Originally Posted by
stuckinfear 
And I am back in that mode, which makes me know the madness has started again. Its just worrying about the unknown again, which is really worse than his actual drinking.
Yes, what you say above is the key. I never was able to pull off the detachment while my ex-ab was playing these games. A beer here, a glass of wine there. I went totally into codie mode by trying to control his drinking. I think that just accomplished three things. (1) It delayed the inevitable increase in drinking (2) He went underground with his drinking (3) He resented me.
Many years ago, before I knew personally about this whole alcoholism thing, I had a good friend who was an amazing recovering alcoholic/addict. She was big into sponsoring and really walked the walk and talked the talk. Her answer to her sponsees who played games with slips would be to tell them they were probably not ready and maybe they need to drink some more until the pain was greater than the pleasure. She said it with complete love, lack of judgement, and support for her sponsee. Now mind you, only an AA sponsor could say something like that. Our job as family/friends is to stay out of the way of a AA's journey.