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Hi Joseph..I need help. My husband is an alcoholic. He drinks every day. When he comes home from work at 4pm he cracks open a beer..so from 4pm until he falls asleep he is drinking. Weekends it's Noon time until he goes to bed. He goes to the package store on the weekends about 2-3 times a day. He is a great father and husband, I just cant take the drinking and when he is drunk I cant stand him. I've been to therepy because I'm not happy. He will not go for therepy or get any help. I know that I can't make him. I told him that I'm leaving and taking our two yr old son. It does not even phase him. I'm tryting to build up the corouge to leave. I'm stressed out.
Thanks for listening
Greetings to you, Shelley.
You have written:
>> I need help ...
>> I've been to therapy ...
>> I'm trying to build up the courage to leave.
One thing that is often different for an alcoholic as compared to the situations of others is that the alcoholic usually ends up facing imminent and inescapable disaster, or even death. Nevertheless, all of us human beings still have the same underlying causes and conditions that ultimately either bring about or at least contribute toward our frustrations, disappointments, and failures in life ... and if that were not so, you would not be trying to build enough courage to step out and again try to find happiness in life. Does that make sense to you? And, it is certainly not my intent to criticize you or to find fault with you. Rather, I am only hoping you might be at a place in your life where you might be able to see yourself at Step One:
"1. We admitted we were powerless ... that our lives had become unmanageable ... and [that we] could not manage our own lives [successfully]." ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, pages 59-60)
Hence, and since "therapy" essentially amounts to attempting to restore (via manipulation and/or exercise) something to a previous state we have never yet actually even had, therapy did not, does not and cannot provide the courage for you to again step out and face life anew any more than it had ever done for me. Or in other words: Trying to build "the courage to leave" actually amounts to trying to build the courage to again face yet another possible series of frustrations, disappointments, and failures in life. Understand?
From page 151 in "Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, and with the matter of your or anyone's drinking or not drinking set off to the side:
"The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt - and one more failure."
So then, and rhetorically: what can be done when we find ourselves in that kind of place?
"There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools [the Twelve Steps] laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.
"The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward G-d's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves." (page 25)
Please know you are always welcomed to write.
Joseph Lee O.
Email: leejosepho@hotmail.com
Forum: http://xsorbit28.com/users5/restored/
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Answers by Expert:
Joseph Lee O.
Expertise
Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.
Experience
The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken.
Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along.
At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ...
... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.
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