aztchr

"No offense to any of you that have had a relation with an alkie, but I've always wondered about the "I woke up one day and realized he/she was an alcoholic".

Could you elaborate a little on what you said above, please?

I knew the effects of my ex's drinking were progressing and not acceptable anymore.
Just because I knew he drank, didn't mean early on in our relationship I would know the extent of what was to come. Having never experienced that before, how would I have known until things progressed and affected me? Maybe what you said above doesn't apply to me. Just curious to hear more.

Thanks!

GlassPrisoner

It wasn't directed at anyone, and I can't pinpoint any examples, but I've read what I sometimes interpreted as people who act as if it was a sudden revelation that their loved one is an alcoholic. I remember thread titles like "I just discovered my husband/wife/etc is an alcoholic".

And yes, you could have a relationship with someone that drinks, not knowing they're a potential alcoholic.

Obviously, a lot of you realized it, and saw it progress.

Then again, take my ex wife for example. She knew my parents were both alcoholics, and saw them in their cups. Her own Dad was an alcoholic, as were most of her siblings and aunts/uncles. The expectation that it would be different for me was un-realistic. Much as an alkie thinking "it will be different this time" or "Yeah, but, it doesn't apply to me..."

Don't know where I'm going with this. That statement I quoted in the other thread just caught my eye.

denny57

I think it's called denial.

Live

In my case I had never known or been exposed to alcoholism before. I hadn't a clue.
I had know party people. But alcoholism.....was beyond my realm of understanding and/or experience.

GlassPrisoner

Wow....now I'm the one that "just didn't know".

Yeah, denial. (If you knew a little about alcoholism at least.) I didn't even think of that. Really.

And, there are people out there that don't know about the disease. Which, in my world, is nearly incomprehensable. Much like those fabled people that can leave 1/2 a drink on the bar and go home.

Bear with me, I'm learning. Looks like I'm gonna get another piece of humble pie.

aztchr

Thanks for clarifying! I've come to realize knowing and accepting are two different things.

Everyone is at a different place, and I appreciate being able to learn together from each other.

aztchr

P.S. I wasn't trying to put you on the spot.

denny57

Not sure if I'm understanding this statement correctly, so forgive me if I misread (plus it's going on midnight and I'll still wide awake from whatever they gave for this tooth pulling today.

Denial isn't conscious, so it doesn't mean knowing anything about anything. I only realize I was in denial after I become aware. So, denial in this sense isn't shaking my head back and forth saying no, no, no. The closest word I can put to it is rationalization.

((()))

Spiritual Seeker

OFTEN we are attracted to someone, in an unconscious way, that feels comfortable to our upbringing. Even If our parents weren't alkies, they may have been emotionally unavailable or dysfuntional in some way that makes the personality of an addict feel like chemistry to us now. Or we initially mistake the lifestyle for excitement.

BBQBOY

I think it is like the "perfect storm"......our dependents denial and our (the alkie) "art" of covering up our disease. After awhile our cover-ups are not as clean ( it happens to all alkies sooner or later) and our dependents denial starts to erode....and when these to trends meet.....BOOM... no more denial by both parties, I think that is what some people refer to as "all of the sudden"......just .02 worth...

fluffyflea

It's denial. When I would pop out of it it was like a big revelation.

Earthworm

embraced2000

it could be innoncence, also. it could be ignorance. it could be shock.

i knew about alcoholism, but thought it was like otis on andy taylor show. i had no, no, no idea of the depth, breadth, and scope of alcoholism. totally unprepared of the cruelty and massive destruction of the addiction. it happened slowly, so i was desensitized to so much of what was going on around me.

recovery was just as slow as the event of gaining the knowledge, for peeling away the layers really hurt.

chero

I knew a little about alcoholism(very little) but I had one of those 'he's an alcoholic' moments.
Why? Just like Denny said, DENIAL.

I think he had been progressing slowly for so many years and one day I was standing in my kitchen and it just literally dawned on me that this wasn't just some 'problem' but that he was a full blown alcoholic.

I wasn't trying to be in denial. I wasn't trying to excuse it away. I just didn't know. Ignorance WASN'T bliss. Life was hell. And letting myself finally admit that he was what I feared he might be--I remember it like it was yesterday.

Live

I simply did not, could not understand why he couldn't put down the beer anymore than you can understand how I can drink half a cocktail and then let it sit overnight until I empty it in the morning.
I knew he drank. I knew and understood nothing about addiction to alcohol.

