Sticking around to see them hitting their rock bottom, you drown with them.

 

[37BBL]

Hello,

So, my dad has always liked a drink. As long as I remember he spent a lot of time in the pub and would lie all the time to my mum about where he was, how much he was drinking. Mum finally left him 23 years ago and since then he's lost his job, house and alcoholism swallowed him. He ended up homeless and wouldn't accept our help, we were at our wits end, luckily a policeman found him sleeping rough and it lead to him being housed in council over 65 accommodation.

He seemed really happy and said his time living with nothing had helped him detox and now he didn't need alcohol. Between me and my siblings we each called once a week,two of us live a hundred miles away and one closer so we would call in when visiting and our other sibling would go more often. He didn't like us being too involved, always kept us at arms length and got mad if we interfered too much so we just did what he would allow, but we used to chat about what he'd been up to... Walking / shopping / what he'd been cooking etc

He never needed anything and we always asked, always said he had everything under control and to be fair it always looked that way when we visited. With the onset of covid he became really withdrawn, didn't want us to visit anymore, he became very scared to leave the house. We called on the phone as often as we could (not more than once a week as he said we were checking up on him and would get mad). We sent him food parcels and amazon parcels of masks / sanitiser etc but his life changed quite a lot during lockdown, not feeling safe going out and not seeing anyone.

We had cheery conversations with him and thought everything was okay. He told us everything was okay, we had no reason to worry. We talked the same about food and TV programmes, and how he'd been keeping busy etc

Last week my sibling went over to drop something off at the door and found him on the floor. He hadn't answered my call the night before which made me send my sibling a bit sooner than planned. He was unresponsive. The ambulance came and fire to get them in the house. He had been on the floor upwards of 24 hours.

His house was a terrible state, full with hundreds of cider bottles, messy and unclean. My dad was taken to hospital where he told them this had been happening a lot. They've found him to be severely malnourished, low sodium, low BP, cuts and bruises from other falls, he's undergoing tests still for bleeding on the brain from one of the falls and possible other things including chest xrays and neurological tests. He's still in hospital. We asked if we could get clothes for him / stuff from the house and he said he didn't have anything clean and he didn't even own any socks.

We are absolutely devastated. He hasn't let us near him for the last year because he's been so scared about covid, so we've kept in as much telephone contact as possible but we had no idea what was going on and how bad things had got and over the phone he was always so cheery and told us everything was fine. He was always good at telling my mum what she wanted to hear when they were married so perhaps we shouldn't have taken what he said at face value so much, I don't know.

I don't know what to do, how to help. The hospital have him on detox medication but I'm not sure what that is or how it helps. The alcohol team are involved too. I just don't know how it came to this and why he didn't tell us he needed help.

I don't know why I'm writing this, I've been to clean his house and bought new bed things and clothes and essentials. But I'm not sure what else to do. I don't know medically where he is really and they won't let us visit in the hospital, we are taking regular packages though and we took him a phone so we can call him directly.

Does anyone have experience of a situation being hidden from them to this point? I just wish he had said something, told us he was drinking again, and that it was serious and he was having these falls/periods where he was unconscious, we could have helped, my heart is breaking thinking of what he's been going through on his own and I don't know what to do to help, I don't know what to do at all

I am so sorry to read your story. My situation isn't the same, I suppose no-ones is, but there are similarities. My sister hid it from us for so long. We had no idea at all, she would never invite us in her house but always had a reason that we believed, so we never questioned it.

When we realised how bad things were she refused anyone entry to the house. It took close on a year for her to go to rehab and detox. My parents had to pay professionals to gut her house it was so bad.

In my experience there is nothing you could have done. Your dad needs to make the decision to try and change. Even if you had been visiting every week, the chances are when you weren't there he would have been drinking.

The best thing I did was cut ties for a while. We are slowly rebuilding some sort of relationship now, but its been a very long time and a very slow process with some set backs. There is no rule book for dealing with these people, you just have to do what works for you and what helps you get through the days.


I'm wishing your dad well and I really hope you can try and take a bit of time for yourself too xxx

 

[Nobodyputsbabyinthecorner]

Happy Christmas All Hope this time of year hasn’t been spoilt to much by loved ones suffering from this horrible disease xxx

 

[Nobodyputsbabyinthecorner]

There is a real culture of “over drinking” in my family. And I mean all of them.
I hate it. I barely drink, I’m not tee total but can really take it or leave it.
I find it disgusting to be honest. And boring. My brother is a full blown alcoholic and my daughter drinks way too much. My ex could never stop when he started either.
I feel I’m surrounded by these people who can’t get a grip.
I’m sick to death of being the grown up?
awful things have happened to be and I’m not drinking myself to death?
it’s so hard to deal with

Hope your ok it’s horrible isn’t it.. people just can’t see the damage alcohol causes not only to the drinker but those around them..
I won’t go into it - it’s too longs of a story but I have a very cynical view of alcohol and the way it impacts peoples behaviour/state of mind/moods. Stay strong x

 

[AnderbeauJohnson]

Thanks so much for the kind words everyone. I feel quite a bit better today and less overwhelmed by everything having blurted it all out and knowing other people go through this sort of thing (though obviously I wish you didn't.) I hate teams/zoom calls and it would do me more harm than good to go on one but I'm determined to give an al anon meeting a go when they return in real life, I've found one in my city that I can make the day/time for so for now I'll keep plodding along and distracting myself.

