Expert: Rebos - 10/30/2006

Question
Hi.  My husband and I have been married for a little over two years. We are both 40 years old. I don't know if he is an "alcoholic," but he definitely abuses alcohol.  He goes out and gets extremely falling-down drunk one weekend night a week.  He doesn't drink at home.  I really hate it and I have no idea what to do about it.  I've talked to him about it several times and he makes promises to stop(and often even denies having gotten drunk), but it's always the same thing.  
Thank you for any advice.

Answer
Good morning Anna:

Thank you for your question. Yes, alcoholism (like any other addiction) is a disease of denial. It tells you that everything is ok when it’s really not. Your husband doesn’t drink at home because he does not want you to know how much he really drinks. Once he picks up and downs his first drink he doesn’t care by that time how much he drinks. I can just imagine that he doesn’t want to hear from you, “Are you having another drink so soon”? “Do you have to drink so much… etc?  It doesn’t matter that your husband only drinks on weekends, and it doesn’t matter how much he drinks, what he drinks, who he drinks it with or where he drinks it. What matters is; what does it do to him when he drinks it? For sure it is causing you problems, and if drinking causes problems…then it is a problem! If you want him to stop and he does not, then your husband has a drinking problem, and if he does nothing about it you can plan on a lifetime of misery and unhappiness. Alcoholism never gets better on its own…it always gets worse. He will most likely “graduate” to drinking during the week as time goes by.

I’m sorry to tell you that you are totally powerless over your husband’s drinking, if he does not have a desire to stop drinking. With that being said…For your well being I would recommend that you go to Alanon. 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 you will find out what you can do to help him by first learning to help yourself. Until you are armed with the right information and knowledge of the disease and its implications, your efforts to help him will be for nothing. As you will find out Alcoholism is deadly and it destroys everything and everyone who comes into contact with it. 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. It is very common for an alcoholic to lie about their drinking. They will lie at the drop of a hat to protect their right to drink. That is what alcoholics do! Social drinkers don’t have to hide their bottles, lie about their drinking, or find excuses to continue drinking.

Alcoholism is cunning, baffling, insidious and powerful. 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. 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 cajoling, hand-wringing, 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 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 enters an in-patient detoxification clinic, then enters a program like AA 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.

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. Drinking alcoholically is a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that must be faced up to in order for your husband 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 .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).

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 an alcoholic 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 you allow your husband to continue drinking, without making him pay the consequences then (again I say) you are setting yourself up to living a miserable, unhappy and possibly abusive life. Whatever you do, NEVER MAKE ANY THREATS TO HIM THAT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO FOLLOW THRU ON.

I don’t know if I have helped you with my answer. Whether or not your marriage stays intact I would recommend strongly that you go to Alanon. It may eventually help him to do something for himself. Alanon can be reached by calling: 1-800-344-2666 (United States) or 1-800-443-4525 (Canada). Whatever you decide give it a chance to work. If you decide to go to AlAnon remember that dirty four letter word TIME. Give it time to work!

In closing, I hope that you do not disregard my suggestion for you to attend Alanon meetings. If I can be of further help feel free to contact me again. Thank you Rebos