That above is what you posted. And the feedback you have been given is not what you want to hear. You are mired in his addiction as we all were at one time (trust me I have been you and making every justification for why I would not leave under the sun). Go read my old posts.

I am sorry you aren't feeling supported. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

You can not do anything to make him stop drinking. That's what you aren't understanding. None of us can. And the more you try the more addicted you become to him.

And I just have to wonder who is focused on your kids while all your energy is devoted to monitoring your AH's drinking?

Maggie -- I understand that you get protective of your husband. But believe me when I say the responses you are getting to your posts come from a place of great caring. Most of us here have been in situations similar to yours. Bending over backwards and putting our own lives on hold in order to help an alcoholic stay upright and functioning, or quit drinking.

The tips you are getting on how to get your husband to stop drinking are also solid: You can't. ALL of us have been there. Hoping there's this magic bullet, these words we can say, this particular rehab or treatment we can trick them into so that they become sober. There. Is. No. Such. Thing. For. A. Person. Who. Doesn't. Want. To. Stop.

I also recognize the backpedaling you're doing. Yes he kicked the dog but it's a big dog and it didn't get hurt. It's the same kind of minimizing I did with my AXH. Yes he drinks but only at home -- he's not one of those people who goes out and gets drunk in public. Yes he pukes but he does it in the bathroom. Yes he is rude but he's drunk and that's why.

For a normal person, harming an animal is crossing a boundary that you only cross when your life is in danger. A person who is capable of taking their anger out on a defenseless animal is also capable of doing it on a defenseless human.

My AXH never hit me. Until one night he was drunk and threatened to kill the entire family. When you live with an alcoholic that you love, you keep making excuses for them and keep backing up your "if this happens, I will leave" until your back is against the wall and you have nowhere to go.

I understand that you feel like people don't understand your situation. I felt the same way when I first came here. I felt like they didn't care about my husband, that they were just imposing their own bad experiences on him. In reality, the people here and at Al-Anon were the only people who really understood. I was so mad at the advice I got here that I stopped posting and only read. For years, I didn't post. But I kept reading. And as my husband's alcoholism got worse, the knowledge I had picked up made more and more sense to me.

I hope you don't feel ganged up on. Every single person here is only concerned about you and your children. Are we not concerned about your husband? Well -- we are. But we've also seen time and time again how you cannot force a person to get sober against their will. It's a bit like... saving people from a burning building. You can't save a person who refuses to leave. You have the ability to save yourself and your children. You don't have the power to make choices for your husband. If you did, none of us would be here.

Voicing concern for children who are witnessing the things you have described isn't a lecture. It is voicing concern for your children. You are the parent who is the healthier one and someone needs to be looking out for them.

You obviously WERE concerned about his kicking the dog bc you posted about it. And it IS concerning.

No one is telling you to leave him but you are living in an environment that you initially posted about saying it was awful so if you're feeling trapped and scared that's understandable.

Maggies you've gotten some great advice here and yes, some of it has been tough and very straight talk. But sometimes we need the tough talk.

My sponsor used to say: "I can baby you or I can bury you, what do you want?"

I hope some of the comments here have inspired some new thinking. It sounds like you need some of that.
I hear a lot of fear of change in your posts. But, you can change and you can improve your life.

I really hope you stick with the group here. Everyday there are miracles happening here: women and men who arrived here utterly broken but found the strength to change and as time goes on, it is hard to recognize those sad and hopeless newcomers in the powerful and confident people they have become!

Of course you did.............and now you have found out it's not possible for YOU to stop your husbands drinking.............only HE can control that and you'r not liking that answer very much.

And you are not liking the FACTS that HIS drinking has affected the entire family even the poor dog.

You seem to be stuck on only thinking abuse is physcial and by defending the fact he's not been physcial with any of you only the dog - that some how it's ok to deal with the rest of it all.

I got really tired of being the "human shield" between my AX and the rest of the family (including the animals). It is an absolutely exhausting job to take upon yourself. I also got really tired of trying to monitor and manage his drinking so he could meet HIS responsibilities.
I felt stuck for a long time, like there was no hope, no way out. But that's because I kept waiting for HIM to change, stop drinking, admit he had a problem. He never did any of those things. He is still drinking, even after losing his family, job, everything in his life except alcohol.
I kept myself stuck for a long time waiting for him to get better. But I finally reached out for help and now I am the one getting better thanks to Alanon and individual therapy. My kids are safe and I don't have to walk on eggshells, clean up a grown man's urine, wake up to a houseful of empty beer cans and feel the burning shame that used to consume me when my four year old would wake up and start building a pyramid with them like they were toys. I realized that he was going to grow up thinking all that was normal, acceptable behavior unless I made a change.
Please take care of yourself. People get emotional here because they care and are concerned for you and your family. I know how hard it is to be doing your best to manage an impossible situation and still have everything fall apart.
Hugs and strength to you.