 

[Definitelyme]

My OH had finally reached out for help but he isnt really trying. He sets targets and fails at each one, justifies and excuses drinking.. im so sick of him being useless falling asleep on the sofa the next day, snapping at the kids, leaving me feeling like im alone, the worry of what he'll do when drunk (nothing violent!) .. its just so draining. Its hard to stay, but its hard to leave.

Sounds like he isn’t really ready for the help at all, he’s just paying lip service to it. Hopefully he’s ready to make the leap properly soon.

 

[Justhereforthebants]

My mum has had issues with alcohol for years but over the past 6 months she has made herself so unwell a few times. She tells me she can’t stop being sick, has pains in her legs, can’t sleep, hallucinations. She actually thought she was going to die one day. Anyway, she seems to be able to stop drinking on her own terms and will be totally sober for around 4 weeks. After that the alcohol slowly creeps back in again and before we know it she’s making herself ill again. I’ve told her sober that I think she needs help with staying off it long term, she manages for a few weeks then just goes back the way. Does anyone else’s relatives do this too? I find it so frustrating because I always think surely she must enjoy her life sober, she’s always busy, such a nice person and then when she drinks she literally never leaves the house.

 

[37BBL]

Don't worry. I won't be driving anywhere. Have got my work to keep me occupied. Just don't like this time of year (I have SAD). And when I get depressed i turn to the booze!

I suppose in one respect joining Tattle has helped a great deal, as well as getting in touch with AA. But like other alcoholics on this thread, it doesn't really matter what help you reach out too at the end of the day its up to the individual to get through it once and for all.

Just keep going hun. My sibling is an alcoholic. Spent 7 months in rehab, relapsed several times in the last 5 months since coming out. I can't relate at all, I hate her more than you could imagine, as she has done some truly awful things and caused an unimaginable amount of pain.
You sound like you aren't at that stage and I really hope you can get through with the correct help and support. Keep using your work as a distraction.
Xxx

My ex text me a bunch of quite rude and boarder line emotionally abusive texts last night and into this morning after I asked for help around selling the house (I'm doing all the admin for it).

Told me I had chosen to leave him and I am making his drinking much worse and I am the problem. Although I know this isn't the case, I feel empty inside today and have finally asked to speak to a doctor about stress and anxiety that grew from this relationship. The worst thing about this lockdown is not being able to pop over to my parents or friends for some support. WhatsApp isn't quite the same.

I read a quote once which said something like, alcoholics are the most selfish people and don't think of the hurt and pain they cause but they expect everyone to sacrifice things when they decide they want to change. Its stuck with me ever since I read it.
It certainly isn't your fault he drank and you cannot be to blame.
We are all here for you to talk to x

 

[lozzapaloozza]

Yes, how is everyone doing in general at the moment?


I'm doing okay. My mum has backed off a bit since I told her I was starting anti-depressants and I haven't had any drunken insulting phone calls. Or many phone calls at all really - she's leaned on me a lot since her breakdown and used to phone at least twice a day for years but now it's suddenly once or twice a week. Part of me thinks she realised it was getting a bit much for me but I think it's more likely that she's in a huff about me trying to get my mental health sorted, she's always hated the idea of me getting treatment and even refused to let the GP treat me when I was first diagnosed as depressed at 14.


It makes me feel like a bit of a horrible person to admit it but it's been nice not to have to be focused about being 'on' every day and worrying about picking her up.

So glad you’re doing okay and we’re always here if you need a chat! That’s really good that you’re taking care of yourself and your own mental health, I remember feeling like some sort of carer with my mum and it’s not the way the roles should be. Just remember you can’t control what anybody does except from yourself, so you have to do what’s best for you. Your mum knows you love her and will always be there for her but she also needs to know she can’t hold you back and bring you down also

On another note, does anyone start to struggle even more around Mother’s Day? It’s shoved in my face everywhere I look and is just another reminder she’s not here. Same goes for Father’s Day ect

 

[37BBL]

I don’t drink at all. At uni I went through a phase where I couldn’t just have one drink, I got blitzed -not every night, maybe once or twice a term, but enough for me to see it wasn’t healthy for me. Plus I don’t actually like most alcohol anyway. I know I’m not the best mum in the world, but I also know I will NEVER put my kids through having an alcoholic parent.

Luckily my husband doesn’t drink either. He was never a huge drinker and gave it up a few years ago (his own choice). I do worry though that the fact we never drink or have alcohol in the house will mean as our kids grow up they don’t know how to moderate it and will go buck daft when they start drinking.

My husband doesn't drink either. No big reason for him, he just doesn't like the taste or enjoy it.
We have the odd bottle of wine in, but just personal choice I only have a glass (very rarely) when they're in bed. And I never have one if I am on my own, say my husband was working away or something.
Agree though, I'll never put my kids through having a parent with alcohol addiction.

 

[gmf21]

My partner has a massive drink problem (all day every day but functioning). I haven’t left because our relationship is still good, but I feel like if he doesn’t change I will need to soon.
It’s so sad and frustrating. I’ve tried AlAnon but felt like I didn’t belong there as he’s not abusive and I don’t have kids with him so could walk away any time.
I realise I should but the good/bad ratio is still in his favour. For now. I dream about his death sometimes which is horrible.
he got referred but they basically weren’t interested as he has a job etc and just check his bloods and tell him to reduce but don’t seem to have offered any actual support.
Have read about detaching with love and try hard not to enable but suppose the fact I am still there is probably enabling in itself.