The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
My name is Emma, and I'm hoping to connect with some people here on the forum. This is probably going to be pretty long, I have a lot to get off my chest and I'm hoping to find some people who have had similar experiences that I can talk to. I have been having a hard time and struggling with how to deal with the alcoholic in my life. I have social anxiety and don't feel quite ready to go to an actual al-anon meeting yet, I just need some people to talk to who will understand. In October 2012 I moved across the country, almost a thousand miles from home, to be with my (now ex) fiancee - Joe. We had met a few years prior online and talked all the time, we quit talking for a year and then ironically I met one of my new best friends and she lived in the same town as Joe did. When I was going to visit her for a week, I knew I wanted to meet him. We reconnected and things moved quickly thereafter, and we started going back and forth to visit each other once a month. One night he called me, wasted, and the next morning I had a hard time getting a hold of him. When I finally did, I heard the despair in his voice. He told me he was in the dark, and he needed me. Less than three hours later I was at the airport, running from security to the terminal, getting to the gate just as they called my name over the speaker for last chance to board. I landed in a new state, with nothing but the clothes and things I could stuff into my back pack. My friend who had lived down the street from him had since moved away for school, so someone else I knew a little bit picked me up to give me a ride to Joe's house. Eventually within a month we got an apartment together, and I lived there with him for two years.
In the beginning his drinking wasn't so bad, and I had never really dealt with an alcoholic before and didn't quite know what to expect. Then, as the drinking progressed, things got worse and worse. It escalated to the point where he was drinking for days on end, and he'd sober up on Sunday's when the liquor stores were closed. He hated bars, thankfully, so rarely did he go to the bar unless he was using the "I just need a couple drinks so I'm not so sick" excuse. He is 10 years older than I am, and his dad and I basically took turns baby sitting him. His mother hasn't been in his life much, or regularly, since he was 10 years old. He and his brother are not close, and once I arrived his dad kind of took advantage of the freedom. He was always staying at home to watch Joe because he was afraid to leave him alone, so once I was there he didn't have to worry so much because Joe wasn't alone. It got to the point where Joe would say he was going to smoke, and I would have to text his dad who lived on the other side of the building so he could go out to "sweep" (he was also the caretaker of the building) so that Joe would see him and it would deter him from making a run to the liquor store. His dad would walk over to our apartment upstairs to check the position his shoes were in to see if he had left.
He wouldn't go to therapy. He wouldn't get help. He'd talk about going to treatment and never go.
I had put my WHOLE life on hold, dropped everything, to go be with him. In the beginning the agreement was one year, and then he was supposed to move back with me. He just wanted a year to get sober and get things together and prepare to move. That never, ever even came close to happening. After the first year I told myself that we had had a year to adjust and the next year would be better. It got worse. His drinking kept escalating, he still wasn't getting help, and instead of just getting drunk he would get angrier and in a worse mood the more he drank. His mood was in direct correlation to the amount of alcohol he had consumed. There were nights he'd flip and just start yelling and going off about all kinds of things. He'd be ranting and raving for 2-3 hours about the same things that were basically nothing. His dad would come up so I wasn't dealing with it alone, and he's get confrontational with his dad, get up in his face. There were nights of slamming around, screaming, fighting, etc.
I decided I needed to go back home to my family and friends. I'd been basically completely isolated for two years from everything. I hadn't gotten anything done in my life that I wanted to do because my time was completely consumed by him. I was terrified anytime I wasn't home and would rush back to meet him. I tried to find jobs where I worked the same hours he did, because even if I got off 45 minutes after him I was always scared of what I'd go home to. I lived with a constant weight on my chest: is he drinking? If he hasn't drank, when is he going to? Even when he was sober, it wasn't really like having a break because I was constantly on edge worrying about how long it was going to last.
When I left, things were rough in the beginning, but then they smoothed out. After the first month or two I started really decompressing, and I kind of lost it. I had been trying so hard to be a rock of support for him for two and a half years. I was always encouraging, I was always positive, every time he slipped and went on a binge I didn't give him a hard time because I knew he knew it was wrong. I tried to just encourage him that he could do it, that things would change this time, etc. I tried to always be positive, point out the good things and over look the bad. I had to compartmentalize him in my mind, keep the two parts of him separate. There was the "sober Joe" that I knew and loved with all my heart, the Joe I wanted to be with more than anything, that I knew I would be happy with and didn't want to do the things he was doing. Then there was the "drunk Joe", the Joe I hated and wished would go away, the Joe I wished would leave and never come back so I could just have the Joe I loved all the time.
It put a lot of pressure on me, I kept everything bottled up the whole time. I didn't have any friends there, and I didn't want to talk to my friends and family back home. Sometimes, when things got really hard I did because I knew that I could, I just chose not to because I knew my mom and family already worried about me enough.
