thisisnotmylife

How long after recovery did it take for your family to start to function closer to normal?

How long before the addict started focusing on improving family life?

For those wives- how did you decide to stay or to leave?

justanothrdrunk

It seems to me that within days things started to improve, in my mind anyway. Each day I remain sober is a day closer to "normal."

I'm just short of 11 months sober. I don't think I have yet to focus on improving my family. My focus has always been to stay sober and to be useful to others. It seems to me that when I do that, everything else falls into place.

You'll have to ask my wife on that one. This was my third time in treatment. She tells me this is my last chance. I take that to mean that if I relapse again, she won't be sticking around. How she came to that decision, I don't know. I don't ask and it doesn't matter to me either. All I care about is that I have this chance and I hope that I continue to stay sober. Like I said, once I take care of the sobriety part (with the help of my HP and other recovering alcoholics), everything else just falls into place.

rahsue

when my son came home from rehab it started to get back to normal for the rest of us because he weren't hiding our things and not worrying so much about him. but for him it may be a different story, he was terrified of relapse and to this day I see in him the uncertainty of things. For the family we are back to normal for my son it has to be a day to day thing I guess, I leave him to his recovery and don't ask too many questions because its his to deal with and he doesn't need me nagging him about how well its going. He is hitting his six month sober mark soon and he looks great, but has friend issues at the moment I think, because they go clubbing and drink and he doesn't. His friends don't do drugs (go figure) but they do drink on the weekends.

Jody Hepler

I went to daily Alanon meetings with my husband, my sober sons went to daily AA meetings - and we hung out with sober families that taught us how to act. I had to learn to focus on me, make the changes necessary in me (like stop controlling and nagging and bossing) and let them figure out what to do with their sponsors and recovering friends.

Mostly we tried to stay out of each other's way - not talk a lot about recovery - and just enjoy what we had without the booze. Did fun stuff together - "made sober memories". We also got into some family counseling after a year or so.

But it has been a great life - and quite the journey.

Love in recovery,
Jody Hepler

P.S. You can PM me if you want more specifics. We've been doing recovery for 25 years.