To begin with SR was the only community where I talked about living with and loving someone with big alcohol problems, individually I read, listened and thought about things - none of which I regret.
I also used alcoholism counselling, but only one or two sessions, I used the help line when I needed to touch base. For me it was important to have reliable feedback that I hadn't shot off in the wrong direction through my reading and listening, I wanted an addiction proffessional's input.
My first step into a more structured approach was to take up our workplace counselling service, I had 6 free sessions and I worked hard at it. It came to a natural end as we simply ran out of things to discuss.
Throughout this, from first coming to SR to about April this year I let friends in real life knowmore and more about what was happening, in particular my longest friend. The real life support was needed and SR provided support from others who'd been through similar things.
Then D had/nearly had a breakdown with a full relapse. That rapidly opened up services to both of us, which we've both used fully. We had as many sessions as we could/wanted to squeeze in with an addiction counsellor who had come from a mental health background. She used 'Task Centered Social Work' to work with us as a unit, partnership, interdependent couple. It isn't a global treatment it was tailored to us and I believe that atiloring has made a tangible difference in the excellent results it's had.
Now? Unfortunately our counsellor moved, D is so much better some of the services offered freely last month are a little more scarce. I've been reading about CBT and trying to apply some of it's principles - so has D. Hopefully I'm already signed on to teh waiting list to recieve CBT.
In the meanwhile we were left with some tasks that also seem to be having powerful effects. I'm still at SR and something else has happened, my best friend and her partner have come round us, I feel as though we are as much a little unit of 4 as we were of 2!! Although unrecognisabley better D is still a long way off 100% but he gets support from them too. I have an evening meeting and they invite him to tea. I need a break so my best friend is coming with me on a mini holiday while her other half stays with D so they can look after all four dogs and play video games.
I learned to talk about it here and that spread into real life. I'm still learning here and I wonder what else will spread into real life?
I wish we hadn't lost our counsellor, at first I was afraid and felt unready to lose the structure but as we began the tasks she left I realised why she felt we would be okay. We can always go back and see if we strike it just as lucky with a second counsellor.
So I think 3 things have mattered to me:
** Human contact, friendship and support.
** Learning, reading, checking, - homework!!
** Structure, outside, qualified, good quality guidance.