Wait.. what?!?! He's the one that failed you and your children. A responsible, mature adult with parental responsibilities does not let their life get so out of hand like this.

Here's a thread that served me well. I followed every step to the letter as though my own sanity and emotional health of my children depended on it.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...l-problem.html

Here's another great one, the "sticky section" is a wealth of help for those willing to open their minds.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...cters-1-a.html

Not wanting to be a failure kept me in my marriage for a decade. Jazzman is correct -- you are not the failure.

maggies,

I know you are hearing a lot of things here that you don't really want to listen too, feeling like you are being lectured, and also perhaps feeling like you are being made out to be the bad guy. You aren't.

You aren't. You are in a long term situation, and you have developed a way to cope with it, and it is difficult (to say the least) to change your coping skills.

You have put a lot on your shoulders. You finally reached out for help, I think because you didn't know how to cope anymore.

I'm not going to lecture you, I am going to offer you the support that you came here to seek. First thing though, you can't change your AH. I'm sure that your life has become unmanageable. So you are seeking help, or even just someone to vent to, someone who will listen to you, someones shoulder you can cry on, and in time, someone you can laugh with.

It's hard sometimes when you come to a forum and you may feel that you are being attacked. I belonged to a different forum before this one, it was an abuse forum, I felt I wasn't moving quick enough, learning fast enough, leaving fast enough, so I stopped posting. I don't want that to happen to you. Why???? I lost my support system. I kept quiet longer, I isolated myself longer. All of those things were detrimental to me.

I strongly believe now that we have to get our own feet planted, get our own heads together, and then we will take the action that we need to take.

I'm sure you already "got it" from your replies about your kids and your dog. So, I'm leaving that alone. I know that you are trying to do the best you can with the tools that you have now. What I want to suggest is that you stick around and learn new tools for yourself, so that with the new tools you can make a better life for yourself, children, and hopefully your AH. But remember, you have no control over AH.

Thank you for sharing your story.

maggies,

the irony of my posts to you is that i was told much of what i am telling you by some wonderful wise posters here over the last 3 years and i had the same experience you voice (feeling unsupported, attacked, lectured etc...). but after some time and some acceptance on my part of the truth that i wasn't willing to face, i realized those who questioned me and called me out and challenged me were only looking out for me and my kids and had never been against me at all...

like you, i was defensive, scared, felt like i had failed at marriage, afraid to stay, afraid to leave... and so i put my hope in coming here and getting an easy answer about how to fix things...

when i didn't get the answers i was hoping to hear and instead got bitter truth that i didn't want to face i got upset. but deep deep down i knew they were right and i kept coming back...

for a long time i did NOT want to hear, accept or act on the truth that others were speaking (from their own experience) because as bad as reality was in my life with an A, at least it was familiar in some way...

and i will have to live the rest of my life knowing that my choice to not leave sooner than i did DID cause my daughters (now 8 and 6) irreparable harm... the stress of living in an alcoholic home on kids cant be underestimated... and i and many many others here learned that the hard way...

i see you headed down the same path as me and many others who decide much much later that it was time to leave sooner than you did and i guess i was trying to implore you to do what i wish i had done sooner and make some changes...

im sorry if my posts came off as uncaring and harsh.

Maggie,

YOU CANNOT MAKE HIM STOP DRINKING! Alcoholism doesn't work like that. You have not said if you have read up about the disease. I think from what you are writing that you have not, because if you have been educating yourself about alcoholism then you would know that you cannot make him stop. Why not read about the disease? So many posts have reading material ideas to help you. You seem to not be taking the help. That of course is your choice.

Your husband is mentally abusive to everyone in your family. You are minimizing his abuse. All 3 kids see he is abusive and are suffering the effects of it.

Maggie, I wish you well, but you have to take responsibility for your situation too. You are choosing to keep yourself and your kids around a very sick man, all the while making excuses for him. Your husband is NOT the victim, your kids are. Try focusing on your kids not the alcoholic.

