GetBusyLivin74

Hi all, I just discovered this forum today and I thought I'd chime in.

I'm 39, and I've been aware that I've been drinking excessively for a good 15 years now. Went through a divorce in 2008, largely unrelated to my alcohol problem, although I'm sure there was that element.

My new wife, whom I just married last year, doesn't know all of my history regarding alcohol. We have our little ritual, she has two glasses of wine a night, 3 on weekends, and I match her glass to glass. Only thing is, I've been mostly hiding my addiction from her, but she's obviously not a stupid woman and knows that there's a problem. Recently, she convinced me to see a doctor to get checked out and of course my liver enzymes are sky-high, as well as blood pressure and cholesterol are out of spec, which confirmed her suspicions. I've also had issues with acid reflux and am on Omeprazole to mitigate it. I am pretty sure that it's due to the alcohol intake.

I like to wash the dishes, and the kitchen is around a nook where I am out of eyeshot with her, and it's trivial for me to hide a bottle of hooch in the upper cabinet, and I swig on it the whole time I'm cleaning up the kitchen. She has repeatedly remarked on how she doesn't understand how I'm ending up so hammered because she doesn't see me drink any more than two or three glasses of wine. So, yeah. 3 glasses is just getting warmed up.

Anyway, Thursday night was when it came to a head. I had hidden a 1.5L bottle of wine in the cabinet. I cooked a nice Italian dinner, all the while swigging on the wine. A swig in the pot, a swig down the throat! Maybe a few more swigs down the throat! Dinner came out great, the kitchen was a mess, and I spent two hours getting hammered and cleaning up. I don't remember much else until the morning when I woke up to go to work.

I had slept on the couch, and I went in to get dressed and she was awake, and said "Do you remember last night?"

Me: "Um, yeah." (I do remember something about her being really angry with me but no specifics) "Sorry, I've got to get to work. Love you."

Her daily email to me while I'm at work had a rather terse tone, and was all business. She was asking me about something doctor related but didn't discuss anything else and didn't include any of the regular pleasantries. I knew I was in trouble.

Came home, she was silent. I offered her leftovers from the night before, she said no. We sat next to each other in silence until about 8pm, and finally she said "So are we gonna talk about last night?"

She told me in tears how I had ended up in the bathroom, passed out, wedged against the door. She couldn't open the door (we only have the one bathroom in the apartment) and she didn't know whether I was dead or alive in there. She tried to wake me up for a half hour, and said she was really close to calling 911 to have them come break the door down. At some point I moved enough to let her in, and she couldn't get me to stand up for another 10 minutes or so. She said when I finally did get up, I was belligerent with her.

I am not a violent person and this is not me. She warned me that if I ever got physical with her, I'd be in jail before I knew what hit me. I've never been physically violent with either my ex-wife (as much as we fought like cats and dogs verbally) and I told her "Well I don't have any history of that", but she felt she needed to express it to me anyway. My new wife and I rarely get into any drama on a normal basis, even with my getting hammered every night, I take great pains to keep to myself. Usually my drinking occurs after she goes to bed, but sometimes I jump the gun when I'm having too much of a good time.

So she asked me, "What are you going to do about this? I'm not living like this anymore. My stepmom died of alcoholism, she'd end up inexplicably drunk and would deny drinking, and we'd go around the house and look for bottles she'd hidden. I already lived that life once, I'm not going through that again. So. What are you going to do?"

I said, "Well, there's only one answer. I need to give up the liquor."

She said, "Well are you sure this is what you want to do? I don't want to feel guilty about having my couple glasses of wine, but I will support you in any way you need, and if that includes giving that up, I will."

I told her "No, I need to stop drinking, and that includes learning to live around people who can handle their liquor."

Anyway, so far so good. I realize I have a long way to go, though, and I'm at the very beginning of my journey. Perhaps you notice I am speaking in present tense about a lot of my drinking behavior, because it is not yet in the past. I've gone on the wagon before, my longest period being three weeks several years ago during my previous marriage. (my ex convinced me that I'd kicked it after 3 weeks, and I started drinking again, one of the myriad reasons she's my ex)

Last night I was in a rotten mood (I'm always in a rotten mood the second sober day, that's when the discomfort and moodiness from excess adrenaline is at its height), and was short with her on a number of occasions, but we got through it. The alcoholic voice kept says "If you just have a glass you'll feel better." This morning seems easier. I woke up with a salty taste in my mouth, and I still feel weirdly hungover-but-not-really-hunger. It's weird to be straight on a weekend, somehow it just seems wrong in the back of my head. But I know I need to do this. To save my wife, and to save my life.