Alcoholic Wife. The breaking point.

I spent Friday night with a roomful of women who used to be just like Mrs. ex and some much worse. Some were new to the program but many of them have been happily sober for 20, 30 and even 50 years.

There is hope but she'll need help.

 

Ex, why did she have a beer? Drinking something softer or lighter isn't exactly how getting sober works.

 

True. Trying to control it or "be normal" is not successful behavior.

She has to realize that she can't control her drinking and stop.

 

Happily sober or able to control their addictive behavior? Big difference.

 

Happily sober and free of the urge to drink. Honestly.

 

I'm happily able to control my addictive behavior. I've beaten it.

 

1, +1 that you can happily control it.

2, Controlling it ≠ beating it

3, see 1

 

What has she said about rehab? Beer notwithstanding, that was an incredible effort on her part to go very nearly dry when it sounds like she's been virtually supporting a dedicated vineyard. But it's just a step.

 

Beating it = I'm at no higher risk of a relapse as someone else is to become an addict in the first place.

I've never been a huge believer in the "just one drop leads to relapse" theory. I had four beers yesterday - probably won't touch it again until my birthday this summer.

That's different than getting clean in the first place. I had to give it up completely for three years before getting to this point.

 

Seems like as good a place as any to post this ...

I think I've mentioned 'round these parts my friend who's careening toward an early grave as a result of her alcoholism. When I first met her -- she was the wife of a golf buddy -- she was morbidly obese and getting ready for gastric bypass surgery. I didn't realize she was a full-blown alcoholic until she had her surgery ... she was under strict doctor's orders to avoid alcohol for six weeks, but she was sipping red wine the day she came home (ordinarily she was a vodka drinker ... I guess in her mind wine didn't count as drinking).

Although at the time I thought their fixation on alcohol was troubling, I didn't realize how much more fixated on it they would become. Cocktail hour starting at 5 p.m. was RELIGIOUSLY observed. He drank Jack Daniels and Sprite. She drank Skyy and water. Each had a dedicated cocktail glass -- hers was a Waterford crystal double old-fashioned, his was one of those 70s-ish vacuum-insulated tall-boy tumblers. He mixed all the drinks. First he'd pour/serve hers, then make his. She'd sit at the kitchen table, drinking one after another until she'd simply pass out. A couple hours later, she'd come to and he'd serve dinner. She'd pour down another few and then stagger back to bed.

By the time I got to know them he was essentially retired, while she still worked as a pharma rep. If she had to attend a training conference or some such thing, he'd pack her a full traveling bar so that she'd never have to go to too much trouble to get a drink. The few times they actually went anywhere, he'd pay whatever for a first-class upgrade, because apparently first-class passengers get rapid-fire beverage service. Everything was about the drinking ... everything.

One thing I noticed over the years with him and her was that they had lots of fabulous old friends who assiduously kept their distance. Further, they routinely trashed her brothers and other formerly close friends. I grew to suspect that all of this was related to their drinking; the trashing of the friends/brothers was because they'd tried to intervene or help.

I and another friend -- my closest friend around here -- stopped trying to include them in various things (birthday dinners, Christmas parties, etc.) because she'd come totally hammered and in need of great assistance. They'd have Memorial Day and Labor Day cookouts at their pool, but I stopped going because I felt guilty about, in some small fraction of a way, enabling them. It was a tough call, though. My closest friend's family and my family, we literally were their only social life. If we didn't see them, they didn't see anybody.

Late last spring my friend's husband was diagnosed with cancer. In the early days after his diagnosis, I tried to help in the usual ways (bringing food, offering to run errands). Sometimes I'd be there when he'd be finagling the details of his treatments. Kid you not, he actually put off chemo and radiation treatments for a few weeks so that he could get a more accommodating (w.r.t. cocktail hour) schedule. I was ... the word astonished doesn't do justice to my reaction.

Over the summer and into the fall, I'd occasionally go by there to check on them. The chemo beat him up pretty bad, so he'd stopped drinking. She, on the other hand, quickly learned how to pour her own drinks. He'd watch TV, wrapped up in a blanket in a recliner, in the living room. She'd sit at that kitchen table, either drinking or passed out. For her, cocktail hour was now beginning at noon. A couple of times he was hospitalized, but she couldn't get herself together to go be with him. The whole thing got way too depressing for me, so I quit going.

Her husband died the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He had some sort of heart attack/embolism, likely facilitated by his chemo. I hear through the grapevine she's still pouring it on, attending neighborhood events (to which she can walk) and needing strangers to get her back home.

I feel really awful about pulling back from her/them, but I don't feel awful enough to subject myself to that show and its inevitable ending. She texted me during the game last night -- "Please don't be strangers. You all are still welcome here anytime!" -- and I feel terribly guilty. It just seems that neither of my other options -- pretending everything's OK and enabling the disease, or trying to do something truly helpful and being cast aside as evil -- is much better than my current strategy of staying away.

 

She had a beer claiming to have had a stressful work day. My days are almost always more stressful and visible than hers but I would never verbalize that.

I told her "you get one beer any wine in the house means you're out".

She had one beer for the week. No wine as far as I can tell. She had been 10-14 bottles a week for months.

The fact that she had no recollection (unless she's lying which could very well be) of last weekend's blackout. She never claims to remember the horrible things she's done.

She did apologize yesterday for her drinking and for blaming me as the reason. For a woman who is never wrong, that's a major step.

I view this as our own 12 steps process. These are the first four:
Stop drinking.
Stop blaming.
Start being nice again aka quit being a bitch.
Start engaging with the family again.

She has to run the table on this or else it won't work.

 

All of that sounds depressing but probably pretty common for alcoholics. Except Skyy and water and Jack Daniels and Sprite. Yuck.