Expert: Rebos - 7/5/2007

Question
My fiance loves to drink. all the time. I don't drink that often, can even go almost a year without a drink. He calls me a prude, and says he doesn't have a problem. I say he does. He can drink alot, and then he wants to fight everyone. He likes to argue with me when he's drunk. He would rather hang out with his single friends than stay home and be bored with me. I feel lost and alone. Either I go with him and be the sober driver, or stay by myself and worry about him. I don't know what to do.

Answer
Good afternoon Tammy and thank you for your question.

In general the action that you take will undoubtedly determine what the rest of your life will be like! If your boyfriend 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 for sure he will get worse. If you continue to stay you will become his victim, but never his girlfriend, lover or wife. Drinking alcoholics have "victims" and 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 when he is sober 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. I know of many cases where the non-drinker of a couple ends up “joining” the drinker as a matter of their own survival. What ever you do 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. If he likes being with his single drinking buddies more than being with you then let him be with them 100% of the time. Is your self esteem so low that you are willing to waste your life on this man?

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. Even though alcoholism is a disease of denial until he “admits and accepts” that alcohol is causing him problems, and that his life has become unmanageable there is little you can do for him. No one can scare an alcoholic into stopping drinking. 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, or entering an in-patient detoxification clinic that has an after care outpatient program, 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.

God forbid that you have a child with him and then become tied to him for the rest of your life, and in the direction he is headed I am sure that he will also end up not being a good provider for his family. Many alcoholics also become unemployable. Get out while you can, and concentrate on someone who can love you, more than love his booze. I know that you love him… BUT HE CAN”T LOVE YOU AND ALCOHOL AT THE SAME TIME!

Stopping drinking is not a matter of willpower. Alcoholism is a disease. Drinking alcoholically is but a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that an alcoholic must face 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.

It doesn’t matter what he drinks, how much he drinks, who he drinks it with, or even where he drinks…the test is WHAT DOES IT DO TO HIM WHEN HE DRINKS IT? He is argumentative with you and likes to fight. He will eventually find someone who won’t consider the consequences of killing him in a drunken fight!

From the description of your actions I would say that you are an “enabler”, because you haven’t held your boyfriend responsible for his behavior and you are going along with his drinking bouts to be the “sober driver”! 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 or personal low self esteem to rescue the alcoholic from their predicament. If you don’t use the special knowledge that you could learn at Al-Anon your boyfriend will sense your weakness and continue on drinking because he knows that he will be forgiven again and again. In a sense when you offer to be the designated driver you are condoning his drinking… Stop doing that no matter what trouble he gets himself into.

If for some insane reason you decide to stay with your boyfriend please start going to Al-Anon. For meeting locations, you can call your local Al-Anon chapter by checking your local phone book under "Alcoholism" or calling the following toll-free numbers: 1-800-344-2666 (United States) or 1-800-443-4525 (Canada). If you choose not to go to Alanon the least you can do is to stop trying to control a situation that is uncontrollable by you, because you are totally powerless over your boyfriend’s drinking.

It is said that alcoholism is a disease of denial, and it is apparent that your boyfriend is in denial about what alcohol 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 so hard, but you are talking about the rest of your life depending on a drunk, that will not do what’s 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 100% 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