Expert: Rebos - 9/4/2006

Question
Help!  My girlfriend of 15 months is drinking again after eleven years of sobriety. She is 53. This is the second incident in 2 months. Her father passed away yesterday, and she has isolated herself and is not talking to me or any of our friends or her family. She recently moved here from back east, where she was very active in the AA community. Since she has been here, however, she has attended AA meetings, but not on a regular basis. She acknowledged that she needed a sponsor, but has yet to get one.

I love her dearly, but have been to AlAnon a few times, and Adult Children of Alcoholics as well, and am aware that she needs to take responsibility for her actions. My concern is what to do in the meantime. During the last incident in July, I brought her to my house, where she told me she had to taper off by drinking sips of wine for the rest of the day.  Is there any truth to that, is that just prolonging the drunk? She did stop later in the evening.

This time I am detaching, and am not attempting to help her other than being there for her to talk and dropping off some food for her without contacting her.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thak you for listening!

Jan

Answer
Good afternoon Jan:

Thank you for your question.

I am pleased to read that you have attended some Alanon meetings, but not as pleased to read that you have not been as involved as you should be in their program. If you haven’t joined a group (to which you attend regularly), if you did not have a sponsor and if you haven’t been working on the twelve steps to recovery, then you are just spinning your wheels. Just like an alcoholic you are settling for less when in fact you could be recovering the way that other desperate people work the program of Alanon. Maybe you haven’t hit YOUR bottom YET. By the way, I believe that Alanon members do not believe that it is a good idea to go to Adult Children of Alcoholics at this time in your early recovery. If you are working the program of Alanon the way you should, that should be enough for you to handle until you get grounded in the basics of Alanon for a while. Remember that Alanon is for you and not your alcoholic girlfriend.

I am not a physician…Generally a person should not stop “cold turkey” if the person is frail and/or subject to seizures, stroke or heart attack.

I would guess that your girlfriend cut down on her meetings or stopped going all together. She undoubtedly is not working her program, even though her father died. If she was working her program she would have remembered that a drink for any (supposed reason) is just an excuse to drink and escape reality. However, the reality is still there when she sobers up. A reason is supposed to have some thought and logic to prior to performing an action! For an alcoholic to pick up a drink is like playing Russian Roulette with all of the gun’s chambers loaded. 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/she is dealing with an addicted person. She will probably find it hard to go back to meetings because of  her false pride and ego. She should remember that it is a matter of her life or death if she continues drinking.

Alcoholism is deadly and it destroys everything and everyone who comes into contact with it. Please go to Alanon meetings it will be your only chance to survive the relationship…“if you choose to remain in 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. The action that you take will undoubtedly determine what the rest of your will be like!

If your girlfriend does not stop drinking, and you stay with her, you are looking at a relationship and the good possibility of having a lifetime full of pain and misery. If she does not stop for sure she will get worse. If you continue to stay you will become her victim, but never her 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 she may love you her addiction will never allow you to come first, booze will always come before you, her health, her job, her family, and even her very life. By breaking up with her you may be doing her a big favor by helping to raise her “bottom”. In other words getting her to recognize that she has lost another thing, which was important in her 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 (unless you are also having a drinking problem), don’t join her in her drinking. You will become her weak prey that she can do with whatever she wants to.

If you were listening at the Alanon meetings that you attended you heard that it is very easy for those who are close to an alcoholic to become “enablers”. For the purpose of repetition; 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 (like you learn at Alanon), 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… and again. In a backhanded way you will give her “permission” to drink by your continued acceptance of her 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 her 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. I would make it very clear to her that you do not want to hear from her again until she does something positive about her drinking problem… like going back to AA. Never make any threat to her unless you intend to follow through with it.

Don’t let her con you into thinking that it’s OK for her to take a sip now and then. It doesn’t work that way…never has and never will. Maybe your girlfriend needs a Detox Clinic to give her a head start by getting some distance between her and her last drink? If she does nothing about stopping then she 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 situation as you are in unless she decides to get help to stop drinking. You were not put on this earth to allow another person to cause you to live in the world of active alcoholism and yet do nothing about it. Her drinking will always come first unless she goes back to AA.

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 intelligent person…don’t let this woman destroy your life. If you have to, get out while you can, and concentrate on someone who can love you, more than booze. I know that you love her…but SHE can’t love you and alcohol at the same time If I can be of further help please do not hesitate to
contact me again through Allexperts.  

Thank you Rebos.