Hi everyone,

I keep coming back to this thread, sometimes reading from the beginning and each time I glean more of the wisdom behind the replies. Anyone reading this far and wondering if the advice given here is sound I can assure you it is profoundly so. Had I been willing to accept it earlier many of the issues I’m facing wouldn’t be on the radar.

Wife just got her 90 day chip a week or so ago. Longest stretch of sobriety in 4 years. It’s a milestone but an early one. Very early.

The one thing I never fully accepted was the brain/personality changes that are inevitable and I now know it’s as real and bizarre as one can imagine. In some ways she is wiser, in others more immature and irresponsible. It’s a strange combination.

Lots of jigsaw puzzles and games on her phone. So much freaking coffee and I can hear her new found tools of manipulation being put to use at work. She has had so much therapy over the last year and yet these mechanisms seem to be welcomed. I don’t understand, but alcohol is a solvent. It dissolves lives.

My recovery is coming along slowly, but surely. My children are doing better, but there are times they look at me and I wonder if it’s just their resiliency that makes it seem that way.

Putting my business back together is proving to be tough after so much neglect due to alcoholism which stresses me the hell out on the daily. The past has caught up with us and it’s brutal. One day at a time.

A saying I read recently that hit me hard.

First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.