pinkflamingo

He wants to drink. He says he's bored and he's too young to sit and do nothing. We don't have the money to do dinner or shopping. But he wants to sit in the garage and get drunk. He says it relaxes him. He's not going to stop. Maybe drinking and driving but not drinking. I can't do this.

He's been to 4 AA meetings. He thinks they aren't for him. He knows he has a problem but doesn't think it affects his life. She made a mistake with the DUI. He binge drinks. Drinks a **** ton on weekends.

I don't know what to do.

Hadassah

You can't do anything but take care of yourself. Is this your husband? If so I would , knowing what I now know,leave. But that's just me. You do what you need to do to take care of you. You can't change him, just you. God's blessings,H

Freedom1990

The bad news is he is going to do what he is going to do.

The good news is you can seek your own recovery from the effects of his alcoholism, and start making healthy changes in your life for you.

Learn2Live

My Dad's an alcoholic. When I was a kid, I'd open the refrigerator door and there would be no food and no milk but two six packs in there. I'm over the age of 40 now and he is STILL sitting there drinking and smoking, spending money on beer and cigarettes while my 70-year old mother still struggles to make ends meet.

You have a choice. Live with it or don't live with it. Every morning when you wake up, ask yourself the question, "Do I want to live with this today?"

nodaybut2day

You didn't CAUSE it
You can't CURE it
You can't CONTROL it

He wants to drink. So be it.

Now what about you? What do you want? How are you going to get there?

pinkflamingo

Yep, that's totally us. He says he doesn't have a problem like all the others in his meetings. He can stop. He says. He says he just wants to drink sometimes. I know it will snowball from there.

smacked

He can drink if he wants to drink.. and as long as he wants to he will. What are you willing to live with?

acdirito

Dear Pinkflamingo, You start by doing one step at a time.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Study of these Steps is essential for our recovery of our codependency and enablers. The principles they embody are universal, applicable to everyone, whatever our personal creed. As codependents, we strive for an ever-deeper understanding of these Steps, and pray for the wisdom to apply them to our lives.

There is a very helpful thread here on SR that is worthy of reading:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ame-blame.html

:ghug3

When we surrender to our higher power, the journey begins.
A journey of a 1,000 miles begins with the first step.
Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life problems at once.
Through our own recovery programs, we have come to "expect miracles"!

ItsmeAlice

I've read many stories on these forums of alcoholics who go to AA and come back saying it's not for them, they can control their drinking where the other members can't, they've been told they can drink on the weekends and not be an alcoholic, or some other such nonsense. Over time I've learned that all that protesting has only meant they didn't like it because it's for alcoholics who want recovery and no matter their brand of alcoholism, they don't actually want recovery.

My XABF would sit for hours on end getting drunk. He had periods where he drank less and times where he drank for days. He would binge dramatically for a time then drink a six-pack a day. He got fired from jobs, he got progressively verbally abusive, near the end he began threatening to hurt me, and was abusive with our pets.

All the while the closest he ever came to acceptance was to say he "was hitting it too hard," "may have a problem," and "can't drink like he should." How should you drink really?

Accepting that a label is just a label and I couldn't make him say he was an alcoholic was a big deal for me. It set me free. I made my peace with his choice to continue drinking and began focusing on how I was going to live with a man whose primary focus in life is a bottle leaving anything else to fall behind it. Of course, this begged the question whether I wanted to live that way, but I let that answer come to me in time.

For me, it's about...
Accepting things as they are and working to cope where I can.
Detaching from what I cannot change and not letting my emotions be driven by them because I can decide what I let upset me.
Making healthy decisions for me even when it doesn't serve the wants of others.

Please keep reading and posting. More answers will come to you as you journey through your own recovery.

Peace to you

Alice

bigchief

im not going to go into depth, but in simple terms you either accept a life of pain as yr feeling now........or jump ship and find someone better......he isnt going to give up thats obvious as he said AA isnt for him.....sorry for being blunt but sometimes we dont like what we hear, the other answer is imagine if it was yr friend telling you the same story about her guy what would you tell her to do?

acdirito

One of the traits of codependents is we live with the illusion that those who have hurt us can be saved. Just like we do in a disruptive childhood, we perform to please in an effort to get those who have damaged us to change their ways. When the change we want is not forthcoming, and our loved one's do not live up to our needs, we turn our disappointment and anger inwardly and invalidate our worth.

I have read numerous posts from codependents and enablers who think their lives will be magically fulfilling if only their love one quit drinking or if they dump their current alcoholic and start another relationship, unfortunately, unless we are willing to work on ourselves by either a recovery program or through individual therapy, we are just allowing the cycle of alcoholism to continue. One of the things about maladaptive human behavior is that it tends to repeat itself. The essence of healthy change is not doing the same things repeatedly that do not work. We must be creative in our quest for new thinking and behavior if we are to recover from the wreckage of our relationships.

We need to see our lives through a new prism. We have accepted the shame by those who had no capacity to meet our needs. We need to let go of the need to try to fix our relationships that are irreparably damaged. We need to begin processing the truth that our self-identity is in no way connected to other's evaluation of us.





When we surrender to our higher power, the journey begins.
A journey of a 1,000 miles begins with the first step!
Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life problems at once.
Through our own recovery programs, we have come to "expect miracles"!

steve11694

Dear Pinkflamingo,

You are living with an ADDICT. They believe it is no problem cause alcohol is a legal drug. Truth is you may as well be living with a heroin, meth, opiate, etc etc, addict as the behaviors can be quite similar.
To boot Alcohol is one of very few drugs that can kill a healthy person in withdrawal. Alcohol also kills 5X as many as all illegal drugs combined.

We try to hold on, rationalize, deceive ourselves, anything to not lose the person we think we love/used to know, etc etc. We take care of them, cushion their falls, cover up for them; only assists them to drink more.

Some of us choose to stay in the darkness with the living dead, some of us choose the daylight.

Really in your hands.

TeM

Alcoholism seems to be a very selfish disease. My own AW has been spending anywhere from $75-$100 a month on alcohol, during a time when we've been struggling financially.

Now, I know we all make foolish spending decisions, but it seems to me that you might as well be setting fire to the money as wasting it on alcohol. Add to that AW's medical expenses from her recent fall, and alcohol is punching a hole in our family budget. Yet, AW will not consider quitting.

It's difficult to understand.

fourmaggie

I so love this group...!!