SteppingUp,
I wish preventing someone from drinking was as simple as to talking to the alcoholic or detaching with love, but unfortunately there is NO magic pill! If there was there wouldn't be so many members here on SR or the millions of alcoholics throughout the world! Some of the most brilliant minds have been alcoholics!
Many people think an alcoholic is a skid row bum or someone at least out of work or with little education locked into a low-skill, low-paying job, but that is not accurate, according to the results of a national study released in June, 2007 by the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The NIAAA determined that alcoholics in the United States include nearly 20 percent who are highly functional alcoholics, well-educated with good incomes. They include corporate presidents, powerful politicians, police, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and other highly-skilled, highly-educated people who are middle- to high-income and by most accounts successful. Celebrity alcoholics include singer Eric Clapton and actor/comedian Robin Williams, as well as alcoholics in high positions including Chris Albrecht, former Chairman and CEO of HBO, Miss USA 2007 Tara Conner, and football legend Joe Namath.
I recommend you continue developing your detachment with love for yourself:
Identify the irrational beliefs in your toxic relationship with your wife which prevent you from becoming detached. Address these beliefs and replace them with healthy,
more rational ones.
Identify all of the reasons why you are being hurt and your physical, emotional and spiritual health is being threatened by the relationship.
Accept and admit to yourself that the other person, place or thing is "sick," dysfunctional or irrational, and that no matter what you say, do or demand you will not
be able to control or change this reality. Accept that there is only one thing you can change in life and that is you. All others are the unchangeables in your life. Change your expectations that things will be better than what they really are. Hand these people, places or things over to your Higher Power and let go of the need to change them.
Work out reasons why there is no need to feel guilt over letting go and being emotionally detached from this relationship and free yourself from guilt as you let go of the emotional "hooks" in the relationship.
Affirm yourself as being a person who "deserves" healthy, wholesome, health-engendering relationships in your life. You are a good person and deserve healthy
relationships, at home, work and in the community.
Gain support for yourself as you begin to let go of your emotional enmeshment with these relationships.
Continue to call upon your Higher Power for the strength to continue to let go and detach.
Continue to give no person, place or thing the power to affect or impact your feelings about yourself.
Continue to detach and let go and work at self-recovery and self-healing as this poem implies.
"Letting Go"
* To "let go" does not mean to stop caring; it means I can't do it for someone else.
* To "let go" is not to cut myself off; it's the realization I can't control another.
* To "let go" is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
* To "let go" is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
* To "let go" is not to try to change or blame another; it's to make the most of myself.
* To "let go" is not to care for, but to care about.
* To "let go" is not to fix, but to be supportive.
* To "let go" is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
* To "let go" is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
* To "let go" is not to be protective; it's to permit another to face reality.
* To "let go" is not to deny, but to accept.
* To "let go" is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
* To "let go" is not to criticize and regulate anybody, but to try to become what I dream I can be.
* To "let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
* To "let go" is to not regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
* To "let go" is to fear less and love myself more.
If you still have problems detaching, then begin all over again.
Just my personal opinion. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Love and Peace,
Phoenix