Expert: Rebos - 12/6/2006

Question
I have been with my alcoholic boyfriend for a year and a half.  For a year, I
wondered if his drinking was "normal".  After enduring all the things that many
loved-ones of alcoholics endure, I attended my first Al-Anon meeting.  That was
six months ago.  Since then, my boyfriend, realizing that he was going to lose
me, admitted to having a problem.  He attened AA and was sober for a month.
Then he fell off the wagon.  For several months he has gone to AA in spurts (I
even attend a weekly meeting with him), but he hasn't stayed sober for more than
a week.    
I believe that he sincerely wants to get sober.  However, my gut tells me he is
not willing to do everything it takes.  He won't get a sponsor, and I suspect
that he wouldn't go to AA if I didn't drive him.  I know for a fact that I am
the only person in his life who supports his sobriety, but I am exhausted.  I
don't want to wait for him to figure out that he needs to do A LOT more if he
wants to stay sober.  I also don't want to leave him at a time that might be
critical to his sobriety.  
I have read that it can take a while for alcoholics to truly get sober.  I am
wondering how long "a while" is.  I am also wondering what his continuous
drinking, despite attending AA, indicates.  Would I be a horrible person for
giving up on him?  I fear that by staying with him, my life will be plagued with
incidents where he falls off the wagon.

Millie

Answer
Good afternoon Millie and thank you for your question.

Your boyfriend has not had enough trouble yet. He is going to meetings for the wrong reason. Unless he goes to meetings because he wants to then he will never get sober. Every time you put the heat on him he says that he will do something about his drinking, but once the heat is off him he breaks out and drinks. Having only a year and a half invested in your “present boyfriend” it is my opinion that you should get rid of him before you get too emotionally attached to him. Just think of the trouble that you will be faced with if you end up having a child with this guy and be strapped to him for the next 18 years or so! If drinking causes problems then IT is a problem! Alcoholism never gets better on its own it always gets worse, and the direction that your boyfriend is headed he will get worse. Alcoholics don’t have girlfriends, they don’t have wives, they don’t even have children, Alcoholics take hostages and have victims…they are too self-centered, and care more about their right to continue drinking than they do for their girlfriends, wives or children. Ask him to stop drinking and see if he does. That should tell you something. I have never seen an alcoholic stop drinking on their willpower alone…the addiction is too powerful.

I have so many things to write you in answer to your question, that I will probably lose track and leave some things out…In any case here goes:

Stop driving him to meetings! If he is serious about his sobriety he like many, many others will find a way to get to meetings. I have never seen or heard of an alcoholic who wants to get to AA meetings that there isn’t someone who will take him (with the exception of it being you). All that he has to do is speak up, and ask at his next meeting that he needs a ride! It will show you how serious he really is about his sobriety. You aren’t his mother, his keeper or his warden. It will give him an opportunity to become a part of the AA program rather than apart from it. With you there he will never join a group, never get a sponsor, he will never go to closed meetings for alcoholics only and most of all he will never change. If he doesn’t change from the guy that he was when he went to his first meeting he will drink again, and if he is only going to a meeting once a week he will never stay sober for very long. Which he isn’t! He should be going to meetings 7 days a week!

You mention that he keeps falling of the wagon…in AA they don’t talk about “falling off the wagon” because that term implies a temporary sobriety. A.A.ers say, “that they are not on the wagon they are a different person that does not drink”.

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. Let him go and get on with your life. There is no bad time for you to leave him if you decide to do so! Alcoholics, if they want to drink, will find all kinds of EXCUSES to pick up a drink. Maybe you will be helping him to hit his bottom, by raising it, before he kills someone. As a matter of fact you may help to save his life by raising his bottom even if you may no longer be 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. Threatening, begging and even putting him away against his wishes will not get an alcoholic 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. His track record has proven that. 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.

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 of  his next drunk and yet do nothing about it.

If you do talk to him or write him a letter 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.

From the description of your actions I would say that you are an “enabler”, and that you have never held your boyfriend responsible for his behavior! It seems as though he becomes a “good boy”, but once the “heat is off” his addiction to the drug alcohol sets him off again. It is very easy for those who are close to an alcoholic to become “enablers”. Many enablers are impelled by their own anxiety and guilt to rescue the alcoholic from their predicament. If you have no special knowledge or training in the field of alcoholism and try to help, your boyfriend can sense your ineptness and weakness and continue on drinking because he knows that he will be forgiven again and again. I hope that you do not turn into such a person. If you decide to stay with your boyfriend going to Al-Anon for just one meeting in six months won’t help you with your problem of having an alcoholic in your life! You should be getting active in Al-Anon by having a sponsor, joining a group, and getting as active in your Al-Anon program as much as you would like to see your boyfriend active in AA.

It is said that alcoholism is a disease of denial, and it is apparent that your boyfriend is in denial about what it is doing to him. 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.

I am sorry that I may have come down on you too hard, but you are looking at the rest of your life depending on a drunk that won’t do what is necessary to clean up his act. Not because you want him to but because he wants to get well and change his life for the better. Please...what ever you do never make any kind of a threat to him that you are not absolutely sure that you will follow through with. If I can be of more help to you feel free to contact me again. Thank you Rebos