SoberLink vs BacTrack
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SoberLink vs BacTrack
Hi all,
I posted this on the Alcoholism forum but thought I would try it here too:
I have a court order requiring my ex-husband to use SoberLink breathalyzer monitoring to provide continuous proof that he is sober during visits with my daughter. He has informed me that he intends to discontinue SoberLink and instead use another device called BacTrack because it is cheaper.
To the best of my knowledge, he is still actively drinking although he can manage to abstain for short visits with her.
Do any of you have any experience with portable breathalyzers, and specifically with SoberLink vs BacTrack? Or any other thoughts on this situation?
I posted this on the Alcoholism forum but thought I would try it here too:
I have a court order requiring my ex-husband to use SoberLink breathalyzer monitoring to provide continuous proof that he is sober during visits with my daughter. He has informed me that he intends to discontinue SoberLink and instead use another device called BacTrack because it is cheaper.
To the best of my knowledge, he is still actively drinking although he can manage to abstain for short visits with her.
Do any of you have any experience with portable breathalyzers, and specifically with SoberLink vs BacTrack? Or any other thoughts on this situation?
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Well he is right in that it's a lot cheaper, he can purchase the BacTrack for about the same as he pays for 1 month of soberlink.
The downside is how much interaction do you want with him for all this? BacTrac is a personal device, no outside monitoring, no facial recognition - so he will have to skype you every time he uses it when you are not actually there.
What if he can't "get skype to work".
The downside is how much interaction do you want with him for all this? BacTrac is a personal device, no outside monitoring, no facial recognition - so he will have to skype you every time he uses it when you are not actually there.
What if he can't "get skype to work".
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Surely if the Court orders him to use a particular product, he cannot then change it.
Sounds like some alkie mind game to me. Personally I would pass it back to the legal folk to sort out. Getting hooked in will cause you stress.
Sorry you have this going on.
Sounds like some alkie mind game to me. Personally I would pass it back to the legal folk to sort out. Getting hooked in will cause you stress.
Sorry you have this going on.
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Originally Posted by PeacefulWater12 
Surely if the Court orders him to use a particular product, he cannot then change it.
Sounds like some alkie mind game to me. Personally I would pass it back to the legal folk to sort out. Getting hooked in will cause you stress.
Sorry you have this going on.
Sounds like some alkie mind game to me. Personally I would pass it back to the legal folk to sort out. Getting hooked in will cause you stress.
Sorry you have this going on.
... yup. Full points to PeacefulWater.
This afternoon, less than 24 hours after announcing that he was going to switch to BacTrack, during a visit with Kid, ex texted me saying that he had a "technical issue" with SoberLink and so he was going to use his new breathlayzer. I responded that that was not consistent with our court order and this was a failure to comply. I got the angry ranting text about how I am stupid and my lawyer is incompetent.
Half an hour later, after Kid was home, I got a clean SoberLink test.
So SoberLink was working fine - until it suddenly wasn't. Ex tried to substitute his new preferred breathalyzer. When I said I wouldn't accept it as equivalent, SoberLink spontaneously started working again.
What. A. Load. Of. Crappy. Manipulative. Alcoholic. Nonsense.
Kid is in her room crying.
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omg, Sasha, I feel for you.
As others have said, hold firm. You got the SoberLink for a reason, court ordered.
It's not surprising that he would try to substitute something else and attack you for supposedly being unreasonable. My XAH verbally attacked and disparaged me often while he was court ordered to use Soberlink (while he had custody during the first year of our separation).
Like yours (apparently), my XAH got really proficient at managing his drinking around the tests. Which was fine with me, so long as our children were safe.
This is an aside to your issue, but one thing I realize in retrospect is that the year of testing was hard on me, as it tied us together in a very uncomfortable way.
Good luck to you--
As others have said, hold firm. You got the SoberLink for a reason, court ordered.
It's not surprising that he would try to substitute something else and attack you for supposedly being unreasonable. My XAH verbally attacked and disparaged me often while he was court ordered to use Soberlink (while he had custody during the first year of our separation).
Like yours (apparently), my XAH got really proficient at managing his drinking around the tests. Which was fine with me, so long as our children were safe.
This is an aside to your issue, but one thing I realize in retrospect is that the year of testing was hard on me, as it tied us together in a very uncomfortable way.
Good luck to you--
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Originally Posted by sauerkraut
omg, Sasha, I feel for you.
