People that are in relationships with alcoholics want nothing more than our love ones to stop drinking. However, even when our alcoholic stops drinking our relationships will still have its ups and downs, and its good times and its bad times. Those are ups and downs that everyone experiences and should be expected in any relationship. The alcoholic has to surrender to the HP, and the journey of recovery begins. The alcoholic needs and should want to be responsible for all aspects of their recovery, whether it is through a 12-step program or a professional substance abuse counselor. Otherwise
their growth in recovery could be stunted with only one piece of the pie in check: being physically clean and sober.
The alcoholic that is described as a "dry drunk" only works on the physical clean and sober aspect of their recovery. The Dry Drunk Syndrome is a term that should not be used as a catch-all when one has a bad day or a bump in life throws us for a while. The Dry Drunk is a condition far more serious than the highs and lows of our day-to-day existence.
The phrase "dry drunk" has two significant words for the alcoholic. "Dry" refers to the abstinence from drinking, whereas "drunk" signifies a deeply pathological condition resulting from the use of alcohol in the past. Taken together these words suggest intoxication without alcohol. Since intoxication comes from the Greek word for poison, "dry drunk" implies a state of mind and a mode of behavior that are poisonous to the alcoholic's well being.
Persons experiencing a full-blown DRY DRUNK are, for that period, removed from the world of sobriety; they fail, for whatever reason, to accept the necessary conditions for sober living. Their mental and emotional homes are chaotic, their approach to everyday living is unrealistic, and their behavior, both verbal and physical, is unacceptable.
The symptoms of a dry drunk shows up as:
1. Grandiosity, put very simply, is an exaggeration of one's own importance. This can be demonstrated either in terms of one's strengths or weaknesses. In either case it is blatantly self- seeking or self-serving, putting oneself at the center of attention, from the "big me" who has ask the answers to the "poor me" whose cup of self-pity runneth over and wants all of our attention.
2. Judgmentalism is mutually related to grandiosity. It means that the alcoholic is prone to make value judgments - strikingly inappropriate evaluations - usually in terms of "goodness" or "badness".
3. Intolerance leaves no room for delaying the gratification of personal desires. This is accomplished by gross confusion of priorities with the result that a mere whim or passing fancy is mistakenly given more importance than genuine personal needs.
4. Impulsivity is the result of intolerance or the lack of ability to delay gratification of personal desires. Impulsivity describes behavior which is heedless of the ultimate consequence for self or others.
5. Indecisiveness is related to impulsitivity in the sense that while the latter takes no realistic account of the consequences of the actions, the former precludes effective action altogether. Indecisiveness stems from an unrealistic exaggeration of the negative possibilities of the action ; so one wavers between two or more possible courses of action, more times than not-nothing gets done.
In order to survive living with a dry drunk, a codependent needs to keep a sense of humor. There just is no other way to do it. I was thinking about this yesterday as I was cleaning up my bedroom. I suffered a massive stroke in DEC 2009, and as a result I suffer from immobility problems. Well, my husband basically wasn't there to help me when I got back home. It got to such a condition that I was embarrassed of having anyone in my house, and I had my inhome care discontinued. My DDH had to take me to my doctor's for vertigo. The nurse noticed this in my medical records and wanted to know why. I told her the truth.
Now,
GET THIS!
My DDH's explanation was he just kept hoping for me to get better!
HUH!? (I needed to get better before my DDH was willing to help me around the house.)
