He has a choice, he can keep drinking and slowly kill himself or he can quit. They will often say they want to quit because that’s what you want to hear expect for that they don’t want to actually do the work necessary to truly recover. So instead he will just call you and make you listen to his woe is me story and playing victim.
Detox serves no purpose in the recovery process really. All it does is help people stop drinking safely so that they don’t die from quitting cold turkey. But that won’t make him stay clean. Once he detoxes then he needs to go to rehab/counseling etc to actually start on recovery. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like he is ready to actually quit for himself. As hard as it is, either stop taking his calls completely (unless he call you from rehab) or take his call but if he is drunk or starts his pity party for one you tell him you are not willing to listen to him complain any more and finish the call right then and there. As you know there is nothing you or anyone else can do for him to make him quit. He is not willing to quit but he wants to make everyone else feel guilty about him not being able to quit or not wanting to listen to his stories.
By you continuing to answer his calls and listen to him he is getting what he wants and in the mean time it is taking a huge toll on your mental health but it isn’t helping him at all. If he is threatening suicide or other manipulative threats just call the cops on him for a welfare check and let them deal with it. Otherwise he is a grown man and he can do what he wants even if that means drink. But that doesn’t mean you have to put up with his behaviors. I understand that it is very hard to watch your kid self destruct slowly but until he is wanting to help himself nothing will change. So best you can do is take care of yourself so you don’t lose your marbles as well. So kudos to you for turning of your phone. I’m sure that wasn’t easy. He needs to hit rock bottom and hopefully he will get to that point When he realizes that no one will listen to him anymore unless he starts working on true recovery. And that will involve rehab and counseling. His excuse that he doesn’t believe in god likely means he won’t want to do AA but there are other routes. He will not be able to quit long term unless he quits for himself and actually seeks professional help.my ex had excuses on why he could not go to AA, I realized later that was just because he didn’t really want to quit. After he went to rehab and got sober he went to local AA without a problem.
I wish you all the best. I think going no contact will be best for your sanity. Staying in touch will just make you more worried and it won’t change the outcome until he decides to seek help. So might as we’ll save your own sanity rather than having both of you lose it. A friend of my from alanon described it as someone is in the ocean struggling and kicking trying not to drown ( the alcoholic) and then the rescuer (you in this case) are trying to help him by giving him a life saver ring but he keeps kicking and flailing and in the process both of you end up drowning. I thought that was a pretty good analogy of what our trying to help the alcoholic would end up doing to us.
I know for me with my now ex that last year before he got sober I actually quit caring about what might happen to him. That sounds really awful but I figured if he was going to self destruct than I was going to let him. I was done interfering (until i hit rock bottom and could no longer stand being around him so something had to happen). I never thought I would have gotten to that point but I guess we all have a breaking point.