As others have said, hold firm. You got the SoberLink for a reason, court ordered.
It's not surprising that he would try to substitute something else and attack you for supposedly being unreasonable. My XAH verbally attacked and disparaged me often while he was court ordered to use Soberlink (while he had custody during the first year of our separation).
Like yours (apparently), my XAH got really proficient at managing his drinking around the tests. Which was fine with me, so long as our children were safe.
This is an aside to your issue, but one thing I realize in retrospect is that the year of testing was hard on me, as it tied us together in a very uncomfortable way.
Good luck to you--
As others have said, hold firm. You got the SoberLink for a reason, court ordered.
It's not surprising that he would try to substitute something else and attack you for supposedly being unreasonable. My XAH verbally attacked and disparaged me often while he was court ordered to use Soberlink (while he had custody during the first year of our separation).
Like yours (apparently), my XAH got really proficient at managing his drinking around the tests. Which was fine with me, so long as our children were safe.
This is an aside to your issue, but one thing I realize in retrospect is that the year of testing was hard on me, as it tied us together in a very uncomfortable way.
Good luck to you--
I just realized that the timing of this screwup is probably not a coincidence - ex was two days away from "graduating" to being able to have regular extended visits with Kid (including one weekday evening and a 12-hr daytime visits every second Saturday). So he screws up and gets busted back down to no regular visits, supervised only, and arranged in advance with me. He has done this before - sabotaged his own progress.
For a normal non-alcoholic, getting regular visits would be a good thing. But to the alcoholic brain, it means "Oh my God, I can't ever get drunk on Tuesday evening or alternate Saturdays again! My freedom to get wasted whenever I feel like it is under threat and must be protected! If I fail SoberLink, I won't have to go to that scary place! If I fail SoberLink, I won't have to commit to not being drunk!". If the visits are irregular and arranged on the fly, he doesn't need to plan his drinking - he can arrange visits on days when he feels like staying sober for a few hours, and stay out of touch on days when he feels like drinking.
My lawyer refers to this as the difference between organizing your drinking around your parenting (when you have a set visiting schedule which implies that certain times are off-limits for drinking) and organizing your parenting around your drinking (when you see your kid if you think you'll be sober for the next few hours ). Ex can more or less manage the latter, but he can't or won't attempt the former.
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Yes, and the "tied together in an uncomfortable way": if ex were to be compliant with SoberLink, there would be very little interaction with me. If he screws up and creates crises (sorry, I mean if there are "technical issues" completely beyond his control and totally SoberLink's fault and they just happen to occur at the moment he is supposed to test and did I mention none of this is his responsibility and it's all because of other people?), he gets my attention. And when I respond by saying "okay, SoberLink fail = visit is over per the court order", he gets an excuse to try and engage me in pompous text tirades about what an unreasonable POS I am and how I'm going to be destroyed by his lawyer, on and on. So in a horrible way, these fails enable him to keep demanding my attention.
I got a text about an hour ago saying he wants me to bring Kid to his place tomorrow after a sport event that she's competing in. For the first time in a long while, I realize that I do not need to explain myself. He knows he was noncompliant under the terms of the court order. He knows the consequences of noncompliance. He owns this problem. If his brain was working, he would know that his version of events is completely implausible. I do not need to JADE or even to reply. I can just ignore him. I am complying with the order.
If I were a truly compassionate person, I would see this nonsense as a manifestation of extreme social isolation, brought about as one person after another walks away from him because he's drunk and crazy. But I am not quite that compassionate.
I got a text about an hour ago saying he wants me to bring Kid to his place tomorrow after a sport event that she's competing in. For the first time in a long while, I realize that I do not need to explain myself. He knows he was noncompliant under the terms of the court order. He knows the consequences of noncompliance. He owns this problem. If his brain was working, he would know that his version of events is completely implausible. I do not need to JADE or even to reply. I can just ignore him. I am complying with the order.
If I were a truly compassionate person, I would see this nonsense as a manifestation of extreme social isolation, brought about as one person after another walks away from him because he's drunk and crazy. But I am not quite that compassionate.
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I agree that the court ordered method is the way to go. I ordered a BacTrack so that I can have *some* peace of mind at certain times, but it will be...such a joy to ask AH to "blow", if/when the need arises (don't have it yet). Anyway, if or since Soberlink seems to be the middleman and prevent you from being the police, that is good self-care for you.
