Originally Posted by
sage1969 
The thing is, *if* he is able to become sober and work his recovery, he will be a different person. *If* this happens, it will take time, years.
You already know who he is now. No one knows what the future holds. You need to take care of yourself now, in the present.
As an aside, all the health problems you listed in an earlier post, those are all symptoms of advanced alcoholism. They won't begin improving til he detoxes and stays clean and sober; some may never resolve.
So I need to come to the conclusion that my husband is an alcoholic and has been keeping it a secret from me for a decade? That hwen I thought he was sober, he wasn't even if he won't admit it - all the signs are there that he was lying again when saying he was not drinking during the weird moments of passing out all over the place, slurring his words and seeming drunk when he wasn't - I thought he had a neurological disorder, but he was just drunk? He would end up in his bed sometimes for 3 or 4 days at a time with a really bad tremor, vertigo, nausea, vomiting and diarhea - he couldn't stand up. I know he wasn't drinking during those periods but maybe a hard session led to them? I guess I'll never know? But because people on the internet are telling me, I need to believe in my heart of hearts that he is an alcoholic and has been lying to me about it for a decade? That when he takes a few months off the sauce, that is normal alcoholic behaviour and then he always goes back to it but I just don't know because it's all secretive chugging vodka in the garage eve nthough he says it hasn't been that frequent? I saw 6 empty bottles in the golf bag - they could have taken a month to accumulate or a year and I'll never know over what period he secretly drank that? I do know that last summer, I found 3 empty 40s in the trailer and we only spent 4 or 5 weekends up there last summer so I guess I can deduce that at the trailer last summer, when he would fall asleep early or during the day pass out from his "sleep disorder", he was really actually drunk and probably had chugged 20 ounces of straight vodka? So now when he drove my daughter to the river down the road from our house and was watching her and her friend swim, and nearly passing out on the dock, was he drunk? Hungover? I guess I'll never know. So without a doctor's diagnosis or an admission from him, I need to believe with all of my being that he is secretly drunk fairly frequently, or at least buzzed and each time when I thought I smelled booze on him in the car, it was booze....so what about the more frequent times when I didn't smell booze...was he sober? I need to decide and believe it with all of my being that his abusive words, punching things, throwing plates, extreme irritability and lack of patience are all to do with secret drinking that I never knew he was doing for 10 years? And that his inability to deal with normal stuff in life - like paperwork - like how I had to deal with the lawyers and do all of his permanent residency application on my own - that was due to booze? That even though he NEVER misses a day of work, he's frequently been drinking many ounces of straight booze the night before and I never knew? That the man I thought I knew was a lie - 10 years of lies and at any moment he could have explained to me that he was passing out at weird times and I was unable to wake him up because he was drunk? So now when he passedout this weekend and I looked and there was no vodka gone from his golf bag, that was somehow due to the secret drinking too? The insomnia is due to the secret drinking? All of this is due to secret drinking even though I have no idea how frequent or how voluminous it is? This is really hard.