SuedeSeven

Hello all. I’m a new member, currently both grateful this group exists and angry that I have reason to have found it.

My husband was sober for almost 3 years and doing well. 3 weeks ago he relapsed. Since then I’ve quickly been losing my mind. He went to detox for a week and seemed ready to come home. Ever since I can’t get over the idea that he’s drinking and I don’t know it. It’s driving me crazy not to know what’s true and what’s yet another lie. I have a habit of searching a few places around our house for bottles. Places I know he tends to hide vodka. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I can’t seem to help it. Today I found an empty bottle in a place I know didn’t have one a couple of days ago. I confronted my husband and he denies it. Adamantly denies it. I had the empty bottle in my hand and he maintained he had no idea how it got there. Why tell the lie? I clearly know it’s not true. I’m literally holding the evidence.
Honestly I think this may be the end of our marriage. I love him so much, but we have a young son and I refuse to have him grow up with a father who is actively drinking. It’s the absolute last thing I want to do, but I feel like he is making the decision for me. I’m afraid and angry and hurt and simply in disbelief. He can’t actually be doing this, right? He can’t know this will cost him his family and still choose to do it. I know that’s what addiction is and the evidence is in my hand, but I just can’t accept it’s true.

I don't know what to do.

FeelingGreat

Hi SS, what an awful situation, especially as you love your husband and want to save your marriage.

At least you've got a good grasp on reality when it comes to the fact that he's drinking. Are you able to tell without seeing the bottles, just from his behaviour?

I have personal experience of an A lying in the face of actual reality and judging from this forum its very common, if completely baffling. But you know what you know; he doesn't have to admit to it.

Are you in a position to attend Al-anon? It may not answer your questions but many posters have found its a life-saver with the stress of living with an A. You might also think about seeing a counsellor or even talking to your doctor. I know this doesn't help with the circumstances you're in, but it can help for you to talk to someone.

SuedeSeven

Amusic

maia1234

SS.
Welcome back. I do show that you have been on SR since Feb of 2012 so this obviously is not your first rodeo with an addict. I am sorry for all that you have gone through and how wonderful that your husband was sober for 3 years, what a blessing.

So now... what is your plan? He is drinking again and lying about it. Wash rinse and repeat. You have been down this road on and off for 7 years according to your joining date and 1/2 of it he was sober. You know how this turns out. Confronting an active addict is crazy, of course he is going to deny it. This is what addicts do. He doesn't have a problem with his drinking, you do, so it is technically your problem to fix, not his.

What are your options for your problem. You can hit an alanon or open aa meeting as said above. You can reach out to an addiction therapist to help you navigate these waters again. You can live with his active drinking and "mind" your own business or you can make plans to move on in life. You are married to an addict sober or active. Until he realizes and accepts his addiction nothing is going to change, as you already know. Do you want to wait around, question everything he says and does? This is where you are in your life right now. I can tell you I did wait around..... 34 years and I was never blessed to see one day of sobriety. I finally had enough respect for myself and divorced my addict. (best thing I ever did for myself and kids)

You have many options, you need to educate yourself on those options and execute a plan. This does not need to be done today, tomorrow or next month. You have a child to take care of, he doesn't have the choices you have of staying with an active addict or not. My kids (grown up now) wished that I hadn't stayed together for the "sake" of the family. But I can't look back and change my life.

Read all over this forum. Go to the adult children of alcoholics forum and see what these peoples lives were like growing up in a crazy alcoholic home. Read the new to recover programs and see how the addicts struggle with their addiction. Once you do you homework you will be in a better place to make a calculated decision on whats best for you and your child.

Good luck my friend, and I am so sorry that he relapsed.

rescuer

I'm so sorry for what you are going through. The uncertainty is horrible.

My situation is somewhat similar in that my AW was sober for nearly a year and then relapsed, and then managed a couple of months sobriety and then drank again, then went for a one week detox and then drank again. I have decided I've had enough - I can't live with the uncertainty. She seems to be on the right track now but it's too soon to tell - but in any case I'm getting off the merry-go-round. I think it might even be the best thing for her.

No one can know exactly what's going on in his head, of course, but I will say this: alcoholics are MASTER manipulators. There was a period (long before my AW even admitted she had a problem) when I had just begun my policing phase and was still feeling guilty about it (of course much later I realised the policing was useless and only another symptom of codependency). So, she would come home and deny she'd been drinking and deny that she had any booze on her. And I'd say "Can I check your bag?", and she'd hold it out to me. Then I'd feel bad about it and not actually check her bag. I realised later that on several occasions she actually did have booze in the bag she was holding out for me to check! She is normally very guileless when sober, but somehow the alcoholic mind had instinctively read the situation and predicted my reaction, and gone ahead with the punt. Looking back, it was actually quite impressive! Worthy of a brilliant poker player.

Obviously I'm not saying for sure that your husband is bluffing about the breathalyser....but it's possible.

I hope you find a way out of the mess. Wishing you strength.

