Bidgdrunner

Greetings from the UK, and with my apologies for posting here, if it's inappropriate please move or even delete.

We're all here for various reasons, and all have different circumstances, but united in our need for guidance, support and fellowship.

I've been a regular reader and sometime poster on the family and friends support threads for some time now. I'm teetotal and have been for over three years now but for six years have lived with an alcoholic. Someone who in a typical week drinks six nights, passes out at least four nights, and who gets through nine bottles of wine a week. She's regularly tired and tetchy the next day. She regularly drinks in secret. She regularly hides empty bottles in random places. She regularly makes stupid excuses for going to the shop to get something random or other, only to come back with wine. Like many I suspect, it's all or nothing. The idea of a drink or two is anathema. It's either none or a bottle and a half.

So, longstory short, I'm trying to understand what goes through the heads of people in this situation. Do they want to cut down, do they feel awful the next morning, do they still get hangovers like regular drinkers, do they know they're drunk and behaving ridiculously or is their sense of reality so warped that they just don't see it (or in fact, do they see it but just suppress it in order to carry on), how do they feel when they wake up having passed out on the sofa?

I think knowing some real life thoughts from those that have lived this will be helpful in helping me understand and empathise with what my wife is going through. I've done well to detach myself as best I can from her drinking but I doubt anyone on here needs me to articulate the loneliness, despair and abject misery that comes from living with and loving someone who is alcohol dependent.

Thanks in advance for any insights you're able to offer.