Newby...GF may be an alcoholic
 

Hi,

Am really new to all this. Have done a bit of reading and just don't know what to do.

A bit of background:

Have been with my GF for about 3 months. I started to become aware that she has a drinking problem. Not sure how bad and a lot of this info is based on what she has told me.

She has said that she came from a miserable relationship in the past where her other half used to buy her 2 bottles of wine a day that she drank. She has since told me that she has cut this down to 4 a week. Lately, she has told me that she doesn't drink in the house at all. I really don't know if any of this is true.

What I can say for definite, is that she has cut down. We meet up every other day and at the start of our relationship she would turn up quite drunk. Now, she appears to turn up sober.
I have sat her down and talked to her about her drinking and how it makes me feel.

She still continues to drink to the point of not being in control of herself...to the point of not being able to walk. This happens once or twice a week and more often than not is followed with a blackout.

Am I being stupid and thinking that with more time she may help herself and get better? I am slowly but surely going out of my mind with worry. I love her very much but the trust has been damaged and it's starting to feel less like a relationship every day.

Any thoughts/comments are welcome.
Thanks.

Welcome iamfluke if its only 3 months I'd kinda say it one evening but be warned she may be hostile to the idea or laugh it off

if she carries on there isn't much more you can do as if she wants help she has to seek it

You could show her the uplifting posts of this community here at SR

I don't think you are stupid to not understand the power alcohol has over your girl friend and to hope that your feelings for her translate to her wanting to quit drinking. But you are not knowledgeable about alcoholism.

And you shouldn't have to be. You are three months into a relationship. The early months of a relationship are used to determine if two people are compatible, if they share the same interests, the same values, that make a long term commitment possible.

Sounds like your girl friend's commitment is to alcohol. Is that compatible with what you want in a relationship?

If not, bid her farewell.

In time she may seek help or she may not. There's no way you or anyone else can answer that. Your worry is for naught, only because you can't do anything about her drinking and whether she'll stop or not. It's all up to her.

Welcome to the Forum :wave:

Hi🙋🙋so it sounds like she deffinately has a problem, the issue is...does she think she has & she probably doesn't. If u sit her down & talk to her she will more than likely get defensive or she will downplay the amount she drinks. It took me 5 years to admit to my fiance that i had a problem, he was aware the whole time but nothing changed until i was ready. We as alcoholic's/problem drinkers can b selfish, i think u need to decide if this is something u can put up with for a while as this won't change overnight

Does she want to stop drinking? If not, there is little you can do to change things. The behavior you are seeing is likely to continue and worsen until and unless she decides to stop drinking.

It sounds like in her mind and yours that she's "cut down" her drinking, but in reality she's converted from a daily drinker to a binge drinker.

If she doesn't think she has a problem and doesn't take the initiative to stop, then there's not much you can do. You're so early on in this relationship you don't have much leverage or influence. If it doesn't stop soon do you really want to be having this same discussion 5, 10, or 15 years from now?

Thanks for all the replies.

In response to some of these comments:

I have talked to her about her drinking. I spent a lot of time composing what I wanted to say and to let her know how her drinking makes me feel rather than sound like I'm attacking. She acknowledges that she has a problem and states that she knows she cannot continue like this. Whether her words carry any merit, I really don't know.

Frank14, your comment about her turning from a daily drinker in to a binge drinker is slightly worrying, as this may be the case. It is early days at the moment and I will have to see how it continues. The last time she drank, she was paralytic.

When I talked to her last night about her drinking, she told me that she had been drinking two bottles of wine everyday for the past 3 years....Does anyone know if this would make her an alcoholic, or what implications this would have now that she is trying to curb her drinking?

Thanks again for the help. I know I must sound like a complete newbie, but I am doing my best for now and seeing how things progress. From what I know, she has drank twice in the last week as opposed to everyday. I hope she is genuinely trying to help herself. I don't know if this is her starting to address her problem or if she is lying to me about the quantity of her drinking, or if she will relapse and start drinking to excess again.

There is no clinical definition of an alcoholic as far as I know. But for those of us here alcohol had become a problem in our lives. That can range from the truly horific to what an outsider may not even notice. But the one thing that generally defines us is that we can't truly moderate our drinking, I.e. 1 or 2 drinks a couple of times a week, month, whatever, just doesn't do it for us. If your gf was drinking a couple of bottles of wine a day most likely she will not be able to have just a few glasses occasionally. She might be able to do that for a short time but if she's like us it'll return to a couple of bottles a day in a short time frame. A couple of bottles a day for years is a lot.That's more than I was drinking and I'm here.

I'd say she has a massive drink problem that I would call alcoholic have you told her about this site I think it would help

What flipped my switch to stop was education about my problem.

You could try that.