Leelee168

He's lying about the breathalyzer. It will be too hard to get, too expensive, they will be out of stock on Amazon--there will be an excuse for why you never actually get around to getting one. He's an A; when his lips are moving, there's a 99.9% chance he's lying.

Wombaticus

SS, I too am a health professional. I too feel soooo stupid at times too - should have seen it coming etc. BUT...our relationships with the A in our lives are based on love, not a framework, strategic plan and an evidence-based assessment and management plan. We are not a professional in that relationship. Which is why it is so hard. We cannot control the A in our lives.
I met with a v good friend yesterday who is a doctor. I said that if someone has a massive lump on their body that is growing larger, or out of control blood sugars or ingrown toenail, no amount of love and support will make it go away. Its the same with alcohol. We can't cure their situation. Frustrating, because in our professional lives, that's exactly what we are trained to do.

SmallButMighty

SS, I am sorry you are going through this chaos. I can completely relate to how you are feeling. I lived it for years when I was still married to my AXH.

The levels of manipulation, lying, gas lighting and indignation they can display are astounding. They really can get us second guessing ourselves and not trusting our instincts. I think not trusting my own instincts about what I knew deep down to be true, is was caused me the most harm. Not only could I not trust him, I didn't trust me either. It was a terrifying way to live and I got extremely sick with anxiety because of it. I so wanted to believe him... I gave him sooooo many last chances... I always wanted to believe that "this" time he was telling the truth, or, "this" time he would keep his promises... It was a very sad, very sick cycle of alcoholism and codependence. Had I not allowed him to pull the wool over my eyes time and time again, I would not have gone so far down the rabbit hole, and could have started getting healthy so much sooner.

I've been you... I've been standing there with concrete evidence in my hand being told I was wrong. Those years of my life were the worst years of my life. I was a crazy woman because neither me nor my AXH wanted to change the status quo. It was what we knew. It was what we had both grown up within our families of origin. I raised my kids in that same mess. After more then two decades together when our children were 16 and 20, I summoned the courage to leave. I knew I was never going to get better dancing that dance with him. He wasn't ever going to change, his actions and inactions had proven that. Change needed to happen for me to get healthy, so I changed.

My advice to you would be to trust your instincts. You honestly don't need to go on a bottle hunt to know what you know. I know the validation feels kind of "good", but it doesn't really serve a purpose when they deny it to your face any way. You know what you know.

Ignoring my instincts made me very, very sick. Please don't do that to yourself.

The book "Codependent No More" by Melody Beattie was a life changer for me...That and hanging out here at SR reading my eyeballs out. For me, it was the stuff I hated reading the most that taught me what I needed to learn.

I'm glad you found us. I hope you stick around. *hugs*

dandylion

Suede......I am giving you the following link to an article by Floyd P. Garrett, M.D. He has written many articles, that I think you may find very helpful.
I, especially.like this one....because, it makes clear that the alcoholic is not drinking or lying AGAINST us.....it has nothing to do with us.....
Most loved ones do take it personally...but, that is so far from the truth of the situation.....It is not about US.

Siede...in your program, I imagine that it is mostly about the alcoholic, and helping them to reach for recovery.....(as it should be, of course)…
You are not the alcoholic, in this situation that you describe.
It is a whole different world on the side of the loved ones....as you are beginning to realize, I think.
I, myself am a medical professional, and, as such, I have been the medical co-ordinator of a large HMO program for alocholics. I have detoxed many alcoholic and helped manage their recovery program and worked with their families.....
Yet, with my own son's journey of alcoholism and recovery...I did lots of "wrong" things, and often felt as lost as a kitten in a storm.....

I hope that you will read the post that I just wrote to StacyO, on this forum....as I would like to say the same things to you...(but, my fingers are very tired...lol!)...….

By the way....at one point, my son tried to tell me that our gardner (who doesn't drink) was bringing empty vodka bottles from his home across town, and putting them under my son's bed....
When I asked my son why would the gardener bring empty bottles to hide under his bed, when he passed so many trash cans on the way to our house....?!!.
My son said....."that is a good question....and you should ask the gardener about that.".....

Here is that link...

http://www.bma-wellness.com/papers/A..._Lies_Rel.html

trailmix

Hi SuedeSeven and welcome.

Lots of good advice already given but I thought you might find these articles enlightening and helpful perhaps. It is sometimes hard to believe the level of denial that can occur.

Addiction and Its Mechanisms of Defense

"In conscious and deliberate deception the individual remains aware of the difference between his own truth claims and what he realizes is the actual truth of the matter; in psychodynamic denial he believes his own deceptions and distortions and therefore regards the contrary opinions of others as false and their efforts to convince him otherwise as misguided at best and malevolent at worst".

Addiction, Lies and Relationships

"Addiction protects and augments itself by means of a bodyguard of lies, distortions and evasions that taken together amount to a full scale assault upon consensual reality. Because addiction involves irrational and unhealthy thinking and behavior, its presence results in cognitive dissonance both within the addict himself and in the intersubjective realm of ongoing personal relationships.