I got really, really mad at him. I understand addiction is a disease, and I know he didn't do it on purpose. But I got mad because he didn't do anything to try and stop it before I left. He just drank and kept saying he could do it on his own, that he would stop drinking and didn't need help. Once I left, he went to a therapist (he told me twice a week, his dad recently told me he only went twice all together) and he went to some AA meetings (how many he actually attended I have no idea). I got mad at him because he said he loved me, and all I wanted was to be with him, and he wouldn't get help. I told him I left because I couldn't do it for him, I couldn't force him to do anything, he had to do it for himself. He had to make the change.
He begged me to come back. He wouldn't drop it. I told him we couldn't be together until he was sober. He would call me 25 times, send me 30+ text messages, and yell and scream at me about whatever I was doing. One night while drunk he broke up with me, and I told him I was sick of having to listen to everything he said and forget about it the next day just because he was drunk. I told him that wasn't a good enough excuse for everything anymore. Since then, we started arguing more and more when we talked. He'd get drunk and change his number so I couldn't call him and then text me four days later. It's been this nasty, back and forth vicious cycle. One morning he sent me pictures of a counter full of pills saying he was killing himself. I had to call the cops and have an ambulance go over there and they took him into the hospital for 2 days.
His dad and my mom talked the other day. His dad said he's so angry at himself, he goes on and on about how much he screwed up. He said he's back to playing the guilt and the mind games. When Joe talks to me he tells me that he knows I'm sleeping with other people, he gets mad at me for going to concerts with my friends and calls me a groupie, he basically gets pissed at everything I do. Regardless of how big or small it is, he will text me for hours and hours and argue. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to handle this situation. I love him so much, I can't give up on him and I want to help him but I don't know how. He's telling me he met some blonde chick and she went to AA so she's going to help him and be way better for him than I ever was. His dad tells me that there's no blonde girl, probably just part of his games. He keeps telling me that he can send me pictures of her, that they're flirting and he's gonna send me pictures of them "doing things". I know he's just trying to get to me and make me jealous because I haven't been talking to him much. I don't talk to him because it's impossible to talk to him drunk, and he's drunk every day. Sunday used to be the best, and only day, to talk to him, but now he just goes to the bars. He texts me how much he needs me and without my support he is going to die. That he can't stop without me. So I try to talk to him, and then he just starts yelling at me about how selfish and horrible I am, about how I used him and abused him and never really cared about him. He flip flops back and forth from one second to the next. I mentally can't handle the s** talking and him bashing me anymore and then the next minute talking about how I saved his life and without me he'd be dead right now. When I was there and his drinking was at the worst, I was forcing him to eat, keeping him hydrated, making him eat things even if he didn't want to so it would absorb some of what was in his system, I set alarms on my phone so when he was passed out drunk I could get up and make sure he was still breathing.
Sorry this is SO long, I've just been holding all this in for years and have no idea how to deal with it. I can't handle it anymore and I don't know how to help him. All I want to do is help him, I just want to be able to talk to him because I can't imagine not having him in my life. If anyone's been through anything similar with someone I'd love to talk. Thanks again.
-- Edited by hotrod on Sunday 9th of August 2015 06:44:27 AM
welcome to Miracles in Progress, you've come to the right place.
I hope that you can go to a face-to-face Al-Anon meeting sometime; you'll meet people who you'll identify with and they will identify with you. I recognised a lot from your share and understand some of what you've been dealing with.
It's great that you think of alcoholism as an illness; that's something a lot of people struggle with.
It sounds like Joe is very afraid of being alone. With you and his father there to help him and to always pick up the pieces when things go wrong, that's perhaps understandable. But because he always has someone to be there and dig him out of hole, he has no real need to find help for himself. In Al-Anon and other twelve-step programs, we call that Enabling. He doesn't have to face the consequences of his drinking. This is one of the difficult parts of dealing with active alcoholism - detaching from the alcoholic situation so that the alcoholic has to face up to the consequences of his / her actions, but doing that with love and compassion, not with indifference.
You moved away for your well-being; in Al-Anon we learn that we must take care of ourselves. You have set an important boundary by saying that the two of you can't be together until he finds sobriety. You are practicing Detachment - well done. Joe will have to deal with things more on his own now, but perhaps his father is still enabling? Maybe you could suggest that he attends an Al-Anon meeting?
Detachment can be tough; sometimes I honestly feel like I'm being cruel when I detach from my alcoholic situation, because I see how much my alcoholic brother is hurting. Sometimes the consequences of active drinking can be devastating: unemployment, injury, hospitalisation, police involvement, homelessness and so on. But in the long run detachment has worked for me. I attend Al-Anon meetings regularly - I need to in order to receive the experience, strength and hope of my fellow members, and to pass on to them whatever I can from my experience.
Thank you for posting; please keep coming back.
-- Edited by Jock on Sunday 9th of August 2015 05:44:17 AM
Welcome to MIP,Emma , thank you for sharing with such clarity and honesty. As I was reading , I could so identify with the feelings and confusion that you expressed.
Living with the disease of alcoholism is extremely destructive to our own self-esteem and self-worth. Trying to cope with the insanity of the disease, we develop many negative coping tools that do not work.
