Expert: Rebos - 11/16/2007

Question
I have been married for 13 years. During that time I have seen my husband gradually increase the intake of his alcohol. Whenever there is a party either at my place or elsewhere my husband and his mates always never finish till after 12.00am. We use to have fights over this and hence I have avoided having parties at home. For the last 5 years he has become self employed and has been taking drinks in the office after office hours. They would go on till about 4/5 am in the morning. He can drink for about 10 hours a day this happens at least 3/4 times a week. I am not sure how to help him as he does not see it as a problem. Is my husband and alcoholic.

Answer
Good afternoon Chitra and thank you for your question.

Based upon the drinking pattern that you described I would venture to say that your husband is an alcoholic, and if he does nothing to get help then your married life with him will deteriorate as his drinking continues. If you have any children they will be negatively affected also. Keep your eye on the children (if you have any) to look for changes in their school work, friends that they go with or any other behavioral problems that they may develop. Alcoholism is a family disease and it affects everyone in the family! I suspect that your husband’s self employment company will not be very long lived if he continues to drink the way you described.

I am sorry that you didn’t cover more details as to your situation. Since you gave me very little to go on to intelligently answer your question all that I can suggest that you should go to Alanon meetings. You may not be able to do anything about your husband’s drinking but you can do something about the problem that has developed in your life by having an alcoholic in it. At Alanon meetings you will find out what you can do to help your husband, by first learning to help yourself. Until you are armed with the right information about the disease and its implications, your efforts to help him will be for nothing. Alanon can be reached by calling: 1-800-344-2666 (United States) or 1-800-443-4525 (Canada). NEVER MAKE ANY THREAT TO HIM THAT YOU ARE NOT 100% PREPARED TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON!

Your husband should never be rewarded for any of his irresponsible actions. He must be held responsible for them. Something must be done to stop his spiral downward. I would suggest that you try to talk him into entering himself into a detox clinic to get counseling, be given some medication that will ease any withdrawals to help that he not have seizures or heart problems during that time and get some distance between him and his last drink. When he is discharged he should then start going to Alcoholics Anonymous regularly! Most insurance plans do cover the cost of detoxification. If he complains that he can’t take time off from work… tell him that he really can’t afford to not go because his drinking is not good for a healthy marriage.

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”. 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. 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 husband 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 on his own 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 husband 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 in the process. 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.

It is generally believed (in AA which 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 husband must be held responsible for his irresponsible actions including his disruption of family. Drinking alcoholically is a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that your husband must face up to in order for him to recover. Without your husband 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 an alcoholic 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). The exception is a doctor’s prescription as long as he or she knows that the patient is an addict!

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 husband 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 husband. 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.

I can’t advise you as what to do, but I will say this…If your husband is allowed to continue drinking, doesn’t turn himself in to a detox clinic, and then continue to faithfully go to AA EVERY DAY after his detoxification is over, you are setting yourself 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! Once again remember it is most important for you to NEVER make any threat to your husband that you are not 100% willing to follow through with! I hope that you do not 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 should not be tolerated at all. Many enablers are impelled by their own anxiety and guilt to rescue the alcoholic from their predicament. If an enabler has no special knowledge of alcoholism recovery and try to help, your husband can sense your ineptness and weakness and continue on drinking because he knows that he will be forgiven again and again. I hope that you do not turn into such a 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 may mean going as low as a person can go...plus six feet!

I hope that I have not taken too many liberties with you by the way I have responded to your question. The truth of the matter is… if your husband continues down the road that he is on your life will not get better it will only get worse. Feel free to get in touch with me again. Thank you Rebos