Welcome Jenny69. My story is like FindingPeace's above, only substitute child for step-children (mine). My husband is a good man with a BIG problem. As soon as I began challenging that BIG problem, he became the classic monster alcoholic with every behavior we can go read about in hundreds of books on the market today. As soon as I began to set appropriate boundaries and have consequences for them, he became even worse. As soon as I started doing things to protect myself...well...you get the picture. I ended up leaving the house with my kids and dogs and am in the process of starting over. Not because I want a divorce or am giving up on him, but because I can't live with him until he truly gets this 2 ton gorilla off his back, and that's way more than stopping drinking.
I struggled with Al-Anon at first, especially trying to relate to others who have completely out-of-control addicts they are dealing with. Some stories would leave me depressed for days! "My AH was never that bad", I would think. "Maybe I don't need to be here after all", I would think. But you know what I found instead? A big group of people who had similar feelings that I had about all of this and different ways of approaching it that, to me, seemed so much better than my own! Wow! Imagine that! But it took going back, at least a handful of times, to finally make that connection. I still giggle a little at some of the cheesy things in Al-Anon but I also believe it works, and sometimes I even find myself needing a little of that cheese to get through my day.
Our addict loved ones come in all shapes, sizes, flavors, stages of addiction, etc. Our stories are all different on the surface, but underneath are some distinct threads of similarity. Stay on this forum long enough and you'll begin to see them, and most likely relate to much of it. You are not alone.
~T