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this is my first post on this forum. i have been mistakenly, but acceptingly posting on the aa forum and being a newbie, didn't know about all the various sub forums connected to alcohol problems. so, here's mine if someone wants to listen.
i had this same problem around new years, things settled for a while then the MONSTER RETURNED!!! My wife was the binge drinker that drinks until she pukes 3 to 4 times a year. she is thai, i'm amerikan [just for the record].
maybe i'm generalizing, but having lived in asia for the last 13 yrs i feel that i can honestly say that asians have their own brand of alcohol disfunction, typicaly like my wife, who is mostly sober, reserved and self controled, but give her an occasion [birthday party, new years, and this last time a Buddhist temple fund raising event] and she will drink until she pukes and drops.
the last new years episode was quite messy as i over reacted and almost let her bait me into violence. looking back now, maybe that was her intention. i dragged her into the shower to sober up and wash the puke off her. that was last year..........
thanks to members on this post, i tried a different, totally non violent approach.
this latest episode, i maintained my self control, when she returned from the fund raising drunk, but horny. [horns make the man a little more forgiving] but after some sloppy and basic sex, i reached for the towel and it was full of puke. you can immagine how much of a turn off that was!!
but, i still kept my cool and didn't react as i usually do. i allowed her to puke her guts out, enjoying each gut renching retch that she was going thru, hoping that she would maybe remember the pain and humiliation. my only reaction was to refuse to let her sleep in our bed.
this morning we didn't speak as we both knew that it could become 'nuclear'. i had a sleepless night and feel like s---. my hangover without drinking!!
not speaking all day, but THINKING AND THINKING, i decided a diferent approach. BRIBERY [or call it motivation]. i finally broke the ice by expressing my disgust and anger and tried my usual usless demands that only got thrown back in my face [an asian trick is to reverse blame]. then i had my brainstorm and offered her a BRIBE, or i should say offered her family a bribe. in asia, old fashioned family values still exist and the daughters [and sons] feel deep obligations to their families [and extended families] almost to a fault. i can never do enough for them, altho i have given until it hurts.
to make a long story short, i offered her family a generous new years gift if she can remain totally sober for a year. she smiled her first smile of the day and agreed. i even wrote it on the calendar. i will inform the family so they can give her encouragement.
Gudheartedguy, I feel your pain, as my own A is a binger...Once a year or so he takes a "gentleman's vacation," drinks himself nearly to death, wanders home after three days, is sick for several days, then goes about life as if nothing has happened. The whole process baffles me. But one thing I do know: Bribing your A will have no effect on whether or not she drinks. Nothing you can do will have any effect. She must help herself, and apparently she is not ready to do that. I know a sloppy, sick drunk is not an appealing sight, and I understand your revulsion. Perhaps attending local AlAnon meetings would be of help in your understanding of how to detach from her alcoholism and live your life with peace whether or not she continues to drink. The first of the 12 steps is that we must admit we are powerless, and you surely are that. It is a long and difficult road for those of us who choose to stand by and watch our loved one ill and hurting. Still, we must first see to our own sanity, and if we are not careful, we can become sicker than our A is. Take care of yourself . You come first.
Best wishes and good luck, Diva
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"Speak your truth quietly and clearly..." Desiderata
Most people with a drinking problem reverse the blaim, we are always at fault. Setting boundaries of not sleeping in your bed is a good place to start. Keep coming back and start working the program and you will learn how to take care of you and how to handle these situations.
Josey
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Julianne - It's best to move on. You cannot look back in anger in life. It's too short
i think there can be different cultural responses to drinking I also think that at the end of the day an alcoholic is an alcoholic. I grew up in a culture in the UK where drinking is part of socializing. Nevetheless there were people like my sister and a neighbor who could not stop. Their lives have been totally controlled by their alcoholism. I think I can be in denial about binge drinkers and weekend drinkers. My current counselor thinks my father was an alcoholic even though he only drank on the weekend.
