hopeful4

I say this gently because I hear the panic and hurt in your voice. What I think everyone wants you to understand is that you may lose your wife, and that she may never get sober. Unless she really wants it, badly, she will not recover, no matter what you do.

I know there is love there. It is absolutely tragic to watch someone you care about so much go down the rabbit hole of addiction. I agree that it is definitely not safe for her to be detoxing on her own.

I wish I had some better answers for you, that we could tell you what to do to make her well. Unfortunately, sometimes with addiction there is no answer.

kodi

She will stop when she reaches a crisis bigger than her need to drink. So far including her health there has been none. She needs to be so uncomfortable it overtakes the need to drink.

There is a big however though here. Taking in account how long her body and mind has been alcohol drenched I don't think she is any capacity to stop by will alone. Her brain in on alcohol autopilot - its damaged.

I know you dread her dying but how many days of drinking does she have left in her? Making a softer landing will not extend her days it will decrease it because it easier to drink. This is a crisis.

The matchstick and videotaping and the keeping her around yourself when she drinks although are meant as good intentions are really just ways to manage your own anxiety. None of it is affecting her alcoholism. Its feels better in the moment to do something instead of not doing anything. She NEEDs professional treatment for her addiction not home assistance.

I also think you are battle worn. I don't blame you . Anyone would be but as long as you are carry the burden for both of you it won't go away.

I hear the desperation but there must be a point of acceptance from you that this is her battle alone. And also acceptance that you might need to take the step away from her (separation/divorce) if you cannot tolerate anymore emotionally. She IS killing herself and you need to face the reality and prepare towards a life without her physically or if she lives without an addict in your life.

I am truly sorry for you. I hope you make it through okay. Please practice selfcare. It is just as important as anything else.

Berrybean

Have you tried speaking to these people? They apparently do NHS referrals... https://www.eata.org.uk/addiction/help/mansfield/
Have you spoken to the GP yet?

The other thing would be to chat to the AA hotline, which for the UK is 0800 9177 650. Most rehabs offer 12-step recovery (which comes from AA and the Big Book anyway). The local AA might be able to send a couple of ladies round to talk to your wife if you explain the situation, or give some other suggestions of how they could help locally. It's a 24-hour line. And of course, AA is completely free and anyone can go along.

BB

Hummer

I sincerely hope that the excellent advice given in this thread will enable you to move forward and make healthy decisions for you both.
Warm wishes and lots of support being sent your way.

Alan60

Hi
And thx I should say for all the help and replies even you Sylvie lol .

1. Yes I am thinking of going to AL Anon , I did go to Hettys but found it didn't really get me anywhere and to be honest I think this about Al Anon but I will prob give it a try.

2. Thx for the link to the support in my area , but it does and will like going to the GP only point us towards where she has been before.

3. She has tried Smart Recovery , I asked her last night why she quit after trying it for over 2 weeks . The answer I got is it didn't really do anything for me . She has also tried CRI which seems to close down on a regular basis and resurface with another name in a different location with EXACTLY the same people running the new one as before . And altho she wentthere for quite a while they kept moving the goal posts on rehab so much so I spoke to the manager and proper lost my temper . In turn her therapist had a go at her ( that's how trained and good they are ) which resulted in her drinking again.

Al Anon fills me with a bit of dread to be honest not because I wont open up I'm not afraid to cry like a baby in public ( to me that's a stronger bloke ) but I think its just going to tell me to leave . And I don't need help with that I already know what I need to know to be able to do that , but Al Anon cant help me with keeping my finances together if I go and all they will tell me is what is it you want your mental health or your standard of life ?.

Its all a very tricky situation.

I did ask my wife last night .....at night when you get over tired if I left you to it you would drink all the time like every 5 to 10 mins do you want me to manage your drink for you at night only . Her reply was yes please if you would I need help .
At the moment she is tapering nicely now and the worse seems over until another 4 weeks time we all know the drill or even sooner.

FeelingGreat

Good luck Alan. I can see you've thought through the financial implications of leaving, and I have some sympathy for that. It's what keeps many partners and spouses from getting out as things deteriorate.

If she's repeatedly asking to drink as you say, it sounds like there's some brain damage. It does happen after a long period of over-doing the alcohol. It might make recovery much more difficult without medical help.

