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Old 04-19-2007, 08:58 PM
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Leo_the_Cat
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Chicago IL
Posts: 67
I am an atheist but Al-Anon helped me a great deal with my wife's alcoholism. Also, the family programs at the treatment centers that she attended helped a lot. She had advanced liver damage from drinking at age 28. The ideas that I came to accept was that I couldn't control my wife's drinking and that I did not have to tolerate it. I never did get beyond the first step in al-anon (I was powerless over my wife's drinking) but the first step was all that I needed from that program

I'd love to say that she ended up recovering but she did not. She died at age 37 about 4 years after we were divorced. I felt bad when she died but there wasn't anything I could do to make her better. If anything, I just enabled her for a long time.

Ironically, after we were divorced my own addictions became evident and more severe.
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