Expert: Joseph Lee O. - 9/26/2008

Question
Hello, I married a wonderful and thoughtful man 5 weeks ago. It was the happiest day of my life. My husband is a recovered drug addict and alcoholic. He has also struggled with gambling issues in the past, and I thought that is where everything was left, in the past. We were only married 3 days, and on our honeymoon, when he picked a fight with me and left me for the entire day so he could drink. He was so drunk he passed out on the balcony of our room on the cruise and I thought he was dead. This is the first I'd ever seen this in him and it was sooo terrifying. We talked the next night and he said he was just stressed with our new marriage and it wouldn't happen again. Well, within 5 weeks, it's happened 4 times and two days ago he gambled his entire paycheck away. He keeps pushing me away further away from him stating I just need to accept him "as is". He'll apologize and say it will never happen again, but it's become a weekly issue now.

Where is the man I dated for a year? He got drunk only 1x while we were dating, but that was a year ago. I am new to addictions issues and at a total loss for how to react, respond, or live with him. I feel like I'm living with a total stranger and I'm very afraid of my future. How did I not know he could be like this...did I miss the signs? We are Christians, so kept true to our faith and did not live together before marriage. So, maybe we didn't spend enough time together before hand?

Any advice you can give me on how to support him and help him, I'd greatly appreciate it. He's been through rehab and counseling in the past and is somewhat open to it again.  I have tried being patient, loving and forgiving, but all that gets me is more to deal with and I feel like it's telling him this is ok. This isn't the marriage I thought it'd be and I don't know if I can do this.

Thank you,
My new husband has returned to addictions

Answer
Greetings to you, Tracia.

You have asked:

>> Where is the man I dated for a year?
>> How did I not know he could be like this...did I miss the signs?
>> ... maybe we didn't spend enough time together before hand?

If your husband is at all like I used to be, you have married a very troubled man.  In my own case, I had intentionally deceived my wife into marriage even while attending church ... but most of all, I had been deceiving myself.  And with all of this being so new to you, it is very understandable you did not see any of it coming.

You have written:

>> My husband is a recovered drug addict and alcoholic.

In the final analysis, the word “recovered” equates with transformation and actually means something like this:

“Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink [or gambling or whatever else] has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him.  Seemingly he could not drink even if he would.  G-d had restored his sanity.
“What is this but a miracle of healing?  Yet its elements are simple.  Circumstances made him willing to believe.  He humbly offered himself to his Maker - then he knew.
“Even so has G-d restored us all to our right minds ...
“When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!” (“Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, page 57)

I would have to know a lot more about your husband and his overall experience in order to explain why he is still actually “chronic”, but such is quite obvious.

>> He has also struggled with gambling issues in the past, and I thought that is where everything was left, in the past.

Having been raised within Christianity, I am very familiar with the idea of (even repeatedly) responding to an altar call and allegedly walking away as some kind of “new man”, but that is just not reality.  What your husband is up against here is far bigger than anything like mere religion or philosophy that might fix:

“If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago.  But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried.  We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there.  Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.
"Lack of power, that was our dilemma.  We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.” (pages 44-45)

>> We were only married 3 days, and on our honeymoon ...

Intentionally or not (and in my own case it was), your husband has “taken you hostage”, so to speak, and I say that even if his intentions had actually been impeccable.  He might have been displaying his very best behaviour for a year previous, but those days are over now that he has a firm grip on you.  Looking back, my wife has said she would have sought an immediate annulment if she had understood any of that at the time.

>> We talked the next night and he said he was just stressed ...

Here is the actual fact of that matter:

“... the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his [non-transformed] mind, rather than in his body.  If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis.  Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic's drinking bout creates.  They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can't feel the ache.  If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.
Once in a while he may tell the truth.  And the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have.” (page 23)

>> He keeps ... stating I just need to accept him "as is".

You have absolutely no obligation to do so.

>> I am ... at a total loss for how to react, respond, or live with him.

You might begin by reading the chapter “To Wives” in “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, and it is my own advice that you get completely away from him immediately.  Until you can obtain a copy of your own, you can read that book online here:
http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm .

>> I feel like I'm living with a total stranger ...

Yes, and a very dangerous one, at that.

>> I'm very afraid of my future.

You should be.

>> Any advice you can give me on how to support him and help him, I'd greatly appreciate it. He's been through rehab and counseling in the past and is somewhat open to it again.

The *only* hope for your husband can be found in “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, and I keep referring to that book in that specific way because none of today’s AA or any “rehab and counseling” are even close to being the same.

>> I have tried being patient, loving and forgiving, but all that gets me is more to deal with and I feel like it's telling him this is ok.

Some people would say you are enabling him, but the fact is that you are unwittingly participating in his delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if only he manages well. (page 61)

>> This isn't the marriage I thought it'd be and I don't know if I can do this.

With the details being different, my younger daughter is presently in a very similar situation and I have brought her back into my own house while letting her husband know there is help available for him.  You should pack your stuff (and leave a copy of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, behind) and get out of there immediately ... and I will do my best to help you understand all along.

Please know you are always welcomed to write.

Joseph Lee O.
Email: leejosepho@hotmail.com
Forum: http://xsorbit28.com/users5/restored/