AW's house of cards
I haven't posted on this board now for months, and so much has happened. I got served divorce by my AW in April of last year. I was obliged by a legal agreement to leave the marital home in February of this year and I've been in a pitched legal battle since then to obtain interim custody of the kids.
To cut a long story short, her legal argument has been that she cannot be diagnosed as being alcohol dependent by the DSM classification because, according to her, she's not an alcoholic. She's had two psychologists attest to this, one who's a director of a respected rehab center (!), and it looked for a time like I was legally up the creek trying to prove anything to the contrary. AW has a background in psychiatry so she is very shrewd in manipulating the system, especially when it comes to dealing with shrinks. She knows how to talk the psycho-babble talk.
Her lawyer has been rabid in his pursuit of a settlement with me, insisting that I stop being a bitter ex etc etc. Anyway, her whole house of cards came tumbling down when my eight year old phoned me last week in a state of anxiety, telling me that his mum was stumbling around the house and he was scared and didn't know what to do. I phoned her neighbour to check on her and she quickly informed me that AW was totally smashed. I then got another friend of mine to accompany me to the house, plus two policemen. The cops concurred that she was drunk and gave me permission to remove the kids. She was later visited by her doctor who also saw her totally out of it, so it was witnessed by five people, including two cops.
Things didn't end there for her. Her family swooped on her the next day. It seems like they've been awoken from a deep slumber of denial. This time they didn't take no for an answer and unanimously told her it's rehab or bust. She told them to organise it as she felt immobilised. So three days later she was booked into rehab for a month. I've currently got the kids and I'm busy trying to secure custody of them.
An addictions counselor has advised me to contact the case manager of the rehab she's gone to so that custody can be "mediated", however I'm so wary now of anything that looks like a shrink that I'm also going to secure it via child welfare. Additionaly I'm going to get a protection order against her driving the kids anywhere as she frequently drives them while drunk, which completely horrifies me.
Her legal argument is now blown out of the water. After eighteen months of legal wrangling about whether she's an alcoholic or not, her family and the community have taken action. Even her own doctor has made it clear that she will assist me in the securing of the children. This is coming from a person who, even two months ago doubted that she had a drinking problem. That quickly changed about a month ago when she ended up having to drive AW and my kids home from a school concert because AW was too pissed to drive herself.
I can't imagine what she must be thinking now, in rehab, hundreds of miles away from home, but I doubt she's embracing it as she's basically been strong-armed into going. I don't hold out much hope for rehab actually working, as I can't see how a month's sobriety will change her thought patterns. She was still blaming everyone for her drinking right after the incident, and still drinking the night before she left for rehab. She's quit drinking for thirty days before just to get me out the house, so I know she can turn it off and on.
The kids are safe, that is the main thing. They've received counseling for the trauma of being taken out of their house, and my eldest is slowly making sense of what has happened. I'm countering all his feelings of guilt about what he initiated by making sure all the grown ups he knows tell him what a brave boy he was and how he did the right thing, as well as telling him that myself on a daily basis. My younger daughter is still processing it in her own way. She's only five so her understanding of this is limited.
Now it feels like I have to catch my breath, deal with everything as it happens and stay calm...