I rarely drank when AH was drinking and I haven't had anything during the 18 days that he has been sober. I likely won't be drinking in the future either.

The more my RAH husband drank the less I did. Someone had to drive home!!! Now that he has been sober 2 1/2 years, our home is alcohol free. I never drink anymore. Alcohol has caused me so much heart ache, I have no desire to drink.

Thanks for the great posts. I really appreciate the feedback.
CJ

I've brought this same topic up here in the past...curious as well about how others handle it. I still drink and did drink with my RAH. It was like everyone else's situation...I'd have one, maybe two drinks and he'd finish the bottle. I found myself getting irritated that I'd buy a 6 pack of my favorite micro-brew, which are way more expensive than regular beer, only to have it last one night.

I don't drink around him, except in a few social events where I had one drink and I asked him first. Because we don't live together, he has come over a few times while I was drinking, but I either dumped it or asked him if he was ok with me finishing it. I believe that if he isn't going to drink, then I shouldn't either in his presence out of respect. But that doesn't mean I have to completely abstain if I don't want to.

Now, having said that - I have caught myself drinking more through the rough patches of the past few years, and it has concerned me (and because I like beer, added some extra padding that I don't like, either!) Like Mike says above, I've spent some time really thinking about what is bothering me that instead. Why I would need a crutch? And like many here, I worry about myself becoming an alcoholic too, knowing it can become a slippery slope and who knows what my DNA is.

P.S. I had a martini for the first time in two years at Christmas dinner - had the same feeling of "wow this is so good!" And one was all for the rest of the night...it made me pretty loopy!

I can't drink. Many Asians don't possess the enzymes to digest alcohol, so the reaction is rather...unpleasant. My face gets red, I get heart palpitations, I get a rash, and then I either vomit or pass out, or both. Not what I'd call fun.

There is no alcohol in my house. That being said, I go out 2 or 3 times a year and will drink-out with friends or whatever. Sometimes to excess I will admit. The problem that I have with it is that I am a single parent. Do I really need to have a couple of glasses of wine and not be able to drive to the hospital or wherever if there was a problem with one of the kids? I need to be in a sober state of mind at all times at home with them.

I'm not an alcoholic so I drink whenever I want. That said, when I'm with my AW I often don't want to drink (PTSD?), and if I do I only have one or two. That said, I don't ask for permission and I don't flaunt it. I just order my drink and enjoy it.

I have had beers with other people in Alanon. What we do is, we have a couple of beers, talk and joke, eat some peanuts and go home. You know, like normal people.

Finally, I believe her sobriety is 100 percent hers, and that it is codependent and passive-aggressively controlling of me to not have a beer because she's a recovering alcoholic. Now, if I start to overdrink that's another story.

Cyranoak

My therapist said something similar when I asked if I should abstain at a wedding when my husband was around. She said that if he asked me to abstain that I could consider it but was not obligated to.

I enjoy having an occasional glass of wine at a restaurant or when I am out with friends. I've bought wine to drink at home but feel very wasteful because typically I'll have one glass and not want another for a few weeks...so it goes bad.

Alcohol is pretty much a social or a "special occasion" thing to me. I've heard that this is actually a pretty good way to view alcohol.

This made me laugh...not that its a laughing matter! But its just nice to 'meet' someone else who understands what allergic to alcohol means. My mother, sister and one of my brothers are exactly the same. My mother is full Korean. My poor sisters friends didn't really believe that someone could be allergic to alcohol. To make a long story short, she caved to them one night and drank a wine cooler. She ended up in the hospital from alcohol poisoning. From one wine cooler.
Definitely not fun!

I've gone through phases since leaving AXH. I'd drink because I wasn't the alcoholic, dammit! I've refused to have alcohol in the house because it's an evil force in the universe. Now, I've gotten to the point where wine to me is like... a BLT sandwich: If I decide I'd like it, I'll have some. But it's not something I agonize or think a lot about.

That said -- I've realized I like BLT sandwiches a whole lot more than I like alcohol. I've had maybe three drinks in the past year. But I consider it a victory to come to the point where I don't even worry all that much about it.

The only hard rule I have in my house is that I don't drink when the kids are with me. They have one parent who drinks himself into a stupor every night; they don't need to see their other parent even drink right now. Maybe they'll get to a point where they can have a "normal" view of alcohol, but they're not there. Even the clinging of ice cubes in a glass gives them PTSD flashbacks.

Good topic, something I struggle with and my AH is a drug addict and not an alcoholic. Even though he does not have a problem with alcohol, I worry about drinking at home. I go through periods where I will not have anything at all to feeling it is okay to have a bottle of wine every now and again. I always feel guilty for bringing it home. I don't know how I should feel about it. It's a messed up deal for something so small to be such a big issue in my mind.

I use to drink with him, I was a bartender for 5 years and i drank heavily until almost 2 years ago i quit drinking cuz i saw the person i had become and i did not like her one bit. So even after we got back together i quit and kept to it. I am pretty sure i am not ever going to drink again. He was always at the bar when i was pregnant and every time i drive by that bar i wish it would burn to the ground, It hurt me alot all the stress i went through the neglect he seemed to want a bottle and pills over our family we where starting. I now want to be a good parent and give my daughter the best life possible so i will never touch the stuff again. Good rideence to the booze for this momma.