You seem down on all the people who have been seeing her in regard to her drinking, but unless she's really on board with sobriety they're not going to be able to MAKE her stop, any more than you can. I don't know if you heard the therapist yell at her. If you didn't, understand that As will find any excuse to relapse.

honeypig

Sure looks like a nice solution to your problem and a polite request for badly needed help from AW, doesn't it?

What it really is, is setting YOU up to be the reason she drinks again/yet/too much. YOU have been given the power of being the "drug and alchohol czar", so while YOU are seeing it as the power to make her do what you want her to do, SHE is seeing it as an excuse to blame YOU for her uncontrolled drinking and drugging. YOU have been put in charge, right? So if she drinks/drugs to excess, SHE certainly didn't fail, b/c she is not in charge--YOU failed. YOU were in charge. And once again, she is not facing the results of her own actions...what will change? WHY would it change?

Berrybean

Has she tried AA? That is run BY alcoholics, FOR alcoholics. It worked for me because I was a queen of manipulation (poor little me, I couldn't possibly be responsible for my own drinking, I'm such a poor little girl in an adult word, boo hoo, lie lie lie). Thing is, you can't BS those folks in AA because they've all been there, seen it and done it. Other 'services' are run by 'professionals' which is all very well but for the fact that they can't spot those subtle little fibs that an alcoholic tells themselves like someone who's been through it can.

If she doesn't really want to get sober it will really pee her off. If she DOES really want to get sober it will be a relief to her, as well as scary. If you find an Open meeting you can go in with her if she prefers.

I think at the bottom of it though you need to find some acceptance of the way things are, and what your choices are. Following her around and being her conscience and will-power for the rest of her life really is no way to live. That is not a loving healthy relationship. She is an adult, not a child. We cannot just pass off personal responsibility for ourselves like that.

If you split up, of course there will be financial ramifications. But what do you want more? Fredom from this, and your life back? Or to keep your financial situation unaltered? You may not be able to have both. Only you can decide what is most important. In AA we use the serenity prayer A LOT.

God. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
Courage to change the things that I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.

You can even alter it a little to apply to people...

God. Grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change. (Your wife?)
The courage to change the person I can. (Only ever ourselves).
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I would say that the folk at AlAnon will not tell you to leave your wife. After all, they're all there because they love alcoholics themselves. They might suggest that you stop being her moral compass for her though, because that'enabling behaviour and allows her to take less and less responsibility for changing herself (and only she can decide to change and make those changes - thats the crux of it).

The thing is, it sounds to me like you have already decided what the GP will say. What your wife will do. What the people at AlAnon will say. But actually, you don't know really. Why not just go along with all the facts to give and an open mind, and a willingness to try what is suggested, even if what they suggest seems counter-intuitive to you? Lets face it. You can carry on how you are, but it doesn't seem to be helping you much in the long term. And nothing changes if nothing changes.

In addition to that, while your wife is still drinking and wanting you to take sole responsibility for her I really would take what she says with a pinch of salt about people 'having a go' at her and the like. This is not personal against your wife, obviously because I've never met her, but it is fairly standard behaviour for active alcoholics whose drinking is being threatened to find reasons for dismissing help that is available to get sober. Chances are she was just called out on some cowpoop or other and she didn't like it. That's kinda par for the course. Those elephants get dragged into view and people start to challenge our alcoholic perspectives - and it hurts at first. There is no way of getting sober and starting to recover that is going to comfortable, and emotionally pain-free for her. This **** hurts. But it's worth it. IF she wants it. But we've said all this before.

Anyway. I really do hope you keep badgering your GP. Chain yourself to the receptionists desk if needs be. Well perhaps not quite, but you know what I mean. Maybe take along the video footage you showed your wife and show it to them as well if you think they're not taking it seriously. Make sure they understand just how severe this has become. You may have to say some things that seem unflattering or even disloyal to your wife in there. So be it. Do what you need to get them to take this seriously.

Good luck. BB

Vivisectus

I recognize a lot of what you are going through. I have been down quite a bit of this road as well. Hunting for bottles. Checking receipts. Peering out the windows to see if I saw her stagger off to the shops. Checking the shopping bags she brought in.

Looking back, I wonder what I was hoping to achieve. How would catching her at it benefit me or her?

