Do I Belong? (An Introduction)
I've been reading posts in this forum for a little while now, trying to decide if I belong here. Somehow I feel I do, but I guess it's still a little hard to face it.
My husband is what I would call a functioning alcoholic. We have been married a little over 2 years. He has always drank on a regular basis. He can drink a lot before getting to the point that he would act or appear drunk. He has the one drink he likes and drinks regularly, but will drink other things once in a while.
Everything came to a head about a month ago. He also has horrible sleep apnea and had been self medicating with the alcohol as we went through the ridiculous process of trying to get him a cpap machine. Over the last several months he spent more and more time drinking and on the weekends he spent most of his time sleeping. When he would get up he would eat a little something and always have a drink.
I suffered from a miscarriage in August. After attempting to avoid surgical intervention, my body wasn't cooperating and I scheduled a D&C procedure. All he had to do was take me to the hospital that morning and be the "responsible adult" who would drive me back home again after. Just 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave (VERY early in the morning) he said he didn't know what was wrong with him but he couldn't wake up and could not manage to get me to the hospital and back. My sister in law ended up taking me, staying with me and bringing me home again.
The following day I took him to the emergency room. This stuff with his sleep apnea had so severely affected his health it could no longer be ignored. All the symptoms were there - the more he slept, the more sleep he felt he needed. He never got restful sleep because when he was asleep he stopped breathing. (The cpap machine is a long story for another time.) He had been diagnosed with severe sleep apnea - one of the worst cases the sleep center had ever seen. He was admitted to the hospital and they ran all kinds of tests. Everything was normal - EKG, CT scan, bloodwork, urine sample, you name it. Normal. Well, except for one little thing. His BAC content came back at .298. The doctor was furious. We were just liars wasting her time. I brought him to the ER because he was drunk? A social worker was called in, and the doctor would have nothing more to do with us.
It finally opened his eyes. He has a problem with alcohol. I took him to the regular doctor the next day, who prescribed some meds to help him get through the detox stage. He hadn't slept at all the night before (just the opposite of the way it usually goes) and was shaking, sweating, had chills, hallucinations, the whole nine yards. He admitted to the doctor his alcohol consumption was beyond his control and needed to be addressed. We have a 16 month old daughter and hope to have another. He has a family to provide for, live for, and we all want him to be healthy and a part of our lives. I thought it was a new beginning.
Within a week he had his first beer. We play pool and it was at our weekly league. Which makes things tough because once a week we're in that situation where "everyone" drinks and he has to be one of the guys.
Now he's convinced he can control it himself. After all, people who have two drinks a day are healthier than those who don't drink at all. The medical studies back that up. Of course, he's still drinking more than that, which throws the medical excuse out the window. But there is no telling him that.
So currently he is drinking but he's not drinking nearly as much as he was before. I know for a fact he's not drinking anything I'm not aware of because I control the family finances and have access any ways he has access to money, and neither of us carry cash so it's not like he's taking cash and then buying alcohol. So I'm aware exactly of how much he has access to.
I'm not sure where we go from here. He's not abusive or angry when he drinks. He's dependent, drinks more under stress (and we have a lot of that) so it's his coping mechanism. I can tell he feels he "needs" it, even if it's just a little. That's dependency.
So here I am.