Expert: james52144@earthlink.net - 1/3/2009

Question
When I met my husband he was 23 years old and drank with his friends every night, often until he just fell asleep drunk. His father is an alcoholic, so I was concerned about this and let him know, but I never asked him to stop drinking, despite his causing me emotional pain during several holidays because of it. When I became pregnant (almost 4 years ago) I asked him to stop drinking during my pregnancy. He did for the most part, though he had a beer or two at home a few times. It didn't seem too tough for him because most of his friends had moved out of our town by then. However, just after I gave birth to our son, he started drinking heavily. We got very close to seperating because he wasn't doing many of the things that were needed from him at that time. We did not end up seperating and now there have been several more years for me to watch his drinking pattern. There seem to be about 3 or 4 times a year where drinking is a very big problem (usually holidays when it affects our family the most) but other than that things are relatively normal and we occaisionally will drink a beer at home together with no ill effects. I recently (two days before Christmas) discovered that he was hiding alcohol bottles (whiskey) from me and drinking secretively. This is something that happened about 2 years ago too, but I never did anything other than beg him to stop. For the first time, instead of having an arguement with me about it, he admitted to me that he realized he was an alcoholic two years ago but couldn't bring himself to admit it to me until now. He has severe problems with social anxiety and admitted that recently he went out before meetings at his job and drank to feel like he could deal with the people in the meeting. He told me that part of why he couldn't admit this to me before is that he is afraid I will force him to attend meetings, and that he thinks if he had to do that he would most likely find himself drinking on the way to the meeting to tone down his anxiety about being at the meeting and having to talk to people about his problems.  I know this is a serious issue and I want it to stop before it affects our family in a disasterous way. I feel like this could potentially become a worse problem for him in the future if something isn't done about it now. It has been tough for me to know what to do because it isn't a situation that shows itself constantly. I could really use some advice.

Answer
Dear Kim

I would strongly recommend that you start going to Alanon, a support group for people that are victims of alcoholics. You can't force an alcoholic to stop drinking, he has to decide that for himself. You can only support him to not drink. The fact that he is drinking is not fooling anybody at work.