Mango blast

AH is starting IP rehab tomorrow. He's stated several times over the past couple weeks that he knows he needs help and wants to quit drinking. Currently sober over 10 days again; last time he went just a couple days longer before relapsing. Symptoms in the past couple days of eating more sugar, not eating regular meals, and today being negative about everything. Same as the last two recent times of quitting and relapsing. He's looking for a way out of rehab, but he knows it's coming anyway. Part of me wants to say again that it's his choice whether or not to go tomorrow, but in his present state of mind he'd probably quit his job to get out of it. He's brought up a bunch of negative things about his job today and with each one I've kept out of it, while thinking to myself about how he's lucky they didn't fire him years ago, that they didn't fire him a couple weeks ago, that they are giving him the time and support on this and care about him. I know treatment needs to be his decision or he's never going to work at it, but now that he's this close I don't want to give him an out. Is that codependent?

Earlier this week he told a couple people that he's going to rehab. We never talked about telling our adult kids and our parents, but with telling others I thought he'd do that when we saw everyone over the holidays. Nope. As far as it seems, not a word about it, even though one son may be home for a day or two early next week and our oldest's sons wife is pregnant and the due date is 3 weeks away. Family week at rehab is during the second week of treatment. It'd be really good to have some of our adult kids there -- both for themselves and AH. I'll know more about that tomorrow. I don't know whether to force AH to talk to them about this or make it a non-issue right now and deal with it later. It shouldn't be left to me to deal with, yet his doctor is usually (so far) smart about this and advised me to let him to deal with his main battle without nitpicking about other things right now. This doesn't fall under the nitpicking category, except that it seems like it when I'm not sure if he'll even admit himself if I start making waves now.

Do I tell the kids or leave it to him? I plan on telling our 6 yr old son either tonight or in the morning. If the other kids call and ask about their dad, do I give them his new phone # at rehab? Do I let him invite them to family week and otherwise stay out of it, or invite the kids myself??

Mango blast

I finally realized I need to ask AH if he's talked to the kids yet. Then if the answer is no, start a conversation and hold firm that it's not fair to avoid it and leave it to me to deal with. Realistically, because of his attitude today, I may wait until we're 3-4 hours into the 6 hour trip there. If he chooses to turn around and not admit himself for treatment, so be it. I doubt that'll happen, but the choice still needs to be his.

Still working on how to articulate WHY he should tell the kids. I get it and I have a bunch of reasons bouncing around in my head, I just don't know how to say it. Please help me out here with ideas.

Seren

I think that sounds like a good plan...ask him if he has talked to the kids yet, and if not, then you will need to do so.

How and what you tell them probably depends on their ages and what you think they will be able to understand. "Daddy is sick and needs to go get help from people who really know about this disease" perhaps?

Seren

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...addiction.html

Oh, and I remembered this blog entry. It was written by someone names Buddy T., and is posted in cynicalone's blog. I thought you might find it helpful.