I'd be interested to learn from those who've sadly been there just what goes through the mind of an alcoholic. Do they know they're making such destructive decisions? Do they wrestle internally to fight the compulsions? Or are they blind or blasé about it? After all, if other people have a problem with me then that's their problem, I'm in control?
Be interested to know that's all. My wife had her worst session in months on Friday night. Doubt it was any less than three bottles and she was totally wasted. I left here on the sofa again and she picked up on my stress the next morning and we had another talk, me like the stuck record I am saying what I've said at least 9 or 10 or in fact probably many more times before over more than five years, she, like the stuck record she is, saying she'll cut down and making promises etc. She was at a friends Saturday night and said she'd drive back rather than stay over (she stayed over) and she promised she'd only drink at the weekend.
Well, last night was Monday and I got back from a bike ride at 18:00 to see her swigging brazenly from a can of beer. There was also an opened bottle of wine on the shelf with a medium glass of wine gone. To see her sitting there quite openly drinking made my jaw hit the floor. I was as surprised as I was shocked as I was disappointed.
Bearing in mind this was after I'd sent her the note below on Saturday night.
I'd really welcome thoughts from those who've been there and about what goes through the mind of an alcoholic. I really don't think I could have been any clearer or any blunter.
Consider this your first nag, as you asked me to do this morning and while this is fresh in both our minds please and while I have time to put this down. I love you. But I hate that we have had to have this conversation yet again so soon after the last one, and I don't hate it as much as I hate the person you become when you're drunk. You need to save this please and you need to read it regularly. When you drink you become a person I can't live with. And it is a person I won't live with. I love the person I spend the day with and absolutely hate who comes out at night. You drink too often, and when you drink you drink too much. And when you are drunk you are argumentative and belligerent, you slur when you talk, and you stagger around asking me the same questions and shouting at the kids, and then more often than not you then pass out on the sofa as you did last night. I've lost count of the number of times that has happened, or even of the times when I have been unable to wake you like I wasn't last night and have left you spread drunkenly across the sofa while I've gone to bed alone.
Just so there is no misunderstanding I will not spend my life with this person. Someone who makes me so unhappy, night after night. Someone with whom I have begged, pleaded, and threatened again and again, over many years, but who hasn't controlled her drinking. Someone who has promised me more times than I can even remember that she'll control things, only to end up back where she was.
This is not an accusation, it is a statement of fact. You have a problem with alcohol. And of all the people in the world, I'm the one affected by it. It's not a little bit too much, every week or so, it's not a small glass to take the edge off a tough day. It's glass after glass, bottle after bottle, night after night. You become a staggering, slurring, argumentative wreck, night after night, week after week, regularly passing out. I asked you this morning how it feels waking up on the sofa knowing you've passed out and I've gone to bed unable to wake you up and you told me it was awful. Surely that alone is enough to help you control things. You admitted again today, as in May, that you don't like who you become, but this cycle continues. I thought there had been a breakthrough in May when you finally accepted it was bad and when you first admitted you hated who you became and as you promised to do something about it. But it's now just as bad again.
I really will do everything in my power to help you, but I can't stop you drinking too much, only you can control that. You have to accept the problem AND want to do something about AND actually do something about it. Unless you can do all three of these things, with my help, or with the help of friends, or with the help from a professional and / or from a support group then I will not tolerate this. It's a blunt as that. The love and compassion I feel for you during the day is simply not strong enough to enable me to deal with the stress, anger and frustration of living with who you become night after night.
The fact that I still hate the effect your drinking has on me is why I can't come back onto the mortgage, and won't until I know you've beaten this for good. I need that money, bluntly, in case you don't beat this and I need to buy my own house.
Please let me know what I can do to help you, please talk to me, and please seek help if you don't feel able to tackle this on your own, but if you don't beat it, with or without my help, and with or without any other help, there simply won't be any more messages like this, I'll have given you everything I possibly can and the next time we have to have this conversation then, bluntly, we won't. Love you, please have fun tonight, all is good here x