In order for the addiction to continue it requires an increasingly idiosyncratic private reality subject to the needs of the addictive process and indifferent or even actively hostile to the healthy needs of the addict and those around him".

trailmix

I see dandylion (whom I got the link from in the first place) just posted the same link as I was posting, yes, the articles are that worthwhile.

Sasha1972

The lies are really baffling, especially when they are obviously lies. I can offer two speculations: depending on how advanced in the disease your husband is, in some people long-term alcohol abuse leads to a neurological condition called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, one of the symptoms of which is confabulation - the person 's memory is damaged and they have holes in their recall, so their brain fills those holes with "memories" of things that didn't happen. The affected person is not consciously lying - they actually believe their confabulated memories are true. They become quite upset when they're called out, because in their own minds they aren't being deceitful (e.g. they don't remember driving to the liquor store and buying a whole lot of booze, they think they were at home the whole time - so they really have no idea how the liquor store bag ended up in the kitchen.

The other speculation is that for an alcoholic protecting their ability to drink at will is the top priority and they will do all kinds of crazy things to preserve it. A normal person might have many reasons not to lie in such an obvious manner - this will damage my relationship with my spouse, I'll feel guilty if I do, etc - but for an alcoholic, all those considerations are secondary to "telling this lie will allow me to continue drinking as I want for another day/week/month".

And a couple of personal notes - my alcoholic ex is the grand master of breathalyzer avoidance - he agreed to use one as a condition of visits with my daughter, but he can always find reasons why it won't work "this time" (he left his device at work, the internet is broken, it's too cold, he just had [nonexistent] root canal surgery and can't blow, etc). So if an alcoholic is volunteering to use a breathalyzer, they've probably already figured out how they're going to get around using it.

The other is a story I heard from my ex's second ex-wife - they were separated "to work on their issues", he had sworn up and down that he had been sober since rehab; she found credit card statements with hundreds of dollars in liquor store charges in a city about an hour away and confronted him, he told her that someone stole his credit card and PIN, drove an hour away and bought a boatload of alcohol, then got arrested and his credit card was returned, but he was at home the whole time.

A couple of days later she got a photo-radar ticket in the mail showing that his car had been ticketed for speeding in the city of the liquor store receipts, on the same day. His response was, "oh right, I forgot to mention, someone stole my car too".

dawnrising

The lying I believe is what eventually ended my marriage. It was so hard to deal with especially when it was so very blatant. It made me crazy I became so hyper aware of the tiny changes when AH was drunk. The only thing I can say and this may only apply to my situation. I truly believe my AH is incapable of self reflecting on any issue but most of all his addiction. I don't know if it's intentional or not. I have never understood this type of personality but I do think it comes from either deep pain or insecurity. I believe if my AH were to acknowledge the hurt, pain and trauma he has caused our family , then he would have to accept responsibility. When someone accepts the responsibility for their actions then they are forever on the hook for owning their actions or changing their actions. I actually am thankful now for the gift of self reflection because that means I am open to change, growth, and learning. My AH hid booze in the toilet tank and tried to blame our son until I said well lets ask him about it. I have had a 45 year old man who swears he hasn't been drinking clench his teeth while faking taking a breathalyzer. Which he failed with a .12 after being passed out for 4 hours. Just know the lying has absolutely nothing to do with you. I was told for years "I lie because of your reaction" , my reaction was one of disappointment, fear and frustration nothing more. They simply have to deny reality so the alcoholic can drink. The sad thing is if they would only accept responsibility they would find the biggest most supportive cheering section they could ever imagine. Its sad and its a sign of how deep they are in their addiction. Much love to you.

Beachn

SuedeSeven

trailmix

He is really doing it, he's lying to your face about it and he knows exactly what it will cost him. That does not mean he doesn't care by the way, it means the drive to drink is greater than anything. Remember, he is not drinking at you, for you or against you, he's just drinking. It's not personal but it certainly feels like it i'm sure.

If you are going to stick around for a while you are certainly going to need some coping mechanisms/tools.

First of all you might want to check out Al-Anon meetings.

It is perhaps a good idea to detach, emotionally and physically as in find your own life again, put the focus back on your life and your child and what you want and enjoy. There is no use focusing on the madness of it all or on him and his lack of work at recovery. He will get in to recovery when he is ready and not one minute before.

This thread, in the classic reading section might be helpful: https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...rty-lines.html (Detachment - Property Lines)

He can't be relied on, certainly not for taking care of your child alone, so you will need to find a sitter if that's not something you would normally do when attending a meeting or event alone.

You said:

Once you have thought a bit more about what your boundaries are going to be (boundaries are for you by the way, not "rules" for the alcoholic) you may decide that this is non-negotiable. This is a boundary you could share with him perhaps and discuss when you think he might be sober. You just need to back it up though, if you decide to go that route.

Other boundaries might be if he is going to drink he needs to not be in the house, that might mean staying overnight with a friend etc.

That you won't reply to texts or phone calls when he has been drinking, that kind of thing. Again, these are for you, to help keep you sane through this.

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...oundaries.html (So what ARE Boundaries?)

Anyway, just a few suggestions, I'm sorry you are sad. You will get through this.

Lunchbox1