Welcome JayR to SR,
I first 'found out' that my husband of 22 yrs was an alcoholic about 16 months ago. With lots of reading books about alcoholism/codependance, attending al-anon meetings and visiting/posting on the SR website it has taught me what I need to know about alcoholism and the effect of the disease on me. I still struggle to put what I have learnt into practice but I keep trying.
Like you, I too, recorded my alcoholics drinking, keeping an excel spreadsheet on all of his purchases, noting how many beers were in the fridge on a daily basis. I also argued with him, berated him, nagged him and finally gave him an ultimatum - the beer or me. He chose beer. He said that he was going to drink for the rest of his life and if I didnt like it, I could leave. I was a mess. Its really hard work playing booze detective with an active alcoholic and It was making me insane.
I believe alcoholism is one of the only diseases that requires a completly different approach than what we would consider the norm. Whatever I had been doing I needed to do the opposite and this felt very alien to me. For the alcoholic to want to stop drinking they first need to feel their own consequences from their actions. I had to give up trying to control my AH and his drinking and ignore it when it happened and when I started to do that, I began to feel as though an enormous weight had been lifted.
The idea is that we have to bring serenity into our own lives. No more up at 4am worried, stessed out, head spinning that isnt healthy for us. I sometimes feel that I am so sick that I could die from feeling so stressed out about my AH alcoholism. What sort of life is that for me. So I am trying to bring serenity into my life by detaching and leaving my AH to destroy his own life with alcohol. He continues to drink and hasnt changed in the slightest! Hopefully one day he will see what a nice life I lead without the stuff and what a miserable existence he leads with it and will make the descision to get sober for himself.
One day sobriety may come for him, but in the meantime I choose to focus on myself and not my AH, thats all I can do.