Originally Posted by chrissy81

Thank you for sharing and I'm so very sorry for what you have to go through. Your wife sounds like my mom - while she does not have any specifically diagnosed mental illness, I'm very certain that there are a couple of issues that contribute to her drinking, which only began about ten years ago. She follows a similar pattern - is fine and productive until around 3ish, or the 'witching hour' as my sister and I refer to it, and that's when we get weird emails that have one too many typographical errors in them (and my mother is normally not the type to make those errors), or strange posts appear on Facebook, etc - my sister is the super-lucky one who actually gets strings of nasty, hateful, unprovoked emails from her. Apparently, my mother doesn't love me enough to take out her issues on me, so I guess I'm thankful. And then we find out later that when my father comes home, she is in fact drunk. We're adults and so we do not live anywhere near to my parents but when my mother comes to visit and stays with my sister (she owns her own house, I do not), it is the same thing - sister goes to work, leaves mom alone who does chores and then sister comes home to find her drunk (from wine she most likely had to purchase by walking to the nearest convenience store, since when she visits, she takes the train and we have to chauffeur her around). It's not the "typical" alcoholic presentation; she doesn't need a drink in the morning and doesn't drink consistently throughout the day. But clearly, it's still abuse and still a problem. I feel so terribly for my dad - my parents are in their 60s and have been married for 37 years. This is not what my dad signed up for.

I'm sorry I don't have anything helpful to say except thank you for sharing.