Lisa, I do understand about feeling hopeless and at a loss. 

You deserve to be safe.  Verbal abuse is abuse.  Can you contact a domestic violence hotline, just to find out what your options are?  Even if you don't use that information now, it will be good to know.

Next, the Al-Anon program is exactly for what you are experiencing.  It can help you find the serenity to not be at such a loss and to plan calmly what is best for you, day by day.  There are face to face and online meetings.  There you will meet other people who are affected by someone else's drinking, and you will know you are not alone.  You can find out how to get through the difficult times and be happy and outgoing once again.

((hugs))

Hi Lisa ... Welcome to MIP!  I think you will find here, and in AlAnon, a program that can help restore you to sanity, serenity and happiness if you work the program honestly, and diligently.  I think you will find that within the AlAnon fellowship many people who found themselves in the place you find yourself today and through working their own recovery in AlAnon were able to find those things weather the alcoholic is still drinking or not.

When I first showed up in the rooms of AlAnon, I thought the program would teach me how to keep my Alcoholic (in my case my wife) from drinking.  When I discovered that it was a program about my own personal recovery, I left, under the faulty assumption that all of my problems were the result of my wife's drinking ... and that if she just quit drinking, they would go away.  When I learned AlAnon would not teach me how to do that, I left discouraged, and returned to living a life of anger, resentment, fear, martyrdom and hopelessness.  Eventually, the disease got worse, and through the insistence of my Pastor, himself a recovering alcoholic active in AA, I tried again ... this time willing to listen to those who would advise me that what I needed was my own recovery.  That was just over a year ago, and I think my Higher Power (whom I choose to call God), that I did.

When I went back, with an open mind and open heart I learned some very important things in the first few weeks of attending.

1. I didn't cause the disease, I couldn't cure the disease, and I couldn't control the disease.  As I contemplated this, I realized I had been spending years thinking just the opposite, and my behavior got increasingly crazier, the more my efforts to cure and control it failed, and the more I blamed myself for the disease getting worse.  Once I came to accept 'The 3 C's' as true, it was a huge burden lifted from my shoulders.  I no longer had the burden I had placed on myself to try and cure her, and was able to redirect that energy toward helping the only one I was capable of helping ... myself.
2. I learned that I did not have to attend every fight I was invited to.  I learned that I could politely decline to engage ... when my Alcoholic would criticize me, or blame me, I could say simply, and honestly 'you may be right' ... and no more.  I could politely say 'I understand you are upset right now, but I would prefer to have this discussion when you are sober' and walk away.  I learned that I could say what I mean, mean what I say, and not say it mean.  It is my experience that the alcoholic often needs conflict with loved ones to justify in their minds, their drinking.  I didn't have to enable that by being manipulated into arguments and fights simply to give my wife the excuse she needed to drink more.  My wife also used texting as a way to bait me.  I learned I could block her number when she was drinking, or simply turn my phone off.  I found that when I was able to do this, my wife stopped engaging me in this way, because I was not providing to her what the disease told her she needed.  An excuse to drink.  Until she found recovery, she found the excuses she needed, but she didn't get them from me, and I had more serenity in my life when she did.
3. I learned that Alcoholism is a disease, not a character flaw.  The alcoholic doesn't choose to be one ... they have a disease they have not yet figured out how to manage.  I learned that only they can do that.  Until they decide to take the steps necessary to find recovery, they won't, and there is nothing anyone else can do to change that.  I also learned that it is a family disease.  It affects everyone close to the alcoholic.  I was told it was much like a pebble dropped in a pond.  Those most affected by the disease, are the ones closest to where the pebble hits the water, with the alcoholic in the middle.  The closer you are to where it drops in, the more you are affected.  As one also afflicted with the disease, I learned that I too was sick and needed my own recovery.  The AlAnon program became my medicine.  Recognizing we were both sick, allowed me to empathetic and compassionate with her, and myself.
4. I learned that it is just as pointless to blame an alcoholic for their behaviors as it is to get upset with a pigeon if it poops on you when you sit under one roosting in a tree.  Its what pigeons do.  Alcoholics are no different.  They are going to do what Alcoholics do.  My responsibility was to check the tree for pigeons before I sat down under a tree with one in it.  When I realized this, i was able to begin my journey of detaching from my alcoholics behaviors with love and empathy.
5. I learned that the AlAnon program, taken almost word for word from the 12 step program of AA, is a simple program ... but not an easy one.  One must really want what the program offers, and be willing to work for it.  My second time in, I did this ... what else did I have to lose?  1 Year later, through attending multiple face to face meetings a week, finding a sponsor, taking on service commitments, daily reading of AlAnon literature, and leveraging the experience strength and hope of others working the program, I have a serenity in my life I have not known for more than a decade ... and am happier now than I have been since I was a teenager.  It has not been easy, but it has saved my life ... one that now has hope, purpose, ease, and increasing grace.  I am, perhaps for the first time in my life, physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy.  I take it one day at a time, with gratitude for what I have, and with decreasing resentment about what I don't ... and with decreasing fear about what the future holds for me and my family.  I re-established my relationship with my God, and found in that, someone I could turn over to the things I could control myself, and have faith that he would take care of them and me.
6. I learned that I can take from the program what I like ... and leave the rest.  That there are no 'Musts' in AlAnon.  

