Expert: Rebos - 12/12/2007

Question
I need lots of help and your advise....please please !!
My boyfriend is an alcoholic and admits tot he 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 a half, 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 else it might take , but he is always finding excuses not to go, we make appointments for him at mental health to speak with a counsler, but if I dont 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 supose 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 dont see any effert 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 counsler even though he doesnt want me too and of course ever thing is privite , 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 , worring , I am always stressed out  and not the best company to be around , I am always tired.
I think Im going nuts and I need a counsler 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

Answer
Good afternoon Nova and thank you for your question.

First off; never, never, never make any threats to you boyfriend that you are not 100% willing to follow thru on! You have become an “enabler”. 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. Any verbal or physical abuse by him toward you or your son should not be tolerated at all. I don’t blame your son for not liking your boyfriend! By you not sticking by your threats to him you are really buying him his next drink and allowing him to get drunk. I don’t know how you can be taken advantage of by this guy that cares nothing for you. He doesn’t love you as much as he loves his booze. Many enablers are impelled by their own anxiety and guilt to rescue the alcoholic from their predicament. If you have no special knowledge of alcoholism recovery and try to help, your boyfriend senses your weakness and continues on drinking because he knows that he will be forgiven again and again.


Drinking alcoholically is a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that your boyfriend must face up to in order for him to recover. Without him 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 he must drink again. For an alcoholic there is no such thing as cutting down, drinking only on weekends, changing to beer or wine, or even switching to the near beer with 0.05% alcohol. For an alcoholic nothing will work short of total and complete abstinence from any thing that contains alcohol or mind-altering substances (drugs).

It is generally believed (in AA who has the best track record for recovery) that alcoholism is a three-fold disease… mental, physical, and spiritual. The “mental part”; deals with the thought that precedes the first drink...thinking about the drink in between the drinks…a pre-occupation with thinking about drinking which is so powerful that the alcoholic must drink. The “physical part” is that once the first drink is downed a physical compulsion takes over and the alcoholic must continue to drink until some outside incident stops them. And last but not least, the “spiritual part” of the illness. Not spiritual in a religious way, but in the loss of values and a willingness to settle for less and less as his drinking continues. Stopping drinking, for an alcoholic, is not a matter of willpower. Alcoholism is a disease; the AMA says it is, but your boyfriend must be held responsible for his irresponsible actions including his disruption of the family unit.

Alcoholism is cunning, baffling, insidious and powerful. It has no cure…once an alcoholic always an alcoholic! So to speak…“once you turn a cucumber into a pickle, you can never change it back to a cucumber”. It has been my experience to have NEVER seen an alcoholic recover on their own willpower for the long haul. No one can scare an alcoholic into stop drinking. All the threatening and begging in the world will not get them to stop doing what they cannot do on their own. Don't for one second think that your boyfriend does not want to stop drinking… he can't stop when left to his own devices. Don't be fooled 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 knows that he can’t stop. Unless your boyfriend gets to a detoxification clinic then goes to a program like Alcoholics Anonymous he is destined to die from one of the many complications of drinking alcoholically, get involved negatively with the law or end up in a mental institution plus destroy you and your son in the process. After being detoxed counseling may be good for him (if you can get him there) but what he needs is a support group like AA so that he can identify with other alcoholics and change his lifestyle.

Each one of us has a breaking point, especially so when we see a person that we care for destroying their life. It is important to understand that your boyfriend is a very sick person who has a “disease”, BUT YET MUST BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS. It is also important for you to hate the disease and not your boyfriend. Alcoholism is a disease that affects not only the alcoholic, but all those who have the unfortunate experience of having any contact with an alcoholic. Alcoholics are self-centered to the extreme. They can’t be good fathers, husbands, wives, employees or real friends; their friend becomes alcohol and they will do anything to protect their right to drink. Alcoholics have “victims” and take “hostages” but never lovers, fathers or friends.

I can’t advise you as what to do, but I will say this…If your boyfriend is allowed to continue drinking, doesn’t turn himself in to a detox clinic, and then continue to faithfully go to a program like AA EVERY DAY after his detoxification is over, you are setting yourself and your son up to living a miserable, unhappy and abusive life.  Alcoholism never gets better…it only gets worse. In any case you have to be strong and insist that he does something about stopping drinking. Measure your words carefully before you say anything to him about him stopping drinking; say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t be mean when you say it!

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 may mean going as low as a person can go...plus six feet! If you still love him you almost have to ask yourself the question; what are you willing to do to help save your boyfriend’s life? Maybe you should consider raising his bottom by making a decision and sticking to it. If your boyfriend continues down the road that he is on your life will not get better it will only get worse.

I can’t to tell you what to do. However, if you intend to stay with this man I strongly suggest that you start going to Alanon. I assume that you know what Alanon is. You can either start YOUR recovery process now – or keep the illness going and destroy your family unit. Your best defense against the emotional impact of your boyfriend’s drinking is to gain knowledge and the emotional maturity to put that knowledge into effect. Alanon can be reached by calling 1-800-344-2666 (United States) or 1-800-443-4525 (Canada). If you decide to not go to Alanon the least that you can do is to stop trying to control a situation that you can’t control. The only one that can straighten out the problem that you are going thru is YOU. No one can do it for you. Is your self esteem so low that you have to spend your life with a drunk that will not do anything to help the situation? Is this the way you want to live your life… if it is I’ve got a surprise for you it won’t be it will only get worse than what it is now.

If I can be of further help please let me know in a follow-up question. Thank you, Rebos.