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Hello Joseph,
I wrote you a few months ago and loved the feedback you gave me, so here I go again with another question. My x and I have been broken-up for a little over a year. Before that we were together for 4 years, and he was a raging alcoholic. While in recovery, he stopped all dealings with me and did not speak to me but maybe 3-4 times. Over this passed weekend, at 1am I received a call from him while he was drunk sitting at a bar. It was random. I couldn't belive that after him being sober for 15 months he relapsed. He wanted to see me and I thought I wanted to see him to. I never got out of bed to see him, instead we spoke the next morning while he was still drinking. I guess he later sobered up and when I called him back and told me that there is another female involved and that he NEVER called me and to never call him again. My question is this, why did this man feel the need to call me after all this time of no contact? That old feeling came back for me, and I guess although I never went to see him the night he was drunk (he had been drinking for 4 days straight) how is it possible that I still meet the alcoholic Joe and not the sober Joe??? I know you probably can't tell me what he was thinking, but maybe you can give some advice. I stay away and he does to, but for a moment when he called me drunk it felt the same way it did when we were in a relationship together. Please help me.
~Confused
Lena
Here is my e-mail address, Lena, and you are certainly welcomed to write any time: leejosepho@hotmail.com
Joe
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Greetings again, Lena.
You have asked:
>> why did this man feel the need to call me after all this time of no contact?
It is probably a good guess he has been miserable (even while sober) for some time and is still quite confused about himself and his life, and that he called you while searching his mind looking for some kind of mental or emotional point of reference, home base or beginning point in an effort to try to make some sense of things.
>> how is it possible that I still meet the alcoholic Joe and not the sober Joe???
He had only been “dry” for several months – nothing about him has changed.
You have written:
>> ... maybe you can give some advice. I stay away and he does to, but for a moment when he called me drunk it felt the same way it did when we were in a relationship together. Please help me.
Having experienced it myself under different circumstances many years ago, I know the devastation you feel:
“How could men who loved their wives and children be so unthinking, so callous, so cruel? There could be no love in such persons, we thought. And just as we were being convinced of their heartlessness, they would surprise us with fresh resolves and new attentions. For a while they would be their old sweet selves, only to dash the new structure of affection to pieces once more. Asked why they commenced to drink again, they would reply with some silly excuse, or none. It was so baffling, so heartbreaking. Could we have been so mistaken in the men we married? When drinking, they were strangers. Sometimes they were so inaccessible that it seemed as though a great wall had been built around them.
And even if they did not love their families, how could they be so blind about themselves? What had become of their judgment, their common sense, their will power? Why could they not see that drink meant ruin to them? Why was it, when these dangers were pointed out that they agreed, and then got drunk again immediately?
“These are some of the questions which race through the mind of every woman who has an alcoholic husband. We hope this book has answered some of them.” (“Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, pages 107-108)
And of course, I have in the past also been the cause of much pain in the lives of the family I had abandoned in order to drink.
Alcoholic or not, and in whatever way or ways, suffering people search to know the real meaning or purpose of life while wondering just what went wrong. We know other people are less than perfect or even evil at times, and we know we would be better off if they would just be better ... and on and on goes the mess.
Taking the Twelve Steps puts ourselves, others and all things related into proper perspective, and in the process we learn a new manner of looking at things and living. That is my personal experience, and I would gladly try to help you gain it for yourself. The bottom line here is that it is not by accident that alcohol is sometimes called “spirits”, and it is not merely coincidental that the solution for our personal dilemmas also takes place in the spiritual realm.
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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