Here was the advice I got at my very first meeting:

• Try to attend at least 6 Face to Face meetings before making a decision about weather AlAnon is right for me.
• Try to attend different meetings, as each one has it own's individual characteristics.  Some may fit you better than others.  Give yourself a chance to find a meeting (or four, as was the case with me) you find most comfortable
• Get a sponsor ... someone who has worked the program before you ... that can help guide you and mentor you.  Look for someone who seems to have what you want ... or a is working a program that seems to be strong and consistent ... whatever it is that you see in them to think they can provide you the guidance you need.

I will be praying for you, your husband, and your children.  I hope you find Face to Face meetings in your area that work for you, and that you keep coming back to them, and us here at MIP.  As we like to say at the end of the meetings I attend ... 'It works if you work it!'

Aloha Lisa and welcome to the board.  You have already received some powerful, honest experience from others who have been victims also of the disease of alcoholism.  Read and listen with an open mind because you also can arrive at the solutions most of us have.  We all started where you are at now and have and the same thoughts, feelings and actions you mention and we are not there now as we use to be and as often as we use to be.  The Al-Anon Family Groups is the major deterrent to living in the insanity of this fatal in curable disease.  Yes alcoholism has no cure and can only be arrested by total abstinence.  First things first is get as much information as you can about the disease you are living with part of which is participating here at MIP and attending open Al-Anon face to face meetings in your area as you can; maybe they have meetings with child care which will allow you to attend the whole meeting uninterrupted.   That will help.  Getting Al-Anon Literature which you can read when you are not being disturbed also helps and we have tons of it.  If you don't have the money to buy new books check with Amazon.com for used less expensive copies.  The literature is a huge part of my recovery and has been since 1979 when I arrived to be helped and then stayed to give that back.   Keep coming back often cause this works when you work it.   (((((hugs)))))  

Lisa, I hope you will believe me when I say that there is a way out - it's just not immediate.  Often we are so beaten down by the years of trying and trying and making no headway that we become discouraged about everything.  But one Al-Anon saying is "Nothing changes when nothing changes."  That means also that when something does change, change happens.  You have made the first change by reaching out for support and help.  When you find a meeting, there will be more positive changes.  (Some meetings have childcare - call the Al-Anon number in your phone book to find out which ones if you need childcare.  There are also online meetings at this site.)  Little by little things will seem better and happier and clearer.  You don't have to believe before it happens.  Just take it small step by small step.  I imagine everyone here knows exactly what that feeling of hopelessness is like.  But there is hope.  Things can get better even tomorrow, even this week.  Start your program, read on the site, find a meeting.  Hugs.

Lisa is not gone, although it feels that way right now. Once you take that first step
and join a local f2f Al-Anon meeting ... http://al-anon.org/find-a-meeting
and start working the 12-steps, you can actually start doing the steps here on
this website, you will be totally blown away.  Please keep coming back.