I am glad that you are looking for support for youself. My boyfriend went on a binge over Christmas that is his time to binge I know. I am through with being around to watch him. I have promised myself I will be taking a lot of actions around holidays rather than watch him binge again. I think actions can state a lot. Words don't necessarily. An alcoholic will always be sorry, always be promising and always be ready to put it on "you". In some ways in your promise you have set it up that way because now you are in a position of having to police her. Do you think you will always know when she is using?
In Al-anon we call that becoming someone's warden.
In alanon we learn that alcohism is a disease.We cannot bribe alcoholism anymore than cancer.
When we bribe or make ultimatums we only set our A up for failure. They already suffer enough guilt on their own.
I don't know if your wife is A. Does she drink other times than four times a year?
If I were you I would leave her in her puke. She is the one who needs to feel sick enough to stop, or humiliated enough or guilty or all of it.
Disease does not know culture. The symptoms are the same everywhere. I was just thinking, telling her family about some major gift if she does not fail, then she does fail, she has been set up to disappoint her whole family.
Can you imagine how that would make her feel? We in no way can control this disease. It is the first step. It is so hard to watch them going thru so much hell, but it is their hell not ours. A's don't like to be told what to do anymore than non A's. She knows she gets sick, she knows how she acts. I would not take care of her at all and allow her the dignity to suffer her own consequences.
I am so glad you shared with us. keep coming back. love,debilyn
Thanks mucho for all your feedback. it's reassuring to know that there are others in the same [sinking?] ship. since the last episode, we have been quite detached and into our own selves.....me feeling lost, lonely and shit upon and her [IMHO] feeling arrogant and defiant. today, things came to a nasty head and almost final [her threatening divorce] because of my wanting to control. danm right, i want to control her drinking til puking, especially while making love, but i don't want to loose a 5 yr investment in our marriage or cause harm to our kids.
a few questions.....i drink a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, then stop. she drinks only 4 or 5x a year and every time pukes her guts out. is she an alcoholic?? or does she have an alergy to alcohol that makes her puke. i think that the last time i drank and puked was when i was a teenager. not saying i'm a better person, but saying maybe that i'm a better drinker. i have simply learned from experience that i don't like the feeling of being out of control, or the misery afterward.
with much humbleness, i tried to talk it out with her. not easy with a person who is in extreme denial and doesn't speak fluent english or know all those key words that we use. also, the cultural barriers.....thais [and other asians] don't like to talk about emotions and will keep their cool which translates into denial to me and builds up pressure to the boiling point. we amerikans talk [maybe too much at times] but i call it venting so as to relieve the pressure. that simple difference makes for a lot of clashing of cultures.
so, the way we left it was that i compromised on my bribe to her family[i call it motivation to be good] and offered her a monthly 'reward' instead of a lump sum at the end of a long year.
i wish that i could attend an alanon meeting, but we live too far from the nearest meeting place and can only hope for support thru this forum. thank Buddah for the internet!! otherwise, i would feel totally lost here in thailand. another problem i have is that most of my expat friends here are retired and quite heavily into drinking and i've drifted away from them because of that, so not too many shoulders to cry on.
(((gudheartedguy))) I think your heart is definitely in the right place. I don't know if your wife is an alcoholic or not. However, I think that given your feelings and reactions, you would definitely benefit from al-anon. Since you don't have f2f meetings in Thailand, I would reccommend coming to this or another site often, I know there are online meetings here, which can be a very good thing. Also, since you can't get to a meeting, I would definitely reccommend getting some alanon literature and pamphlets. Courage to Change and Paths to Recovery would be my first reccommendations. this teaches us that we cannot control their behavior, but we can control out reactions. This didn't make much sense to me at first, but it has made a world of difference. It has allowed me to separate the person I love from his disease. (Still working on it, but it's better than it was.) Keep coming back. Namaste.
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