feelingalone43

My AH, as many of you know, is trying to self-control his drinking. He stopped drinking the bourbon and brandy, and is now drinking low-alcohol beer. He claims that the longer he goes without, the less the urge to have it. Now he is even skipping beer days, and just drinking tea or water sometimes. He is not hiding it anywhere, and I don't smell it on him on these days. I see him drinking less and less, but I still have a HUGE trust issue. I have heard of alcoholics relapsing without participating in a program, and when they do participate.

The low-alcohol beer only has been going on for more than a year, and he has not relapsed back to the harder stuff. I hear so much about alcoholism being progressive, but can recovery be the same?

The trust issue is being addressed in marriage counseling (when the counselor gets done asking all his background questions about our childhoods). I am also distrustful that he can just all of a sudden decide not to be angry at the world, but he claims it is because he is now thinking with a clear head and not through a haze of fog, that he realizes now that his behavior and treatment of others was so wrong.

I think I am just super sensitive and suspicious. We hear so often that if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true. I do not want to be made a fool of.

Florence

My AH, now RAH, would do this. It was usually a window in his drinking pattern when he was feeling guilty and trying to control the drinking. At first I really watched this and was hoping for big, dramatic changes, but the nature of the disease is that most folks can't keep up this pattern.

When my RAH quit-quit, it was after a big intervention, a hard emotional and financial fall, and involved him committing himself to a rehab for thirty days. I still try not to have any expectations around his sobriety.

Just my experience.

Are you making time for yourself?

Summerpeach

in my personal opinion, no it cannot.
Addicts have a base of mental issues and unless one deals with those and treats them, addictions just progress.
I have very little hope and faith in anyone healing from serious addictions. Of course I've seen it and have friends who have been sober YEARS, but they go to al anon and AA 3- 4 x a week to keep their "illness" in check.

Freedom1990

For a true alcoholic like me...no.

Learn2Live

No, feelingalone, the disease of alcoholism does not go backwards. You cannot unwind alcoholism or addiction. It is not just a psychological addiction, it is also a physiological addiction. Alcohol consumption actually causes the cells of the body to change and to "need" alcohol. Alcoholism is a progressive disease that cannot be cured but can be halted, but only by complete abstinence. Your husband is trying to control his disease, but as we accept here, You did not Cause it, you cannot Control it, and you cannot Cure it.

dollydo

There is no back button when it comes to addiction. One is either in the throws of addiction or not. I personally have never seen a white knuckle recovery program that works long term.