AH in rehab...counterintuitive?
 

Hi all,

My AH is currently in a 30 day rehab facility. He is a 'functioning' alcoholic and has been one for the past 15 years. His drink of choice is beer and will average about 12 beer a night, every night. On weekends he can certainly indulge in more along with hard liquor. He 'functions' because he goes to work and able to wake up at 5am every morning and never gets a hangover. His style of drinking is to maintain a buzz but not get 'wasted'. So now he is rehab with a bunch of other guys who mainly all have drug addictions along with alcoholism. He tells me that some guys in there ask him why he's even there and they don't view him as the 'type to have a bad addiction'. My AH is handling himself very well in rehab, and is not craving a drink, nor even having any withdrawal symptoms! He's been drinking every single day for the past 15 years!

Anyways, I'm getting the feeling that rehab my be counterintuitive. My AH is making friends there, getting along with everyone, playing sports and getting acupuncture which is great, but these seem to be the stories he tells me when I talk to him over the phone and ask him how his day is. He isn't the one to bring up his meetings he has in rehab until I ask about it. The response I get about the meetings is that he hears other stories of hard core drug abuse, lost loved ones, mother a prostitute etc. and it makes him feel that he doesn't really belong. His story is quite boring compared to the others and he is handling his recovery extremely easily compared to others in there really struggling. Im worried he is almost taking rehab as somewhat a distraction/vacation from his problems he has at home/work.

Anyone else have similar experience in rehab?

I would say that there are all kinds of people in recovery/rehab.

I would also say that you should stay on your side of the street and not get involved in his recovery - certainly not judging the rehab or people in it. He is perfectly capable of coming to his own conclusions and regardless of who is in the rehab, he'll have to do his own work on his own issues. We all have issues that need work, from the prostitute to the "high-functioning."

Alcohol and drug addiction are one and the same - just a different point on the continuum. I would caution against placing him on a higher level due to the fact he hasn't had dire consequences - yet. It's just a matter of time if he doesn't stay sober.

"functioning" alcoholics are still alcoholics. The level of "function" just decreases over time. It's not usually a good idea to compare how much one drinks to another, but honestly I'd say that drinking 12 beers a night is full blown, out of control drinking. It's way more than enough to cause permanent, irreversible damage to your body and mind if continued for too long. So while he may not be getting all he can get out of rehab, i don't think it's unwarranted for him to be there.

My XAH went to rehab that had an overwhelming amount of heroin abusers there. However, he did stay clean for a year after. His experience seems similar to what your H is experiencing now.

Looking back, it would have been better money spent getting him into a dual diagnosis facility, but that is water under the bridge, and I hope he does that one day for himself. Everyone has different needs, and there is certainly a huge difference in rehab facilities and what you get out of them.

I am with Scott though, it cannot be unwarranted for him to be there. Only he will decide in the future when he gets out if he wants sobriety or not. If not, the best rehab in the world is not going to keep him from picking up again.

No matter what, he'll learn things there.

The first outpatient treatment place I went to was mostly young drug abusers with some wild stories and some severe life problems, and honestly I wound up thinking that as an older professional who "only drank" and hadn't lost much, I didn't have much of a problem after all - therefore I can keep drinking. ;) So I did, and things got worse and worse.

I didn't finally stop drinking until later, after I stopped going to that place and enrolled in a different treatment program that was mostly older alcohol abusers like myself. But I did learn a lot in that first program, that helped me later.

Many, perhaps most, people who first enter some kind of support program will relapse, often multiple times. It's a process, with stops and starts and restarts, but hopefully leading eventually to abstinence. And along the way, you learn things from people and places you might least expect to be helpful.

if the amountmof and type used f drugs/alcohol are removed -get past the war stories-and the underlying issues and thinking are looked at, hes no different than the others.
and im sure the underlying issues and thinking are mentioned at the meetings. he might not be telling you that or he might not be hearing it.
im sure the staff there has been getting at that part in some way.

hes in the right place.

Thanks. Yes, the treatment centre he is at is mainly a younger crowd with wild stories and heroin addiction. I went with him to "check out" the facility and get a tour when we were in the deciding process of which centre to pick. There was a comment made by one of the guys staying there "are you checking in today, you don't look like you belong here, you look way too healthy". My AH takes care of his looks, groomed likely, clean nice clothing etc. which is a different look than the stereotypical look of an addict.

My XAH does not look like an addict either. He has a good job. He grooms himself well. Nice clothing.

One thing about an addict is that you cannot always spot them from afar, that is for sure.

I am a sober alcoholic and I actually drank even less than your husband. I had a job, friends and did volunteer work too.
Since I am single, I drank home alone and my alcoholism did not affect my job or carry any outwardly horrible consequences like DUIs, job or relationship losses, hospitalizations making a fool of myself etc.
Still when I drank, I got into an horrible dark pit of depression and isolation.
My point is that it is not so much how much we drank but how it affected us.

I am in complete agreement with Jeff, he will learn some useful tool in rehab if he can over focusing on the young bucks war stories. I also agree with Tom that if he can get down to identifying with others, he will see some similar feelings and patterns.

There is a tendency for some newcomers or people who are not truly recovered (especially males, must be a macho thing) to indulge into a competition to see who was the drunkest of the drunks, the baddest of the bads, the lowest of the lows.

