"and I knew it even as the doctor uttered that less than helpful suggestion."
Have you ever considered that the doctor wasn't trying to be sarcastic, but rather, he was just telling your husband the truth based on his experience? My ex-boyfriend's doctor told him the same thing 5 years ago. He's dead now. It wasn't a non-helpful suggestion; it was the truth.
Alcoholism is a progressive disease. Left unchecked, it's deadly. How harmful will it be to you, to your children, to sit by and potentially watch him drink himself to death?
I'll tell you how harmful it was to me. I developed chronic high blood pressure from the stress. That led to chronic atrial fibrillation. That led to a diagnosis of congestive heart failure a little more than a week ago. I'm only 48 years old.
Alcohol is poisonous to the body. Over time, it causes damage to the heart, liver, kidneys, and the brain until one or more of the drinker's internal organs begins to fail.
Alcohol is also poisonous to the children, spouse, significant other, family and friends of alcoholics. It robs them of their self-esteem, their serenity, their ability to make healthy choices for themselves and their children, their emotional and physical well being and sometimes, in cases like mine, their health.
I'm not playing devil's advocate here. I'm sharing my experience and my truth.
I used the "but I love him" and "he's such a great guy when he's not drunk" and "but he has such potential" excuses for 22 years. The alcoholic uses denial to continue drinking by claiming he doesn't have a problem or he can stop drinking or control his drinking whenever he wants. Their codependent partners use denial by claiming "but I love him" or "he's such a great guy when he's not drunk" or "but he has such potential" to avoid seeing the truth.
It takes time to peel back the layers of denial and see things how they really are. Time and a lot of hard work. Alanon helped me immensely. Do you attend?