Originally Posted by
ScubaDad 
Sure, sometimes I feel like the advice I am getting here is pretty harsh, it sometimes feels like others are taking their experiences from the past and advising thinking only the worse can happen. I read a lot of posts where there is a very harsh tone to the alcoholic overall.
Probably why Alanon advises -- Take what you like, and leave the rest.
For perspective, I guess I would say that there is a wide band of differing experience here. You and yours -- are on the front end. And in your case, she sounds sincere and repentant. If per the AA Big Book she can be Honest, she has a good chance at Recovery. On the other hand, many, or probably even most A's cannot.
So then other plans are made. (or Plan X, as Code Job says -- where X stands for Exit.)
I know that I personally have drank too much and used drugs in the past to deal with a lot of my own personal issues. That is why I can understand the "self medicating nature" on an addict. When I was a teenager I smoked weed almost everyday sometimes two to three times a day for probably two years. That caused a lot of problems in my life. One day a friend said to me "you aren't funny anymore, you use to be funny." He wasn't saying it to be mean, he said it as an observation. He was also someone I smoked weed with. That showed me that I had changed. That was it, I quit smoking weed. I used drugs intermittently for the next few years, nothing like before and then stopped by 21 or 22 and never did it again. I drank pretty heavily in my 20s and early 30s. When I met my wife my drinking dropped dramatically and I even quit smoking. One day we were at a college football bowl game and I drank way too much. My buddies and I were horsing around and I basically did a very poor backflip, landed on my left shoulder and dislocated and separated it. I think about that day and know that if I had landed just a couple of inches over I could have broken my neck and been paralyzed. It could have easily happened. Now I have a constant reminder of my collar bone sticking up on my left shoulder as to why I don't need to get drunk. That was 10 years ago.
Will save you Drug and Alcohol stories from Army times and before, but yeah, done that, been there. But you and I are not addicts, AFAIK, correct?
In reverse, I would caution you NOT to extract your own experience to compare to an addiction -- especially if you are NOT an addict. Do you follow? Alcohol (and Drugs) are NOT the real problem in most real addiction (even though we chant the Steps, like they were).
Maybe in some of your reading, look at the Big Book? Free online. Easy read. It covers some the "levels" of addiction -- and folks like you or me who can hit it, get it, put it back down and not look back. THAT is not how this stuff works for an addict. There are Actual Measurable, Observable, Physiological, Genetic differences. You follow? Just no real comparison.
So my reasons for making that statement is that I know I have been at fault for drinking and using drugs and it concerned me that others might read that and think that I am being a hypocrite about my wife. And maybe I am, I don't really know. I apologize if my statement offended anyone.
This is not a laundry list of who, what, when, where, how much -- this is about -- Can They Stop Now? A real A cannot. Whole different animal.