My story is really boring: I drank and the depression was horrible and I was feeling suicidal. It does not mean that I am not an alcoholic.
Just because your husband has (thankfully) no horror stories to compete with those guys does not mean he is not an alcoholic, just that he was really lucky and took action before his drinking progressed.

How are you feeling? I hope you are taking care of yourself and maybe reaching out for f2f support. :hug:

He will get sober only when he wants to be sober more than then wants to drink. It doesn't matter if he went to the best rehab in the entire country, if he doesn't want to get sober he won't.

I think it is time to let him handle his recovery. No one can do this but him, and calling him and asking him about meetings and the other people in the rehab is not going to change anything. Maybe just call and ask how HE is doing and whatever he chooses to speak about he chooses to speak about. Letting go is something you may want to research and start to practice.

Thanks. I am certainly well aware he is a full blown alcoholic and I understand that having horror stories or how groomed looking etc. doesn't minimize the fact that he is still an alcoholic. It's a sh*t feeling where I would like for him to see what I see, but I know it's his recovery and he needs to be able to do it on his own. I'm coping, trying to manage day by day and working on me. Been busy and I must say, I quite enjoy not having my AH around the house

I'm in complete agreement. I understand that it's 100% up to him whether he really wants to remain sober or not. Only time can tell, unfortunately from my perspective I don't have the time to wait around to see if he will change nor am I willing to do that. I ask about his recovery wanting to get a feel of where his mental state is in his recovery so that I can better guide my own recovery. If I'm not seeing improvement in his mental state then I'm packing up and leaving this chapter behind.

I remember that feeling whenever my X was in rehab, feeling free and relieved and enjoying not having his negative presence around then as his release date would get closer, I would get more and more anxious.

I truly hope your husband makes it but ultimately you have to look out for number one because unfortunately, many alcoholics do not achieve long term sobriety.

Is he there because he wants to be there, or was he convinced he should go?

The need to stay buzzed is not as noticeable to everyone than the need to stay blown away, but they both reflect a serious level of addiction.

I hope that your husband starts looking for similarities and not differences with his peers.

He's not there on a research project.

BTW, people kept referring to me as a AH when I was in treatment, but I couldn't figure out what they meant.

I must not know all of the current acronnyms.

Just kidding, AW, glad you are here.

Well said AR!

I've never been to rehab but I did check myself in to a medical detox hospital for a week. When you leave your own home and check in to one of these facilities it's far from a vacation! I don't think it's fair for you to judge him in this manner..

Not all achlolics and addicts live under the bridge, they're in the big houses eating at the finest steakhouses too.. Addiction doesn't discriminate..

The quantity your husband was drinking sounds like about how much I was drinking before I got sober...12pk a night...more on some nights. Near the end, my daily ritual when I woke up was to go outside, smoke a cigarette and decide which option was better...drinking or ending things.

People usually don't end up in an inpatient treatment center if things "aren't that bad". Alcoholism is a progressive illness, and it's been my experience that if one drinks long enough one will eventually lose the "functional" tag.

I'm sure that treatment is helping him in some ways even if he's not aware of it. But it will still come down to what he chooses to do once he leaves treatment that matters. To me treatment was basically like a class on what alcoholism/addiction was, and how to treat it and live a reasonably normal and happy life. It was up to me whether I wanted to "learn" what was being "taught" and then apply it back in the real world.

I applaud you for deciding that no matter what he does with his life that YOU will be okay. It seems like it would be common sense, but boy is it not. I wish that I had been that strong at different times of my life with certain people in it.

Many of the people in my rehab had already been in treatment 2, 4, a dozen times. So in that sense they were worse off that I was, even though I was a ghost of a person myself when I arrived. There was no one there that I could relate to as a peer. If you'd spoken to me on the phone while I was there I would probably have mentioned that, because I was spending 24/7 with these people and didn't feel very "myself". But in the end that didn't matter at all. I learned from them even though they were different. And I spent all of that time working on myself, and I'm still sober 9.5 months later.

One or two of the people there at the same time as me had the "vacation" thing put on them by family members. At least at the place I went to, you'd have to be a boiled sociopath to find the experience relaxing. 10 hours a day of being forced to confront your feelings in 7 different kinds of ways is intense no matter how you slice it, even for the people who weren't really putting their heart into it.

I wish him the best and I'm glad that you're preparing yourself for either outcome, that's probably wisest.

So it's been 10 days since my AH went to rehab. He says he is doing really well and hadn't even had the itch to have a drink. The environment in there seems to be of one where there is a lot of positive support and comradery which helps him maintain his sobriety. He called me telling me that he wants to stay there for more than 30 days and to make it 45 days! I'm glad that he wants to stay there to focus longer on recovery and himself.

He says that in rehab he feels like he is a somebody, people are positive and have nice things to say about him. He has a purpose in rehab, he's volunteered to help in the kitchen, made impacts in others lives when they were struggling etc. In the real world he rarely gets that. In his job you are expected to work hard with little praise, the government system isn't as caring if you require assistance- "get in line and wait" is the attitude etc.

Anyone else had similar experience where they didn't want to leave rehab?