Expert: Rebos - 9/23/2006

Question
I am dating a man who is Russian and 23. He was raised in a family that drank regularly and I suspect that his father was a heavy drinker. He has lived in the US for 3.5 years and since his arrival his father was suspiciously killed by the "mafia". I mention this because my boyfriend has some grief/emotional issues as do many Russians I suspect.

Either way, I have watched him be a regular drinker since i met him. I have watched him binge on occasion (3 times a month maybe) like many who are in their 20's. He generally drinks every day, 2 beers or so but drinks significantly more at least 3 days a week. He says that he is a "drinker" but stops short of admitting alcohol dependency/alcoholism.

I am tolerant in general but work as  registered nurse and am VERY familiar with drinking problems in patients in the hospital.

Last night, he got moody, demanding and basically a bit unpleasant because he wanted us to stay out drinking after two hours in a bar playing pool and  drinking. He had had a couple of beers (less than 3 I suspect) with his boss and then had two rum and cokes and a beer with me. I decided to not put up with it and went to bed. In the morning I woke to a wet bed...and a shot glass on the kitchen table.

I called him at work this morning (he does work regularly, his boss is an alcoholic) and told him, that is it. He either addresses the alcohol problem or it is over.

Do you have suggestions? He sounded sorry of course. He sounded open to fixing it of course. But I am not going to marry and start a family with a drunk. Not my nature. I know that denial, being sorry and the continual recurrance of the problem is an issue.

What to do? We do not have the money for a center just yet. He is not going to go into serious withdrawl but I do think he will get depressed. He has trouble even stopping smoking. He is not religious.

Suggestions. Help...Ideas...things to say to him?

Answer
Good afternoon Jody:

Thank you for your question. First off; your boyfriend should not try to stop smoking at the same time as he stops drinking. “First things first”.  Also, it is natural for an alcoholic to be filled with guilt and remorse after each episode of drinking to excess. You do know that alcohol is a depressant, and the longer and more he drinks so will his depressions intensify.

I hope that you seriously consider; the decision you make regarding your future with your boyfriend (I assume since he has only been in the country for 3.5 years) of only a short period of time as being one of the most important decisions that you will make in your lifetime!

Since you presently have only a relatively short period of time invested in this man, I would suggest that you dump him and move on with your life. It’s one thing to have a long term relationship or are married to a person, and THEN they become an alcoholic (or develop one of the many other terminal diseases), but to tie yourself down to a man who you have prior knowledge of having a drinking problem is a disaster from the get go.

Alcoholics who are still drinking are generally self-centered to the extreme, booze is more important to them than ANYTHING ELSE. As much as he may say that he loves you his addiction will never allow you to come first, booze will always come before you, his health, his job, his family, and even his very life. By breaking up with him you may be doing him a big favor by helping to raise his “bottom”. In other words, that he may recognize that he has lost another thing that was important in his life. I know of many cases where the non-drinker of a couple ends up “joining” the drinker as a matter of their own survival. Whatever you do (even if you are also having a drinking problem) don’t join him in his drinking, because to be a male alcoholic is bad enough, but to be a female alcoholic is much worse because of the “special” problems that a woman drunk faces. Plus, you will become his weak prey that he can do with you whatever he wants to.

If you don’t already know, it is generally believed, by many in the field of alcoholism, that it is a three-fold disease… mental, physical and spiritual.

The “mental” part of the illness refers to the mental obsession to drink that precedes the first drink... a pre-occupation with thinking about drinking which is so powerful that the alcoholic must drink. The “physical” aspect of the disease is that once the first drink is downed a physical compulsion takes over in the form of a deep incessant craving that the alcoholic must continue to drink until some outside incident stops them or they pass out. The “spiritual” part of the illness (not spiritual in a religious way) is in the loss of an alcoholic’s values, and a willingness to settle for less and less as the drinking continues. It becomes difficult for the alcoholic to determine the difference between right and wrong or good and bad. The alcoholic develops a change in priorities where drinking becomes more important than health, family, job and friends.

It is very easy for those who are close to an alcoholic to become “enablers”. An enabler is a person who allows an alcoholic to continue drinking, primarily by their acceptance of the alcoholic’s actions and not holding them accountable for their unacceptable behavior. If an enabler has no special knowledge about alcoholism and they try to help, the alcoholic can sense the weakness of the enabler and they continue on drinking because they know that they will be forgiven and rescued time and time, again. In a backhanded way you will give him “permission” to drink by your continued acceptance of his unacceptable behavior. What ever you decide to do it should be based upon your head talking and not your heart. Don’t let your actions appear to be allowing him to continue drinking. If you continue on the road that you are on you haven’t seen anything yet. Alcoholism is a progressive disease it only gets worse it never gets better on its own. I would make it very clear to him that you do not want to hear from him again until he does something positive about his drinking problem…and then only after he has been sober in a program of recovery (like AA) for at least one full year. Never make any threat to him unless you intend to follow through with it.

HOWEVER, if for some insane reason you cannot stop yourself from continuing your relationship with him, then it would be wise for you to go to Alanon meetings. It is the only way that you will survive the ordeal of having an alcoholic in your life. If you
choose to remain in your relationship with him and you don’t attend meetings you have no one to blame for your situation but yourself.

