amberrose

I'm 30 years old and I've been married to a functional alcoholic for ten years. We have 4 children together - they're 9, 7, 4, and 9 months. I'm a stay-at-home mom and my husband works for a furniture delivery company.

I grew up in an alcohol-free house. My mom is extremely religious and believed alcohol (like rock music and pg movies) was evil. The only time I ever saw anyone drink was when we'd go to my dad's family's for holidays. They were all alcoholics and drank like fish. So I thought there were only two extremes and had no role modeling for moderate drinking. My father was a recovering alcoholic. As far as I know he never drank but he was extremely abusive to me. My mother homeschooled me even through high school, we lived in the middle of nowhere, and I was really sheltered.

I met my husband in my first year of college when I was 18 and he was 21. At that point I'd only tried drinking a handful of times at parties. We were at a christian college which banned all alcohol, cigarettes, etc. AH started buying a six pack for us to share almost every night. We would sneak it out to a field and lie out there drinking and talking for hours.

When summer came I moved across the country with him to his home state. At this point nearly every date had centered around alcohol. I assumed that was how normal people did things. My husband was increasingly controlling - I had no access to money, the car, etc. We continued to get drunk in our own apartment every night up until I found out I was pregnant. Beer smell was my worst morning sickness trigger and even now I can't smell it without feeling like I'm going to puke.

My husband drank through my pregnancy and I didn't. Watching him, I saw how he drank more than others and become embarrassed at his behavior. After the baby was born I was soon forced into being the sober, responsible one. He saw no reason we had to be sober to watch the baby so I had to.

Three years later we had another baby. His drinking had increased a lot - a new 12 pack every night - and he started becoming angry with me for little things. He would drive us drunk and refused to let me drive. If he was angry he would drive recklessly to scare me. After he punched a hole in the wall next to my head I left.

Two days later he had talked me into coming back. I wanted counseling and no alcohol. He wanted to cut back on drinking with a promise to try counseling later if we needed it. He won. I did do one good thing in taking control of our finances so I wouldn't be begging for candy bar money anymore.

I'm sure you know how it went. He promised to stick to one 12pack a week. Pretty soon I got suspicious and started marking his cans. He was keeping another case in his trunk and sneaking new ones into the refrigerator. When confronted he outright lied and tried to convince me I was crazy. Eventually I burned out on fighting it and decided to ignore it.

So now it's been 7 years and 2 kids since then. He's still drinking like a fish and binge drinking to an embarrassing level at family events. We'll go to an afternoon barbecue at his mom's house and he'll pull out a bottle of jack daniels and try to convince everyone to drink, then drink the entire thing himself. Everyone else either doesn't notice or pretends not to.

He is always pushing me to drink, but the more he drinks the less I want to. He says I am no fun anymore. Fun=drunk to him. He acts like a drug pusher with the alcohol.

We were working opposite shifts because we couldn't afford daycare. I have decided not to go back to work because I started getting really scared that he would drink so much while watching the kids and then "fall asleep" while they were still up.

We had our daughter's birthday party at chuck e cheese's last month. He spent the entire time with a beer in his hand. By the end he was really irritable and ended up sitting in the car and letting me round up the kids and get them out. He was so mean and I was completely embarrassed in front of everyone. The next day he said he felt I was being annoying on purpose to make him angry.

He cleaned out his SUV two months ago and I saw him sneak two empty 18pack boxes into the garbage bag. I checked last night and there are 7 empty ones back there. One has 6 empty cans in it. I really want to confront him and see what the excuse is for that. I'm guessing he'll say sometimes it's just too hard to carry that heavy beer case all the way into the house so he grabs one at a time. I really hope he's not drinking before work in the parking lot. He could get a DUI for the empties but even if I pointed that out I already know he would blow me off and act like I don't know what I'm talking about.

He got his own credit card a few months ago after I told him he must use his tip money from work for beer and cigarettes because we can't meet our bills even without those expenses. I got the latest statement and in the past month he has spent about $800 at gas stations. To keep that in perspective, his income was $1700.

He plays WOW and drinks all the time. That's all my kids ever see him do. He never plays with them. We never go anywhere. He gets irritable and yells at them or spanks them because they are too noisy. He talks to me like he hates me. Then just when I start thinking divorce he reads my thoughts and turns on the charm.

He doesn't really act drunk and I usually can't tell when he's been drinking. He "takes a nap" for a few hours every day. Sometimes he pukes because he "must have eaten something bad." Spends a lot of time on the toilet, too. In the past month he's started taking rolaids like candy. He says if he had to live without drinking he would kill himself because life would be so boring. His grandpa chewed tobacco and drank a fifth of whiskey every day and lived past 80, so obviously it's good for you.

I'm thinking of trying an al-anon meeting. I believe there is an afternoon one once a week I could go to while my three oldest are in school. It doesn't say beginner - is that okay? Is it okay to bring the baby? What happens there?