Pick-a-name

WOW...I had to re-read....that is the way I felt about AH. Took me 20-some years to get there, and he hasn't gotten there yet. His progression is slow and many areas of his life are still very functional and look good to those who do not know him best and are not privy to his private moments. Image is paramont and so far his facade is holding in public. (drinks alone at home after work)

I can easily understand this.....his family is all the same. They take forgranted that everyone lives like this; that is what an adult "does". They find it odd that I would question this. My FIL went as far to ask me why I objected,since AH had a great job and made good money and hadn't been to jail. "His mother and grandmother always put their spouses to bed everynight (drunk)"....he seriously thinks that is SOP!

Hope this is not OT; I couldn't see it for years,and these dynamics just from HIS family played into it. My family doesn't drink much (except my one sister became a closet-drinker!) and here it is probably because it seems both of my parents' fathers were probably A's themselves....... Who knew!?

duet_4-8

I'd call it denial, too, I guess. Did I just wake up and realize it one day? Sort of......I would have to say that a little over a year ago, I had an epiphany and admitted to myself that my husband of 24 years, the father of my three boys, was a drug addict. Until that moment, I really did not call what he was doing 'addiction'.

I knew that for years and years he would cycle in and out of using drugs. I never saw him as an addict because to me that word conjured up a picture of some poor homeless person with track marks on their arms.

He was a very 'functional' addict for a lot of years. And being a child of the 70's, smoking pot and such was a part of both our lives for a long time. It was just that he could never seem to completely break free of it......

But now when I look back on our life together, I can see the gradual changes over the years. I like to compare it to a post I read here when I first found SR. It was about frogs. Seems if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of room-temp water and turn up the heat gradually, it will just stay there and die.......

MTBChick

When I met my ex-abf he told me that he didn't drink. I had no clue he didn't drink because he was an A. I had and still have many friends that are not A's but choose not to drink because they either don't like the taste, don't like how it makes them feel and so forth...so when he told me he didn't drink I didn't think much of it. During the course of our relationship he never drank around me EVER. Granted most of our relationship was long distance so when we were together I beilieve it was easier for him to not drink around me and keep up his cherades. By the time he came to me and told me he was an A, we had been together for about a 1 - 1 1/2 so I choose to be suporitve and learn what I could through Al-Anon about the disease. He also made claims that he was going to go to AA and beat this thing. What a load of crap at the time. They say hindsight is 20/20 and back when he told me he was an A I should have ended the relationshp and never looked back.

DesertEyes

I woke up one day and realized that _I_ was an alcoholic.

I was raised by drunks. Except for one uncle _all_ the adults in my family had some kind of insanity going on. All my school friends came from "toxic" families. As I grew older I associated with people who were like me; drunks. I _never_ associated the word "alcoholic" with any of my relatives, or with me. I thought they were just mean, evil people. I was just struggling to get by.

I had _no_ clue.

Then one day it all "clicked". I'd heard a few comments here and there. Been to a few AA meetings while still "brain-dazed". All the different pieces of the puzzle that had been floating around in my confused brain finally fit together and it all made sense. I've heard that refered to as a "moment of clarity".

I had that moment when I finally realized that if I just didn't drink I would then have a chance at straightening out the mess of my life. That if I took _one_ drink I would end up right back in the same hole again.

I had that moment when I finally realized that my biological family were _all_ alcoholics. That they chose _not_ to quit drinking and that is why they never were able to straighten out the mess of their own lives.

I had that moment when I finally realized that my ex-wife, who also came from a toxic family, had no intention of stopping her pill addiction and that would prevent her from geting her own life straightened out.

I still get moments of clarity. About other things in my life that need straightening out. Like why I was so emotionally attached to my wedding ring. The pieces of the puzzle just don't fit together right away for me. I'm a slow learner and I'm easily blinded by my own expectations and fantasies. Eventually, I do figure it out, and then it all makes sense in a sudden flash of understanding. Usually it takes a good fourth and fifth step, but sometimes it just takes hearing somebody share at a meet.

Mike

Barbara52

For me it definitely was denial. I wanted things to be different, I didn't want to see that I had chosen to fall in love with an alcoholic, so I pushed the awareness away and ignored it. I told myself that since he was a functional alcoholic it wasn't that serious. Then he got laid off and the disease came out a clear as could be. I told myself he'll get a new job soon and then it'll be ok. Well, he still doesn't have a job almost 2 yrs later, sleeps most the day, doesn't do anything around the house, starts drinking a couple hours after getting up. He rarely get falling down drunk but he's drinking every day, a lot.

Anyway, my point is denial worked for me for a couple of years and then reality open my eyes and I saw him for what he's always been, what I knew underneath he's always been.