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Addiction to Alcohol/alcoholic boyfriend....need help!!
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Question
I need lots of help and your advise....please please !!
My boyfriend is an alcoholic and admits to the fact, every other month he takes off for a week drunk ( vodka is his poison) then ends up in some detox center for 3 days to a week then comes home is sober, as long as he has no money, as soon as he has a dollar in his hand he has a bottle in the other. Of course he sees nothing wrong and it is all my fault for everything. In the last 5 months he has had 2 jobs both lasting a week and ahalf, as soon as he gets a check he drinks it up then expects me to support his smoking habit, pay all the bills and buy the food we eat.Plus we haven't had sex in over 3 months , not even cuddled.
My 23 year old son lives with me and does not like , Dan, at all and lets his feeling be hear. He thinks he is a user and a mouch, which I can understand,because I am starting to feel the same way.
I have found bottles all over the yard hidden in the strangest places , I dump them out. I am willing to go to classes and anything eles it might take , but he is always finding excuses not to go, we make appointments for him at mental health to speak with a consoler, but if I don't stay right there with him he takes off and starts drinking. He is now getting to the place that everytime he drinks he wants to kill his self, last time taking all the pills we had in the house, after I told him I had had enough to pack up and get out, of course then I felt guilty and let him back when he left the rehab center, which was suppose to be a 14 to 28 day stay , that lasted till the doors were left open.
When we talk about this problem he agrees he has one telling me " do you think I want to drink"? my answer is yes because I really don't see any effort in him not to. With all the lies to everyone , no one can believe what he says anymore. He is hateful, never physical but very hateful when drinking.
I do love this man , though I wonder why all the time, would kicking him out help him or would it cause another reaction like the last one? Should I talk to his consoler even though he doesn't want me too and of course ever thing is private , no one can tell me anything , they wont even tell me if he made it to his appointment or not.
I am so tired of babysitting , yet I feel its like my job now....and that sucks. With trying to keep the peace in the house, working , watching , worrying , I am always stressed out and not the best company to be around , I am always tired.
I think I'm going nuts and I need a consoler now, serious!
Please help me if you can, give me some suggestions, good advise I have no one here that likes Dan anymore, who can blame then , but their advise is always to get rid of him that hes bringing you down, I feel this way also most the time.
Thank you for reading my letter and I do hope that I will hear from you, but just getting it out has helped alot right now.
God bless,
Nova
Greetings to you, Nova.
You have written and asked:
>> When we talk about this problem he agrees he has one telling me " do you think I want to drink"?
>> would kicking him out help him or would it cause another reaction like the last one?
>> Should I talk to his consoler even though he doesn't want me too ...
>> Please help me if you can, give me some suggestions, good advise ...
First for your own sake, look in your phone book or newspaper for “Al-Anon” and begin going to meetings where other women can try to help you see things clearly. “Kicking Dan out” is probably not going to make him seek help, but neither is your enabling him ever going to help him. He might want you to think he does not want to drink, but that does not mean he actually has a desire to stop drinking. Whether or not to talk with his counselor is something you can decide, but the counselor probably already knows or at least suspects anything you might say.
Along with Al-Anon and for Dan’s sake, begin reading “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. You might begin with the chapter “To Wives”, and I can help you see some other things in that book that you might eventually be able to share with Dan. You should be able to find that book in just about any library, or you can read it online here:
http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm
I hope this helps a bit, and please know you are welcomed to write again.
Joseph Lee O.
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Answers by Expert:
Joseph Lee O.
Expertise
Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.
Experience
The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken.
Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along.
At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ...
... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.
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