I hardly ever drank for years during the years AH was drinking heavily, mainly because I was raising four children. But, I've never been a teetotaler--as much as I hated the excesses of alcohol and the impact on my life, I didn't see any reason to become an extremist in the other direction.

When AH went on the wagon for five years, I didn't drink at all. We built a life that simply had no place for alcohol. It was great. Cost of dinners was the price of the meal. Wow! No doubling of the bill due to alcohol consumption.

Then he fell off the wagon. Shortly after that I bought MYSELF a bottle of wine, simply because I wanted to enjoy a glass. It was such a momentous occasion, I wrote about it in my diary. I was 52 at the time, and I had never, ever, gone into a liquor store and bought wine for myself.

I enjoyed a simple glass of wine from time to time, but over the last few years, I started feeling the impulse to drink a glass or two of wine if I saw he was drinking, just because, as Laney said, I figured out that his drinking was easier to take if I had a couple myself. That was a red flag to me.

At this point in time, my official position on drinking is, as long as he's drinking, I'll do what I want to do. I don't enable by going to bars with him anymore. But I don't let his drinking affect my own drinking or non-drinking. He drinks and my actions have stopped being contingent on what he does.

BUT, when he is making an effort to be sober (as he is currently--he hasn't had anything to drink since New Year's and is currently on a health kick), I don't think it's fair to pull out a glass of wine at home.

It scared me a little to think I was drinking for the effect of relaxation, so, like Mike said, I'm trying to be very mindful of my one or two glasses of wine a week.

But I still really like a glass of wine on occasion and I don't think that's a sin.

I don't drink. I don't want to. I don't like seeing advertisements for alcohol, and for alcohol to be included in so many meals on cooking shows. I did drink when I was in my late teens into my early thirties. By the time I reached my early thirties, I just didn't enjoy the feeling of being altered by liquor mentally any more, and my body was letting me know it didn't like it. Would I drink if I wanted to with my H being A? I probably would, but not around him and not if he could smell it on me within the time to follow consumption. That's my choice on how I would treat it, not my preaching to anyone else.

My AH and I are amicably separated. I have a very firm boundary that he doesn't drink around me or the kids. Period. I do not drink when I am around him, ever.

Now that I am living on my own, I will have 1-2 glasses of wine per week, usually while I am cooking dinner. I find I am able to enjoy it for the first time, and it's WONDERFUL to open up a bottle of wine and know that no one is going to finish it the next day, and that I will probably wind up tossing half of it out. I even bought a bottle of brandy at Xmas to put in egg nog, and I enjoy looking at that bottle in the cupboard, knowing it will be there next time I look. No disappearing alcohol.

I live in wine country, and am enjoying being able to purchase some great local wines and know they will sit unopened until *I* decide to use them instead of my AH guzzling them down indiscriminately. He once drank a $100 bottle of wine that had been a gift from friends. What a waste!

I have 3 teenagers and there is a lot of discussion in our house about what is responsible alcohol use. I am glad to be able to model something different for them, ie, a parent who can enjoy a glass of wine and that's it. What they saw before is that once the wine was opened up, it was a free for all.

My exabf used to LOVE it when I drank. I think it's because "misery loves company", yknow? He would always try to get everyone drunk. i think that's something alcoholics do. It makes them feel better about their addiction. Hey! Everyone's doing it! It must not be so bad.

That's why I stopped drinking around him. Towards the end of our relationship, he was making an effort for our rel'ship's sake to cut down. So..we didn't have an alcohol in the house. He slipped up, I broke up with him after giving him an ultimatum, and we've been broken up ever since.

I drink on occasion-it doesn't bother me to drink or to be around people who are drinking.

i think i resented him so much because he made me feel like i couldn't drink because it was like "practice what you preach" kind of thing.... i am a social drinker. and i love to cook with wine...a little for the pot, a little for me. but i never brought alcohol into the house becasue he woudl do the same thing....drink the wine before i had a chance to smell it. and i could never offer a guest a glass of wine because he would have it gone as soon as i went to bed...so i gave up.

now i will have my own apartment and i can bring wine home and it will actually be there for an entire week!!!

hang in there.... you've done nothing wrong

My STBXRAH take away the R, stopped drinking and then would randomly bring me a bottle of wine. I think covering up whatever he was doing. I would not drink with him, but wanted to feel normal. It is so hard to just feel normal again. Now, I will drink wine at a gathering or on the weekend. Once in a while I drink a glass with dinner or while cooking when the kids are home. I want them to see what a normal person can do!

Reading the posts on why the significant others don't drink has really helped me see my mother in a new light, and it makes me feel sorry for her even more than I already did. She could never enjoy a drink when we were out to dinner or at a gathering because my dad would overdo it and get wasted. So she would have to drive home (sometimes he wouldn't let her drive even though he was wasted).

I never drank when I lived at home even though my friends experimented with alcohol in high school. Like many of you, I hated the sight and smell of it. But now I drink when I want. It took me a few years after I left home to not feel guilty for having a drink or even getting drunk. But I'm not an alcoholic. In recent years, I've even drank with my dad. I know it sounds crazy, but there are sometimes no other ways for us to bond. I'll join him at the bar when I'm home and have a drink or two and then can make sure he leaves without getting too drunk. Maybe it is a way for me to continue to monitor him, but at least I get to spend time with him. It helps that I live far away and don't go home often, I guess. However, I am very clear that he cannot drink in my home. That is a boundary I made a few years ago and I don't waver on that one.