I too would like to suggest that you search out Al-Anon face-to-face meetings and attend. It is here that I was able to break the isolation caused by the disease, connect with like-minded members who understood as few others could, and develop new coping tools to interact with the insanity of alcoholism.
The steps, the slogans, sponsors and other members encouraged me to keep coming back and to practice using some of the suggested tools everyday. These tools such as: live one day at a time, focus on yourself, act and not react, live in the present and dont project to the future, all helped me to regain my sanity while still loving the alcoholic.
I finally understood that I could not love another, unless I truly loved myself first. Al-Anon meetings are held in most communities and the hotline number is in the white pages.
Emma - my suggestion is work through the social anxiety and any other excuse to not attend face to face alanon. Yeah, this Joe guy has/had a mess of issues, but you chose him. You dropped everything on a whim to be with him and you are still accepting drama into your life on a regular basis with him when you don't have to.
This is what alanon is for. It's for you. You don't have to live like this. Yes, you need people who understand, and we do, but also alanon is a place to make some changes in you so you don't repeat the same behaviors that have been hurting you.
In Al-Anon we have the Three C's: you didn't Cause it (alcoholism), you can't Cure it, you can't Control it. Believe me, with millions of alcoholics and millions of people who love them, if there were a way, someone would have found it by now.
But we can make the situation better for both ourselves and the alcoholic by using recovery tools for ourselves. As others have said, when we stop enabling, their situation becomes clearer to them, and sometimes that induces them to choose recovery. The sad fact is that the majority of alcoholics do not ever make it into longterm recovery. But those who do find it when the consequences of their drinking become too great for them. We can help them by getting out of the way of those consequences and maximizing their chances. As it happens, that's the best way for us to achieve peace and serenity ourselves. So it's win-win.
How do we find recovery? By attending al-anon meetings (there are meetings online here while you gird yourself to finding the great support of local ones), by reading the literature and the threads here, by working the steps with a sponsor, by coming back, by keeping at it. Many of us have experienced peace we never thought we could. I hope you'll pull up a chair and stick around for your miracles too.
Hi Emma, welcome...Your share shows a lot of courage along with your strong desire to find answers to the damaging effects of alcoholic behavior. While my specific circumstances differed from yours, before I found AlAnon I experienced similar feelings of isolation, fear, anxiety, shame, resentment/anger, guilt, helplessness and uncertainty.
I wasn't sure what I would find in a face to face (F2F) AlAnon meeting, and I too felt fear about attending my first meeting. But I decided that it couldn't be worse than what I had faced with the alcoholic behavior, and I heard that AlAnon had helped many others to address the questions and pain that can come from being around alcoholic behavior.
From the first meeting I attended, I felt incredible relief as I found answers to the questions I struggled with. I was introduced to resources and tools that helped me work through the negative thoughts and feelings I had been holding in. Members of AlAnon understood and could relate to what I had been through, so I didn't feel embarrassed or alone.
Everyone's experience is unique, but the wisdom AlAnon offers is beneficial to all who seek a healthier perspective of the challenges we face, whether we are living around an active drinker or not. Attending F2F meetings and reading the daily AlAnon readers and AlAnon Family Group books (Courage to Change, One Day at a Time, Hope for Today in AlAnon, Paths to Recovery) helped me go from mentally exhausted and defeated to a place of increased understanding and peace.
AlAnon helped me see that I had a choice, that I did not have to continue feeling the pain I was carrying. Though I could not stop someone's drinking, there were things I could do that would allow me to find peace despite what others chose to do.
I am so glad you summoned the strength to reach out, and I hope you continue to seek out the great AlAnon resources that are available for you
__________________
Paul
"...when we try to control others, we lose the ability to manage our own lives." - Paths to Recovery
Hiya Emma - I too welcome you to MIP. So glad you found us and so glad you are here!
The program will help you establish and stick to healthy boundaries which will help protect you and your space/peace of mind. I offer this as in your writing it seems as if you feel 'stuck' - you've escaped and put distance there but have some concern/guilt about doing so.
Those above me have given you some great starting points. I do understand about the social anxiety but will tell you.....going to a Face to Face (F2F) meeting would be a good test as you will feel more welcome there than a concert or any other outing/place. The members will help you settle in, make you feel welcome and help lead you to the steps, which for me were a life-changer.
So - you've started strong - joined us, shared your story and where you are. I believe Al-Anon would be of great value for you and to you - you owe yourself some healing based on where you've been and what you've experienced. All of us here have similar stories - we love or live with (present/past) Alcoholics, and the disease is so powerful, all are affected. Alcoholism is described as a family disease as nobody get's out without some affect.
So glad you are here and know you are not alone. We're all just a post away!
__________________
Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
Hi Emma. Im a newbie to Al-Anon. Although my story is very different than yours I hope that you find the courage to attend a face to face. I went to my first last Monday. Even though I shook and cried the entire time the group made me feel welcome and far less alone than I did when I walked thru the door. I'm going back again tomorrow with a little more self confidence and a lot less fear. I hope you'll give it a try.