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Nope. He is sneaky and manipulative as it is, I can just imagine how it would be with his new little device.
You are compassionate, to your daughter. He should try that as well.
Big hugs friend. Stay the course.
You are compassionate, to your daughter. He should try that as well.
Big hugs friend. Stay the course.
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Talked to my lawyer. Letter going out to ex’s lawyer today telling him he’s busted back down to supervised visits only. I will supervise 30 min/week in a public place; if he wants to see Kid more than that he will need to find a third-party supervisor acceptable to me. As all of our mutual friends have distanced themselves from and/or been burned by him, he won’t be able to find anyone. What a fun Christmas this is going to be.
I’ve been getting texts saying that Kid “wants to come over to my place”. I am ignoring them. Spelling and grammar has been deteriorating over the last 24 hours, and in the most recent message he couldn’t spell Kid’s name correctly and it ended with a random string of letters. You can fill in the blanks.
I’ve been getting texts saying that Kid “wants to come over to my place”. I am ignoring them. Spelling and grammar has been deteriorating over the last 24 hours, and in the most recent message he couldn’t spell Kid’s name correctly and it ended with a random string of letters. You can fill in the blanks.
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Sasha,
Thanks for posting this: "And when I respond by saying "okay, SoberLink fail = visit is over per the court order", he gets an excuse to try and engage me in pompous text tirades about what an unreasonable POS I am and how I'm going to be destroyed by his lawyer, on and on. So in a horrible way, these fails enable him to keep demanding my attention. "
It helped me to realize that that's still what's happening with my XAH, 3 years out.
Thanks for posting this: "And when I respond by saying "okay, SoberLink fail = visit is over per the court order", he gets an excuse to try and engage me in pompous text tirades about what an unreasonable POS I am and how I'm going to be destroyed by his lawyer, on and on. So in a horrible way, these fails enable him to keep demanding my attention. "
It helped me to realize that that's still what's happening with my XAH, 3 years out.
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Just a quick shout-out to my lawyer, who did a neat bit of detective work with the metadata from ex's various texts, BacTracks and SoberLink results. He was able to demonstrate that when ex wanted to stage a "technical issue" with his SoberLink connection, he turned off the wifi on his phone and moved to a location with poor cell reception, where his device predictably failed to connect to his phone.
Then he turned wifi back on and moved to a different location with good reception in order to text me from the same phone ten minutes later to say that SoberLink didn't work and it was all SoberLink's fault and here's a selfie of me blowing into BacTrack.
In other words, he's choosing locations where he knows SoberLink can't connect and also disabling his phone in order to pretend that there's a "technical issue", but he hadn't figured out that if he can send me texts and pictures of BacTrack, he should also be able to submit SoberLink tests.
This is the same person who, in the days when we first started using SoberLink, claimed he had forgotten his phone at the gym and so couldn't test - and sent the text message saying "I can't test, I forgot my phone, silly me" from the allegedly forgotten phone itself.
Then he turned wifi back on and moved to a different location with good reception in order to text me from the same phone ten minutes later to say that SoberLink didn't work and it was all SoberLink's fault and here's a selfie of me blowing into BacTrack.
In other words, he's choosing locations where he knows SoberLink can't connect and also disabling his phone in order to pretend that there's a "technical issue", but he hadn't figured out that if he can send me texts and pictures of BacTrack, he should also be able to submit SoberLink tests.
This is the same person who, in the days when we first started using SoberLink, claimed he had forgotten his phone at the gym and so couldn't test - and sent the text message saying "I can't test, I forgot my phone, silly me" from the allegedly forgotten phone itself.
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What can you say ?? Nothing really, just eye rolls. Normies would think we make this type of stuff up as it is so insane!
I am glad you shared about all of this palaver. I have learnt from it and applied it to my AH. Thank you.
I am glad you shared about all of this palaver. I have learnt from it and applied it to my AH. Thank you.
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Mine did things like that, too. He wouldn't pick up his phone for several hours, missing the testing window, and when I finally reached him, he'd claim he was out "walking on the beach" and forgot to bring his phone/breathalyzer. Yeah, right.
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It's all quite basic really. If it's important to see your child, you will do anything in your power to do so, including blowing into whatever device you need to to make that happen. The end. If he cannot do that, then it's really not his priority.
Ugh. Hang in there Sasha!
Ugh. Hang in there Sasha!
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