AboutRebos Expertise If you think that you or someone that you care about is having a problem with alcohol, ask me a question, I may be able to help you. I have over 39 years of experience dealing with alcohol recovery and I am willing to share that experience with you. Alcoholism is a disease, and there is no shame in being an alcoholic. The shame is in doing nothing about it!
Experience Over 39years of experience in the field of alcoholism and alcoholic recovery.
Question my name is liz and i grew up with an alcoholic mother. the alcoholism was hidden until my parents divorced when i was 15. i am now almost 23 and the pain still feels incredibly real. at 19, i went to california to go take care of my mother. a strenuous 9 months that was. before i moved out there, i had abused drugs but not alcohol. the moment i moved to san diego, i became clean. i am not sure if i was an addict or used for the social scene, but i have been two years clean from drugs. i am a cigarette smoker and will have the occasional cocktail, beer or wine. i have never had cravings for drugs and do not miss them at all. i feel the experience i went through with my mother has made me incredibly strong and she unknowingly shed a light on my future.
it has been almost a year since i have spoken with my mother and i do not plan to. we have done all that we (family) can do to help direct her to recovery, but she will not accept the help. she has in the past been to rehab, but she only will stick it out to apease our family. i realize now that it is in her hands.
my boyfriend of 10 months whom i love dearly and see a future with has disappointed me this past weekend. i am not sure if disappoinment is the proper term, but he drank so heavily that when i refused to have sex with him that evening, he started to tell me that he hates me and doesn't like me, quickly responding with "i'm just kidding." this struck a chord with me and when he didn't remember any of it in the morning, the pain i felt was overwhelming. i tried to discuss my feelings with him and he was apologetic, but frustrated that i brought the pain my mother had caused into the conversation. this was not the first time he has been that drunk before. i would say in the past 10 months we have been dating, this is the third time i have seen him that beligerent. before the other night, he has never said anything nasty to me. we are on a break as of the moment because i explained to him that this is something i cannot handle. he explains, that when he gets that drunk, he isn't aware that it is happening. he will go weeks without drinking and claims that he doesn't crave it or need it, but i worry due to my experiences with my mother. he is 24 and is a teacher and is extremely responsible. he has not once missed a day of school and has been teaching for a year and a half now. he does smoke pot, sometimes daily, but it does not seem extremely excessive. the pot doesn't bother me, but i wonder if these are signs of an upcoming problem? i know i cannot fix him, but am i being overly sensitive or is this something i should talk to him about? i do not want to offend him and i am not ready to marry yet, but i know this is the man i want to be with the rest of my life. how should i decipher whether it is a problem or just a slip up? and should i be concerned?
liz
Answer Good afternoon Liz:
Thank you for your question. The best that I can do is to
tell you the truth about alcoholism.
You may not like my answer, but it will be honest and truthful.
Yes, you had better be concerned,
because the action that you take will determine what the
rest of your life will be like.
No, you are not being overly
sensitive. There is no excuse for
your boyfriend’s unacceptable behavior. His problem is
not that he has blackouts and
can’t remember. His problem is that he can’t drink in
safety, and should not be drinking
at all. When he kills someone with his car, in a
blackout, the judge won’t let him
use the excuse that he doesn’t remember. The signs that he is
NOW exhibiting says that he is
already having a problem, never mind an “upcoming
problem” as you indicate!
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 he will get worse.
If you continue to stay with
him you will become his victim, but never his girlfriend,
lover or wife. Drinking
alcoholics 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 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. By breaking up with him you may be
doing him a big
favor by helping to raise his “bottom”. In other words
getting to recognize that
he has lost another thing that was important in
his 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 (you do say that you don’t
have a drinking problem) 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.
You had a first hand look at what your mother went thru.
That’s a lesson that
you should never forget. If you have children with this guy
just think of what you will be
putting your own kids thru!
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. If an enabler has no
special knowledge or
training in the field of 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 time and
time again. In a backhanded way you will give
him “permission” to
drink by your continued acceptance of his unacceptable
behavior. What ever you
decide to do it should be based upon your head talking
and not your heart. Don't let your
actions appear to be
allowing him to continue drinking. If you continue on
the road that you
are on you haven't seen anything yet. Alcoholism is a
progressive disease
it only gets worse it never gets better on its own.
Don’t let your low self esteem make
decisions for you.
HOWEVER, if for some insane reason you cannot stop
yourself from continuing
your relationship
with him, then it would be wise for you to start attending
Alanon meetings. It is the
Only way that you will survive the ordeal
Of having an alcoholic in your life.
If you
chose to remain in your relationship with him and you
don't attend
meetings you have no one to blame for your situation
but yourself. Local Alanon
can be found in the yellow pages of your telephone book.
Alcoholics are not bad people, they are sick people
who need help, but
they must be held responsible for their actions! You
may not be able to do
anything about your boyfriend's drinking but you can
do something about
the problem that has developed in your life by having
an alcoholic in it.
Until you are armed with the right kind of
information, knowledge and
implications of the disease, your efforts to help him
will be for nothing.
Alcoholism is deadly and it destroys everything and
everyone who comes
into contact with it will be your only chance to
survive the relationship.
If you don’t already know, it is generally believed,
by many in the field of
alcoholism, that it is a three-fold disease. Mental,
Physical and Spiritual.
The “mental” part of the illness refers to the mental
obsession to drink
that precedes the first drink... a pre-occupation with
thinking about
drinking which is so powerful that the alcoholic must
drink. 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 an
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.
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 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,
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
is dealing with an
addicted person. 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. Once again, you may help to save his life
by raising his bottom
even if you are no longer 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. Cajoling, hand-wringing, threatening,
begging and even putting
him away against his will, will not get him 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. 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. 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. 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.
There is no reason why you should remain in such a
horrible situation as you are.
With your back round and knowledge from the past,
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 and yet do nothing about it.
If you do talk to him 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. You have to get
on with your life.
God forbid that you have a child with him and then
become tied to him for
the rest of your life. Never make any threats to him
that you are not
willing to follow through on.
If it walks like a duck
Talks like a duck and looks like a duck…
Then it is a duck!
But he thinks that he’s not an alcoholic!
I wish you the very best and I hope that I have not
taken too much liberty
with you in the way I have responded to your question.
You seem to
be an intelligent woman…don’t let this man destroy
your life. Get out
while you can, and concentrate on a someone who
can love you, more than booze.
If I can be of further help please do not hesitate to
contact me again
through Allexperts. Thank you Rebos.
