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Addiction to Alcohol/I think my husband is an alcoholic

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Expert: Joseph Lee O. - 12/8/2006


Question
Dear Lee-
I think my marriage is in trouble. I believe my husband is an alcoholic. We have been married for 10 years. We have three children ages 7,6 and 4. His situation is complicated due to the fact that he was diagnosed with OCD about 9 years ago. He is on 3 different SSR meds for his disorder.
We began our relationship drinking toegther and having lots of fun. We married and our marriage never really started off right. He was still very interested in his things and his friends and it did not seem we were truly together. Time moved on and we had kids. We both drank although he much more then I. We enjoyed red wine together too often. That was really the one thing we did together. I began noticing problems when he was cutting our lawn and drinking a coke can filled with wine. He often did not want to eat dinner until 10:00 or 11:00 at night because he was drinking. Often he would not eat the  dinner I prepared but cook pizza and fries in the oven. Many times he would pass with the oven on 400 degrees. I would awake at 3am by the smell of the burned food. This has happened at least 15 time over the past 2 years. He drinks alone and I believe while driving home from work. He will mix red and white wines so I think he is not consuming as much of his red bottle. Things came to a hear about 3mths ago. He drove my kids to a school function drunk. My 4 year old had no shoes on her feet and looked messy. When I got home he was asleep on the couch and I examined his truck. I found wine in a gatorade bottle. He promised to stop after that. We stared to see a marriage counsler. Then I caught him several times hiding bottles of wine. He says he can control his use of alcohol. He admits to abusing alcohol but does NOT have a problem. Recently his moods are very strange. He is very very very angry. He seems to hate me.
A few nights ago, he came home very depressed - said I have ruined his life - he hopes I am happy now. Then about an hour later he was very angry towards me. Gave me mean looks. He sat on the couch with my boys (7 & 6) and was suddely giving me the finger for about 15 minutes. Just sitting there meand looks and the finger. I feel like I am going to start my plan to leave. Any advice?
Thanks-Rose  

Answer
Greetings to you, Rose.

You might already know many husbands and wives find themselves in situations such as yours after a few years of marriage: Each person entered in with certain expectations, hopes and dreams ... and when things do not later seem to be going so well, it can be tempting to superficially admit a little personal error while conveniently blaming the other more and using both one’s own disappointment and the faults of the other as excuses to jump and run.  But since the two of you now have three innocent and completely-dependent-upon-both-of-you children who will suffer irreparably if that happens, I would say it is time for the two of you to willingly get honest with yourselves, with The One who created us all and with each other.

Alcoholic or not, I suggest the two of you sit down together and make a decision to find out how things *should* have been from the very beginning of your marriage, and to then consider The Twelve Steps as a universal method for finding reconciliation with rightness and for learning to live that out for the remainders of your lives.  And of course, I would gladly help you with doing precisely that.

Peace to you,

Joe

Email: leejosepho@hotmail.com

Addiction to Alcohol

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Joseph Lee O.

Expertise

Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.

Experience

The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken. Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along. At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ... ... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.

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