To my shame I even recorded her wallowing on the couch drunk once as well. I am not proud of that. It was part to show her what she was like. But it was also a punishment. A way to bring the consequences home to her. As if that was my job! It was not healthy behavior. I wish I had not done it.

I was not being a husband. A husband is an equal, a peer, a comrade. I was being a kind of dysfunctional parent. Like all dysfunctional parents I told myself I had no other choice: the bad behavior was so threatening and scary that I had to impose control. And like all dysfunctional parents, I made myself the focus for all of the resistance of the person I was parenting, and did a lot of damage to my relationship with her. It just kind of snuck up on me, one panicky decision at a time.

All the anger and controlling behavior did me no favors either. I am still just figuring out how to get past it - both in my relationship, and in myself.

I also tried to wean her off. That sometimes worked, if she did it herself, if she really wanted to get dry. Generally detoxing at home with the help of some Librium worked better. She would go to visit her GP when she was relatively clear and he would subscribe it for her.

Never if I tried to do it. She would just sneak in extra alcohol. And either way she would be back at the bottle soon enough. 24-hour every day drinking, about 4 bottles of wine a day, with a bottle of spirits tucked away somewhere that would have to be replenished also every second day or so. Severe withdrawal symptoms if she went more than a few hours without a drink.

Looking back, I wish I had done from the start what I ended up doing: simply giving her the living room to drink in, make sure the family finances could not be hurt too much, and focusing on keeping the kids as safe and happy as possible. I would confront her with the negative consequences of her drinking on everyone else, but I did not get into arguments about it.

I found her there covered in blood once when she fell and hit her face. Also, at one stage she ended up in hospital when she got drunk on the street and fell over.

But in the end, she found the motivation to start recovery, to commit to a program. It is still early days. Both is us have a lot of work to do.

I hope you guys get there too, without falling down too many of the same pitfalls.

rescuer

I too have been through the surveillance phase. Checking her bag, searching for bottles, calculating her schedule to see when she could sneak off to buy booze, sniffing the air every time I walked into the room. Coming up with all kinds of ingenious schemes to prevent her from going out or to try to avoid situations where she might be drinking. Driving around looking for her when she was drunk and lost on the streets, figuring out what could have happened during her day and how her drunken self would have reacted, and where she could have ended up and in what kind of trouble.

One becomes both parent and private detective.

Done the video thing. Audio recordings too. Going through my phone the other day I came across these very disturbing videos where she was drunk and I was both taking care of her and mocking her while recording, such was the codependency and built-up resentment and contempt. Also found lots of photos of her passed out on the floor that I had then shown her the next day to give her proof of how bad her drinking was.

As if deep down they don't already know.

Did I manage to manage her drinking? Of course I did not. Did I become more and more miserable and panicky and worried? Of course I did.

Things got worse. I finally learnt to 'detach' a bit. Just went to another room and tried to do my own thing (of course this doesn't completely work). Switched off my phone when she was out and when she got in trouble with the police someone else went and helped her. Meanwhile, she finally accepted that she had to quit, but didn't really put the effort into it, so would invariably drink again after a few days sober, and the consequences/behaviour would be worse each time.

Finally, I asked her to leave the house. She tried again but again relapsed (or never really quit, tbh). I wasn't involved. Then the REAL, genuine decision to quit happened. It had nothing to do with me.

The point that I made in my earlier post in this thread and that many other posters have made is that you can't MAKE her decide to quit drinking. I understand your concern that she is too far gone to make that decision herself. It's a really difficult situation and I can only offer you my sympathy and support. But I do think that you are not doing yourself OR her any favours with the current pattern. The 'tapering' is only allowing her to drink more, you are fully aware of this yourself. Handling her drinks for her is classic enabling.

In the long run, are the financial difficulties of separating worse than the constant misery and pressure of living with her when she is like this? I suspect that the idea of managing them in addition to the guilt of abandoning her makes any kind of separation almost impossible to think about. But for your own sake you might need to seriously consider it. A first step would be to at least BEGIN to detach. Let her drink if she wants to, don't try to control it because you can't really. And yes, you might have to face the guilt of her hurting herself (or worse). But you can't really avoid that either. She is hurting herself right now too. Indeed, sometimes the only way the A comes to the decision to stop is when the spouse/family stop taking care of them.

Again, I'm very sorry for what you are going through. Everyone here understands, they really do.