Dealing with recovering father?
Hi, I'm new here and I was wondering for some possible advice.
My father has been drinking my entire life but his drinking became far more dangerous when my mother became terminally ill/at the time of her death. Ever since then he has been a full-on alcoholic (about 7 years now.) This has, of course, negatively affected basically every aspect of his and our lives--we went in and out homelessness and semi-homelessness (me having to crash on family/friends' couches) for years. Only recently did he finally give up and seek one of his sisters for real help. I have been living in her (my aunt's basement) for the past 6 months or so while he has been in rehab. He came back to stay with me here about three months ago and things have been going great. He finally got a stable job (menial labor, but better than nothing), and has been behaving in a far more positive way. I have finally gotten back the father that I used to know and love, and for the first time in my life I have been happy on a regular basis.
He has done so well that my aunt and uncle even trusted him to stay in their basement with me while they are on vacation. A week into it (last night) I came home with a friend and he was blasting music very loudly and was drunk. He kept yelling obscenities at my friend and me. I felt absolutely humiliated and ashamed. I was very upset but I tried to hide it until my friend left. I looked through the pantry and noticed that he'd bought cases of beer and hard lemonade--which clearly isn't nearly as bad as the obscene hard liquour that he used to drink, but still REALLY alarmed me.
Today I confronted him about it and he promised that he'd "stop forever after the last case was done". I kept asking him to throw it away but he kept saying "I just wanted to check something. I just want to see what happens." I asked him to explain but he said that he couldn't and that I wouldn't understand. Is this the alcoholic in him talking? I know that addiction is very difficult to describe to someone who hasn't fully gone through it, but I really wanted to understand.
I really don't know what to do. This is the first time it's happened since he got out of rehab, but I have a feeling that the only reason that it didn't happen earlier was because my aunt and uncle were in the house watching over him very cautiously. I feel that if he ever does rehabilitate himself to the point of getting us to move out of their house, he will just fall into the same old cycle because he won't have anyone keeping him in check. Or maybe he will start sneaking it behind their backs when they return?
Sorry if this is lengthy, but I have nobody to really turn to. I feel awful about this. Does anyone have any advice/clarification for what my dad's going through? (particularly when he said he was doing it to "check something")