Maggies, I'm so glad you found us but I am so sorry for the reason you did.

As many have said already that they have been where you are right now well I have been there too. My life use to be whether I was sleeping or awake in constant crisis with always the thought of what is going to happen next with my AH. I was stretch so thin taking care of the kids, household, finances and the biggest job of all was cleaning up after my AH, ugh. I was consumed with him, with his binges, driving so drunk he would fall out of the car when he got home, his anger, his puking and peeing anywhere that was available but always hoping beyond hope that surely there was a pill, an answer, a book, someone that would make him realize what he was doing to himself and us, but that never happened until I reached the point where I thought I was going insane, isolated and so alone until I found SR and though I didn't like anything people had to say to me, in time I knew it was the truth and I had to do something about mine and my kids life. Keep reading and posting and know we are here for you.

OK, folks, if you are triggered by this thread, please take a breath and take a break from the keyboard for a while.

Hi maggies, How are you doing today? I think we all understand completely what it is like to live with the stress, anxiety, and fear that comes with living with an active alcoholic. It is not a fun place to be.

I wish that I could tell you some magic word, some fantastic rehab program, some simple formula you could use to get your husband to stop drinking. But there is no such thing. I hope you can encourage him to seek recovery, but unless and until he grabs hold of it with both hands and hangs on for dear life, there is nothing you can do or say to get him to stop drinking. If he wants to drink, he will continue to find ways to do so no matter how many hospital stays, detox visits, or rehabs he attends. Each contact with recovery will hopefully teach him something, but the motivation has to come from within.

I will never tell you to stay or go, but I do hope you will read about boundaries, what they are and how to put them in place for yourself and for your children. You and they deserve a peaceful and joy-filled life without the roller coaster of active addiction.

Peace, S

As the child of an alcoholic and an alcoholic in recovery myself perhaps I can offer what it looks like from the other side.

I decided to get sober myself last summer, no DUI's, legal, money or marriage issues. I grew up in an alcoholic home, my mother has been sober 37 years, so I knew where I was headed. I knew a lot about alcoholism, my mother got sober when I was 13, I spent a lot of time in AA open meetings with her because I was petrified she would relapse.

To this day I struggle with PTSD, hyper vigilance, trust issues. I was the oldest and during high school I was the bratty kid who pushed the envelope. What I couldn't tell anyone was what it was like at home. See, it was tough and confusing even after my mother got sober. It wasn't like a switch flipped and all of a sudden she was sober, in fact if anything my years of never knowing what lurked behind closed doors had primed me well for the perilous anxiety of waiting to see if her new found sobriety would stick. And then there was the ongoing shuffle as we all tried to figure out just what exactly our roles were in this new domestic system. None of us really wanted to trust it, I certainly wasn't going to let a woman who I used to put into bed with black eyes tell me what to do….

Getting sober is a tiny point in what usually proves to be a very long journey. Early sobriety is considered the first two years, and sadly, a lot of us don't make it.

And, even with my detailed knowledge of the disease, I still managed to end up with a problem myself. I got off the elevator a lot earlier than my mother, but this will be something I manage every day for the rest of my life. It is crucial to find support because there is no cure, and even, in the best of circumstances, if an alcoholic gets and stays sober, it will always be a part of our life.

I can also tell you that no one, I mean no one, could have persuaded me to get sober. I might have said the right thing, or allegedly expressed my remorse in the past, but it was usually the means to the end of protecting my drinking. I have been married for 17 years to a wonderful guy, but when it came to drinking, it was the one thing I lied about with no guilt.

I got sober purely because I hated what I knew I was becoming. And, most importantly, because while I know my husband loves me, I know he loves my daughter just a little bit more, we both do. And I know that if my drinking got to a point where it was impacting her he would have given me an ultimatum. I didn't wait for that to happen but knowing that I stood to lose it all plays a very big part in my recovery.

I am mentioning this because I think that a lot of time staying and loving an alcoholic without limits, ruining your own and your children's lives is not the honorable or loving thing to do. It is sad that you have in essence ended up as a single parent, as the saying goes,let go or be dragged, you can"t save him by drowning with him. You didn't ask for this, but you also can't fix it. I didn't ask to be an alcoholic, and I can't fix that fact, but I can be vigilant in treating it with the only cure known, sobriety.

