Expert: Rebos - 11/16/2005

Question
Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  My fiancee and I have been together for almost 3 years, on top of that we dated in high school.  Needless to say we are very close and extremely committed to one another.  However, I believe that he is an alcoholic.  Once he starts drinking he can't stop.  Last February, I asked him to please limit the drinking because I was very concerned about his health.  He did.  He quit during the week and only drinks on the weekends.  The problem is the amount of alcohol consumed during these periods.  He can easily knock back between 6-8 hard alcoholic mixed drinks in a night until he passes out.  The next day he is in denial that he drank too much.  I even went as far as to video tape his behavior during an episode.  When I showed it too him the next day he was embarrassed and shocked.  I really don't know what else to do.  I don't want to leave him, I really don't I love him so much and want to help him.  Yet, I do know that I can't help him.  It's such a helpless feeling to watch someone you love continue down a destructive path.  I've often said to him it's like watching a person with a knife continually stab themselves, yet you can't take it away from them.  He is in definite denial.  I don't want to nag him but at the same time I can't sit by and watch him slowly kill himself.  What can I do to show him that I love him yet also show him that I can't accept his behavior?

Answer
Good afternoon Giving Up:

Thank you for your question. I will do my best to give you some
information that you should consider when it comes to your
fiancee and his drinking
problem.

You have not mentioned if he is attending any sort of recovery
program. I will assume that he is not!

If your fiancee does not stop drinking, and you stay
with him, you are
looking at a relationship and the good possibility of
having a lifetime
full of pain and misery. If he does not stop he will get worse. If you
continue to stay you will
become his victim, but never his girlfriend, lover or
wife. Drinking
alcoholics take “hostages” they never take partners,
because their
alcoholism does not allow them to have a normal
relationship with another
human being. 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 love you and you him, 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. You say that you really don't love him so much. If that
is the case by breaking up with him you may be
doing him a big
favor by helping to raise his “bottom”. In other words
his recognition
that he has lost something (you) that was important in
his life. I know of
many cases where the non-drinker of a couple in a relationship ends up
“joining “ the
drinker as a matter of their own survival. What ever
you do (unless 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. You will become his weak prey that he can do with whatever
he wants to.

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. Many enablers
are impelled by their own fears, anxiety and/or guilt to rescue
the alcoholic from
their predicament. An enabler may be meeting a need of
their own rather
that the need of the alcoholic. If an enabler has no
special knowledge or
training in the field of alcoholism and they try to
help, the alcoholic
can sense the ineptness and weakness of the enabler
and they continue on
drinking because they know that they will be forgiven
and rescued time and
time again… and 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.

You should consider your personal safety above all else.

I would make it very clear to your fiancee 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 upwards to a 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 attend
Alanon meetings. If you chose to remain in your
relationship with him and you
don't attend meetings then you will have no one to
blame for your situation
but yourself. If you go to Alanon you
will find that your problem is not
quite as unique as you may think. At Alanon you would learn how
to live with
having an alcoholic in your life, and learn the truth
about the disease of
alcoholism. Alanon is intended to help YOU and not the Alcoholic
directly. In order for you to be able to help
him you must first learn to help
yourself. At Alanon you would meet people who have
an alcoholic in their
lives too, and that their own lives had become unmanageable as a result of
it. Alcoholism is a disease that affects everyone
who comes into contact
with the alcoholic.

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 fiancée's
drinking but you can
do something about the problem that has developed
in your life by having
an 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 not work.
Alcoholism is deadly and it destroys everything and
everyone who comes
into contact with it. If you do not have Alanon's local number call the
following toll-free numbers:
1-800-344-2666 (United States) or 1-800-443-4525 (Canada).

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
is 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.

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,
drinking only on weekends, changing what they drink,
smoking pot or taking
other mind altering drugs or even switching to “near
beer” with 0.5%
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
is dealing with an
addicted person. Unfortunately, all alcoholics must
hit their own bottom
before they 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. You will be better off to let him
go and get on with
your life. Once again, you may help to save his life
by raising his bottom
even if you are no longer together.

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. Cajoling, hand-wringing, threatening,
begging and even putting
him away against his will, 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 an alcoholic will stop drinking just
because they say that
they will. It's not that he will purposely lie to you…
but they will lie to
themselves 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, or entering an
in-patient detoxification clinic that has an after
care outpatient
program. If he does nothing about stopping then he is
destined to die a
drunk's death, get involved negatively with the law (if he hasn't
already) or
end up in a mental
institution. I am sorry to be blunt, but I am only
stating what you
probably already know. I have never seen an alcoholic
stop drinking on
willpower alone. The disease is too powerful.

You are in a potentially very dangerous relationship and you must
make a decision to
set your fears aside and do what you must do to
protect your self

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 decide to talk to him about leaving him
you may want to say that you are doing so because
of his drinking and… that
until he gets sober and stays sober of upwards to a year or more that you
are breaking off all contact with him for his own good.
You have to get
on with your life. And he has to get his life back on track. An alcoholic
such as you have described your fiancée cannot
cut back and stay cut back.
It's the first drink that gets him drunk…it may not
make him drunk but it's the first one that will eventually get him drunk.
There is an old saying that "once you make a
cucumber into a pickle, you can never change it back to a pickle again".
God forbid that you have a child with him and then
become tied to him for the rest of your life.

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. Alcoholism is deadly and it
and not a matter to be taken lightly. Sometimes the truth
is hardest of all to face up to.

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