You asked if drinking two bottles of wine a day would make her an alcoholic. I think a good way to look at this it be to turn it around and ask if the other way. If someone were not an alcoholic would they drink two bottles of wine a day? The answer is definitely no. This is just my experience, but I've never met anybody who drinks two bottles of wine a day who was not alcoholic.

Oh man! 2 bottles of wine a day is so much!
I'm an alcoholic and I was at 1- 5 bottles a week, sometimes more but usually around 3, and my life was a disaster.
Xoxo

2 bottles of wine a day? Yikes! That's an incredible amount to drink. I'm going to assume she's not 6 foot 7 and 350 pounds....A normal person would certainly black out from this quantity.

My best advice is to be there for her and try to convince her to stop. However, at the end of the day, you should realize you may not be successful. You do NOT want to deal with this down the road if you decide to get married with kids.

Hi iamfluke and welcome to SR.

I drank 2 bottles a wine a day when my drinking was becoming progressive but then it went to three. It was never enough and we always seem to want more till we black out. It's an addiction our bodies get used to and we crave more and more so the alcohol takes over our lives.

By the way, I think it's very commendable and lovely of you to be concerned about her. When I first met my husband I didn't know I had a problem but I read an email to a web site about me 20 years later and he said he should've recognised the signs back then. Although I didn't drink every day I usually drank until I passed out!

2 bottles a day does sound like an awful lot.
But the thing is that isn't not so much the amount we drink that makes us alcoholic, or whether we drink every day. I have not taken a drink for 19 months, But I am still an alcoholic, If I were to take a drink now I would not be able to guarantee that I would be able to take a certain amount an then stop, because I cannot drink in a controlled way. It would also alter my perception of myself and of reality - the upside to this being that I would suddenly feel 'wittier; prettier; and tittier'. The downside to this would be that my behaviour would become very reckless and I would no longer give a **** that I have work in the morning; need this money that I'm handing over to buy or alcohol to buy groceries for the week; have a loving partner at home; etc; etc; etc. And the next morning I would be filled with shame and remorse and self-hatred, and be craving the very thing that made me behave like that in the first place to make me feel better. And when I succumbed to it again, that drink would release me from my shame and personal torment to allow me to go out and do exactly the same again. My life would very quickly spiral back down to where I was before I entered recovery, and become unmanageable because of alcohol. This was my cycle of alcoholism.

If she decides to stop, and is really is drinking 2 bottles of wine a day, I would suggest that she discusses stopping with her doctor, as she may well need a supervised detox.

Have you given her the details of this forum? As lovely as it is that you want to support her, we all have to do this for ourselves. And hopefully, if she was on here educating herself about the nature of alcoholism, and chatting to others, she would be less likely to pick up a drink and can start devising her own sobriety plan and working it.

If you decide that you are going to stay with this lady long term, you might want to check out Al -Anon or similar so that you can get the support that you're likely to need along the way, and get a good understanding on co-dependency and how to avoid it (it's not a good foundation for relationships, no matter how it may feel in the first few heady romantic months when that bond seems strong because you're 'fighting this thing together').

An update:
 

It's been over a year that we have been together now and I just wanted to write an update.

My girlfriend's drinking has gotten better, but she still has the odd binge. I would say once every month or so. Although she has made amazing progress, these episodes where she drinks herself in to oblivion ruins the trust and love between us.

What confuses me is that sometimes she can have a sensible drink, and other times it's as if this demon takes over her and she gets completely wrecked.

I'm still at a loss of what to do. We can go for a month or so and I start to see the silver lining in the clouds, but then sure enough she pulls the carpet from under my feet.

Does anyone have any advice or views on this? Basically, there's still something inside her that rears it's ugly head now and again. I don't want to issue an ultimatum but I feel that it has come to this. I don't want a relationship where I worry whether she is drinking herself overboard whenever I'm not around her.

I will say what I said in my previous response to your first post:

"...you are not knowledgeable about alcoholism."

You chose to stay in a relationship where there is a third party--alcohol. Get yourself to an Al-anon meeting.

Well done on sticking out the year but I would still be concerned by these binges.

Thinking ahead - if she feels this is 'acceptable' I would put money on it that if you were to marry she would get wrecked at the reception - after all she has a 'valid reason' to drink.

What about if you have a family. Would you be happy about having somebody in that state looking after your children/seeing her in that state even if just once every month or so.

It does sound like she still has a dependency - would she be able to stop during trying to conceive/being pregnant?

Maybe an ultimatum is what she needs. She may well see the talks about how her drinking makes you feel as a combination of a bit of a slight slap on the wrist and 'your' problem. A short, sharp shock like this may give her the kick up the bum that will make the difference.

And if it doesn't, that is HER choice. She'd probably - in the illogical way us alcoholics do when in denial (or recognising it but being too ashamed to admit it - blame you for any increase in her drinking but you mustn't let that sway your resolve.

You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink (hmmmm, you can give an alcoholic a bottle and not prevent them from drinking may be a better analogy!!)