Expert: Rebos - 11/30/2006

Question
My wife is in the very early stages of recovery and at times appears to have been drinking, yet she insists that she has not. Is there a chemical imbalance or blood sugar issue that could explain it, and how should I react to the situation.

Answer
Good afternoon again Kelly, and thank you for your comments and ratings.

I felt a need to write you again even though you have not asked me another question. I am sorry to hear that your wife is not attending AA meetings…They do have the best track record for recovery from the disease of alcoholism. I would assume that if you happen to convince her to talk to her pastor that he will also recommend AA for her. But she’s “gottawanna” in order for her to recover. I don’t know what method the Women For Sobriety use in their recovery program, but AA does work, and the best way for you to maybe get her to AA is for you to go to Al-Anon, and tell her that you have decided to go to Al-Anon for your well being.

First, I did not mean for you to ”praise” your wife for her starting to live the way that she should have been living through all of her drinking years even though she has stopped. What I meant was that you should not to accuse her of drinking when she may not be. If she IS drinking, many addicts (out of self preservation) sometimes switch from drinking alcoholic beverages to taking pills or other mind altering substances when they get caught drinking alcohol. At least if she is drinking alcohol you will know it and deal with her drinking appropriately. If you go to Al-Anon you will find that you are totally powerless over your wife’s drinking, and among other things what you would learn…not to become an “enabler”, and never, never make any threats to her that you are not 100% willing to follow through with! If you don’t know… 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 anxiety and guilt to rescue the alcoholic from their predicament. The enabler may be meeting a need of their own rather that the need of the alcoholic. If an enabler has no special knowledge about 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 again and again. In a backhanded way an enabler is giving an alcoholic “permission” to drink by their continued acceptance of the alcoholic’s unacceptable behavior. Making “excuses” for the alcoholic has to be stopped in order for the alcoholic to pay the price for drinking. Because alcoholism is a progressive disease it only gets worse it never gets better on its own. Every time the enabler gets the alcoholic out of a jam, or in any way allows the person to get away with being irresponsible… they are really buying the alcoholic their next drink. I know that you may not like reading this but alcoholics are users! They are too self-centered to think about any thing other than their next drink. They don’t really have family, lovers, wives, husbands, children or friends they have victims and they will take hostages as long as they can get away with it. In the long run enabling will not only destroy the alcoholic, but also their family and friends.

It is believed by many in the field of alcoholism that it is a three-fold illness…mental, physical and spiritual. The “mental” part of the illness refers to the alcoholic’s mental obsession to drink. If you will, the thought that precedes the first drink... a pre-occupation with thinking about drinking which is so powerful that the alcoholic must drink. In so many words, thinking about the drink in between the drinks. The alcoholic never seems to worry about the drink in front of them, but they continually think of the next one. 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 the 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. A determining factor of alcoholism is that it makes no difference… how much a person drinks, where they drink it, what they drink or who even who they drink it with, the key is; what does it do to them when they drink? If drinking causes problems then it is a problem!

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 by the alcoholic 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", or being on a “dry drunk”. It isn’t very long before the alcoholic has to drink again. There is an old saying; “that once you turn a cucumber into a pickle you can never change it back to a cucumber again”. For the alcoholic there is no such thing as cutting down… drinking only on weekends… changing what they drink… or even switching to “near beer” with .05% alcohol in it. For the alcoholic nothing will work that is 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, all alcoholics must hit their own bottom before they do anything about stopping drinking. A bottom can be likened to going down on an elevator. The alcoholic can get of at any floor they want to. There is no need for her to go all the way to the bottom floor. I am sorry to say that hitting a bottom for some may mean going as low as a person can go...plus six feet! There is hope, for there are many alcoholics that have stopped drinking and stayed stopped under the right conditions. On the other hand, even when a person is in a recovery program and has stayed sober for an extremely long period of time there is little guarantee that they can stay sober unless they remain vigilant and continue with their recovery on a one day at a time basis. There can be no let up, not even for a moment!

I hope that I have not taken too much liberty with my response, but Alcoholism is a deadly killer and destroyer of families and is not to ever be taken lightly. By the way if you have any adult children they may wish to join you at Al-Anon or if they may be teenagers Al-Anon sponsors AlAteen for the young victims of their alcoholic parent (s). Thank you again Rebos