Alcoholics are not bad people, they are sick people who need help, but they must be held responsible for their actions! You may not be able to do anything about your boyfriend’s drinking but you can do something about the problem that has developed in your life by having alcoholic in it. Until you are armed with the right kind of information, knowledge and implications of the disease, your efforts to help him will be for nothing. Alcoholism is deadly and it destroys everything and everyone who comes into contact with it. Please go to Alanon meetings it will be your only chance to survive the relationship, “if you choose to remain in the relationship”.

It is said that alcoholism is a disease of denial, and it is apparent that your partner is in denial about what it is doing to him and his relationship with you. Alcoholism is cunning, baffling, insidious and powerful. It has no cure…once an alcoholic always an alcoholic! So to speak…“once you make a cucumber into a pickle, you can never change it back to a cucumber”. The good news is that there is recovery from the disease and it is accomplished “just one day at a time.” I’m sure that you have heard that saying before. Stopping drinking is not a matter of willpower. Alcoholism is a disease. Drinking alcoholically is but a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that must be faced up to in order for an alcoholic to recover. Without learning what that problem is, trying to stay away from a drink is known as “white knuckle sobriety”. It isn’t very long before the alcoholic has to drink again. FOR THE ALCOHOLIC THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CUTTING DOWN, binge or periodic drinking, drinking only on weekends, changing what they drink, smoking pot or taking other mind altering drugs or even switching to “near beer” with 0.05% alcohol. For the alcoholic nothing will work short of total and complete abstinence from any thing that contains alcohol or other mind-altering substances (drugs). Of course the exception is a medical doctor’s prescription as long as the doctor understands that he or she is dealing with an addicted person.

Unfortunately, your boyfriend must hit his own bottom before he will do anything about stopping. I am sorry to say that hitting a bottom for some many may mean going as low as a person can go...plus six feet! Don’t let him take you there with him. Until he “admits and accepts” that alcohol is causing him problems there is little you can do for him. No one can scare an alcoholic into stopping drinking. Threatening, begging and even putting him away against his wishes will not get him to stop doing what he has not made up his own mind to do. Don’t think that he does not want to stop he can’t stop when left to his own devices. Also, don’t be lulled into thinking that he will stop drinking just because he says that he will. It’s not that he will purposely lie to you… but he will lie to himself because down deep he is afraid to stop. Alcoholism is powerful, cunning, baffling and insidious.

An active alcoholic’s choices become limited to: attending a recovery program like AA, and/or entering an in-patient detoxification clinic then to the AA program. If he does nothing about stopping then he is destined to die a drunk’s death, get involved negatively with the law or end up in a mental institution. I am sorry to be blunt, but I am only stating what you probably already know. Rarely have I seen an alcoholic stop drinking on willpower alone. The disease is too powerful. You state that your boyfriend is not a religious man. AA is not a religious program. At AA meetings you can find believers, agnostics and atheists. There is no requirement for membership other that having a desire to stop drinking. It helps somewhat if a person can believe that there is a Power greater than themselves, even if it is an electric light bulb!

There is no reason why you should remain in such a horrible situation as you are. Just ask yourself what you would advise a friend to do if she came to you and explained the same
situation that you are going through, as her problem. I would bet that you would tell her to get
away from him ASAP. You were not put on this earth to allow another person to enslave you and have to live in fear and yet do nothing about it.

If you do talk to him you may want to say that you are leaving him because of his drinking. And… that until he is sober for at least a year or more that you do not want to hear from him or have any contact with you. You have to get on with your life. Don’t let him trap you into “that this whole thing is your problem and not his, and if you didn’t bug him that he would be OK.” Alcoholics are very clever at turning the problem around to protect their own right to drink!

As you stated, God forbid that you have a child with him and then become tied to him for the rest of your life. His drinking will always come first. I wish you the very best and I hope that I have not taken too much liberty with you in the way I have responded to your question. You seem to be intelligent women…don’t let this man destroy your life. Get out while you can, and concentrate on someone who can love you, more than booze. I know that you love him…but HE CAN”T LOVE YOU AND ALCOHOL at the time

Below you will find 12 questions that can be used to determine whether your boyfriend is having a problem or not. They must be answered truthfully in order for them to be meaningful. The questions are normally directed to the drinker, but if you think you know what your boyfriend’s drinking pattern is you may find them interesting. But remember, your boyfriend is the only one who can make the decision, as to him being an alcoholic or not enough to want to do anything about it.

1. Have you ever decided to stop drinking for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days?

2. Do you wish that people would mind their own business about your drinking and stop telling you what to do?

3. Have you ever switched from one drink to another in the hope that this would keep you from getting drunk?

4. Have you ever had an eye-opener upon wakening during the past year?

5. Do you envy people who can drink without getting into trouble?

6. Have you had any problems connected with drinking during the past year?

7. Has your drinking caused trouble at home?

8. Do you ever try to get extra drinks at a party because you do not get enough?

9. Do you tell yourself that you can stop drinking any time you want to, even though you keep getting drunk when you don't mean to?

10. Have you missed days at work or school because of drinking?

11. Do you have "blackouts"? A blackout is when you have been drinking there are periods of time that you can't remember.

12. Have you ever felt that your life would be better if you did not drink?

IF THE ANSWER IS YES TO 4 OR MORE QUESTIONS, your boyfriend is probably in trouble with alcohol.

If I can be of further help please do not hesitate to contact me again through Allexperts. Thank you Rebos