It s*cks, big time, it is a ravenous, horrid disease. You mentioned your husband doesn't think he is an alcoholic because he only drinks beer. He needs to get educated, fast. But not by you. It has never been so easy to find out about addiction, information and an education can be sought from the comfort of your own home, but there needs to be a willingness. I would argue that there needs to be more than a willingness to get sober, there needs to be an element of desperation. If the path is buffered for an alcoholic he won't have any reason to figure it out, especially if we are in the later stages like it sounds like your husband might be. If we are being shielded from consequences then in essence, the entire family is working in tandem to support the habit. My family did that growing up, we all orbited around the active alcoholic, while my father hid in the garage building boats acting like everything was fine. I still have an enormous amount of resentment towards my father for enabling my mother for so long.

If my husband was willing to not only listen to my excuses but help me embellish them I cringe to think how far down I could have gone. (and there is no guarantee ever that I don't have further to fall).

Please trust that as frustrating as this disease is, there is also a lot of similarity between most of us, regardless of our backgrounds. The passion you see demonstrated on this thread is simply because most people have taken the tougher road, you are benefitting from those who have suffered before you. It is a lot to take in, you are brave for being here, and your children are lucky that their mother is beginning to take steps to take back a life that not only do they deserve, but that you deserve too.

Your entire family is bound by this disease. You can not help him if he does not want help, that is the reality.

Jaynie, I want to thank you for sharing that. I appreciate your (and everyone's) journey so much, and am grateful for the opportunity to learn from you.

Maggies, I am sending you good wishes, and I hope you will stick around this forum. I honestly, truly owe my sanity to Al Anon and groups like this.

As a reminder please review the information on this link.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ng-abused.html

Maggie is a new member with only 18 posts.

I wish I could double, triple or even give more thanks to Seren's post. If you are feeling triggered, walk around the block, don't respond.

This is a newcomer here. We do not have to push our "rightness" down her throat. I think she just needs the comfort of being able to open up about things. Sometimes what does our "rightness" actually mean?????? That we made someone too embarrassed, or ashamed to post? So then this person might stop posting, when they really do need help???

Sorry, I was just venting, because it was things like this that caused me to stop seeking help for another 4 years.

Mods - If this is deemed not helpful, please delete it

Maggies-

I don't have children so I cannot share that experience.

Right after marrying my husband he had his first really scary, really bad drinking episode.

He kicked our beloved Golden Retriever.

He could not remember it the next day. I later learned that him not remembering was a sign of a black out, and is a sign that his drinking was pretty significant. All I remember from that experience was shear terror. He did not remember, but almost nine years later that is one of the scariest experiences of my life.

He would NEVER kick or hurt the dog sober. He never indicated he would hurt me, but later I realized that he was often in danger of hurting himself when drinking (weather purposeful or not).

It took me almost five years of more drinking and more problems (and never fully addressing that first incident two weeks into our marriage before I got help or support for myself). I thought for all of that time that somehow that drinking episode was my fault. I thought that I had married him so I needed to take the good with the bad and tolerate it.

What I did not realize was that becauase of that incident I walked on eggshells all the time. I was terrified of when he would drink again, and if something like that would happen again (it did not), but plenty of other scary things did.....getting out of a car at stop lights, punching windows, driving while drinking etc.

I later learned that social workers/domestic violence workers actually have workshops on reports of abused animals.....because often it is an indicator of something more serious going on at home (it may or may not be alcohol related). That was a scary realization for me what I tolerated and the red flag I ignored.

I later learned that regardless of what I did that night (or any other night). I could not stop my loved ones drinking, or what happened to him when he did drink. It was not becuase I did or said anything incorrectly, or because I was present, it was because he had a drinking problem.

That for me took a lot of time, and a lot of support. I got some from here at SR, a great deal from Al-Anon (again five years after I first realized there was a problem), a therapist(s) etc. I did a lot of reading, and a lot of learning about addiction, grief, family of origin, affairs etc. I also got massages, got outside etc.

It was hard, and scary and overwhelming at times, but I am here to say it was worth it. I could not have made any of the changes I made without that support, and I could not make any of hte changes I needed to make until I was good and ready. The results have been so worth it, for me to lead a healthy and happy life. Worth it to be able to make decisions based on what is best for me (which I could not do previously)

What kind of support do you have for you right now Maggies? We are all on this board because we have walked a similar path. I have come to realize as much as I have not liked the learning the lessons have been invaluable....but I could not have done it without support.

Hugs

[QUOTE=redatlanta;4564482]
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I think thats why she is coming here now, because she doesn't think its normal.