Welcome Megan - awareness and knowledge are great starts for you! Welcome to MIP - glad you fund us and glad that you joined in and shared.

You are not alone in how you feel and how you are processing. Same goes for the valiant effort in trying to fix, control and/or change you AH. I am certain that even if we all had completely different back stories we all had similar paths regarding our efforts, feelings, emotions, etc.

Alcoholism is a family disease - it reaches beyond the drinking person and pulls in others in the family. Our thinking and emotions become distorted as we try to battle the disease and the diseased. You would benefit from Al-Anon and I do understand that you've got kids....the fellowship and support are worth the effort to get out and seek support. There is hope for how you feel and you can recover, but you have to choose you.

As Kenny suggests, there are meetings here twice daily. Nobody judges if you arrive late and nobody judges if you step away or leave early. Al-Anon is about sharing ESH (Experience Strength & Hope) and online support/fellowship is a great path also - but it does not replace local support for this disease.

In AA, the literature discusses being willing to go to 'any length' for recovery. I know because I came from that side and it also suggests that half measures avail us nothing. I came to Al-Anon wanting to fix my A, realized that they wanted me to focus on me and was baffled. I know understand because others helped me to do so that I was as sick as they just in a different way - they are addicted to the substance - we are addicted to them, the drama and the chaos it brings.

Hope you keep coming back and it's never too late to start a new way of living!!

(((Hugs)))

I can totally understand where you are at this point...I am only a few months a head of you. My mistake was searching the internet for the topic "What do I do when my alcoholic husband comes home from rehab" The fact is, he will get all he tools he needs while in rehab. You will get nothing. He will get a wealth of insight and knowledge into his disease, you will have to find it out on your own. No one will tell you, until you come here, that there is nothing you can do when your husband comes home from rehab...its his sobriety. Its his journey. I wanted to be supportive, loving, compassionate, and inspiring. Little did I know, I was angry, scared, anxious and confused. Had I had my own recovery, the anger and resentment I suppressed and felt guilty about would not have to continue to fester and I would have been better prepared to deal with the roller coaster and the landing of the pink cloud that the rehab professionals don't really warn you about. Between the hope and promises of a blissful future to the loneliness of the 90 meetings in 90 days, to the constant fear of relapse, the anxiety of wondering what is going on in his head, and the guilt and shame placed on you by yourself, and possibly others depending on your own circumstances, of the stigma of the disease, is the reality of the early recovery phase. I, too, made every excuse for not accepting this gift, I have children (one is physically disabled), I have the responsibilities of a job, and the household, the meetings are too far away....., had I instead searched, "how do I recover from my alcoholic husbands rehab" I would have learned, that I had to have my own support system, my own tools, my own insight and knowledge into the disease, because loving an alcoholic is absolutely the most painful thing I have ever experienced. The road is hard, it is long, and it is painful. Know one understands better than those who have lived through it. In my rural area there is no possible way I can get to a face to face meeting, but I come here to the online meetings, and I listen to the shares, I grow and I learn, and I get stronger. Whether my qualifier relapses or stays sober is out of my control. But no matter what he does, I have to keep moving forward. Therefore, I keep coming back. Not to fix my A, for me. It does work, if you work it.