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He has been a heavy drinker since 2009. For at least the past 2 years (when I started to keep track) he has been drinking 1.75 litres of whiskey every 5 to 6 days. Last Friday morning (18 March), after a fight (it had been at least 12 hours since his last drink), I finally told him that I was concerned about how much he drinks and that it has been bothering me for some time. He has not had a drop since then. From every thing I read, I expected him to experience withdraw or some other ugly symptoms. I had even been told by my counsellor that it was dangerous to quit cold turkey without medical help. But he does not seem to be affected.
I know it has only been a few days, but I can't help wondering. Maybe he is not an alcoholic and does not have a problem with alcohol. Maybe it is me who has the problem because I do not agree with his lifestyle choice, just like I think 2 chocolate bars a day is too much as well.
Is he hiding how bad he feels? Can he really just stop drinking "just like that"? Could this be a permanent change? Is it only temporary? Will he go back to drinking later on this week, this month, next month...?
Help, I am in uncharted territory and don't know what to think or expect.
Welcome Petey If someone else's drinking is upsetting you then alanon face to face meetings will help. It is here I learned tools to keep the focus on myself, live one day at a time with courage, serenity and wsidom while rebuilding my self esteem and self worth. A lanon hotline number can be found in the white pages and face to face meetings are available in most communities. Good Luck- You are not alone.
I can't answer your questions, but I can give my experience. My wife started drinking later in life. She started getting a little worried, so she quit for a couple of weeks, just to show that she could. Once she was done with that, she was always able to tell me that she could quit whenever she felt like it, because she already had for a couple of weeks one time.
The real question to me was not "is my wife an alcoholic", but "does my wife's drinking bother me?, am I worried about it?". I had to say yes to that, once I realized it was binge alcoholism and not that she was tired from mononucleosis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
What to expect? I found expectations were always bad, she was always surprising me! Being crashed in the afternoon and me getting calls from my son's school that he hadn't been picked up, getting a couple of DUIs, those were all things I didn't expect. So I found I had to keep my expectations to a minimum.
I do know that when my wife entered rehab, they put her on phenobarbitol for a few days to reduce the likelihood of seizures. Exactly how likely they really are, I don't know, but I do know that my wife had already been having some seizures before she entered rehab, and now that she has been sober for 2 years + (with a couple of one-day relapses) she hasn't had a seizure in 2 1/2 years.
Keep coming back, and see if you can get to some F2F meetings or online meetings. That's where I learned some of the ways of changing my questions, which changed my expectations, which changed my life.
Kenny
-- Edited by KennyFenderjazz on Monday 21st of March 2016 12:57:35 PM
Aloha Petey and welcome to the board...II hated that expectation thought when I was having it because we already had the experiences of the other shoe falling. My alcoholic addict wife would crises, which is an other shoe drop in itself...and then she would stop because of the new crises get clean and sober on the surface and then flame out like a comet pass. I put my life on hold waiting for the next shoe to drop and lost my sanity and peace of mind. She was soooo sick and so was I. As the others have said the face to face Al-Anon Family Group meetings and events saved my life and my sanity along with hers. This disease for me is the worst on the planet as its victims get deathly ill (any die) clean up for a short while and then return to drinking as if it would be the only thing to save their sanity.
The shoe fell for me when I got complacent after a period of "undrunkedness"? (lol) and then my wife would be gone and in her place was my alcoholic. Please find the hotline number to Al-Anon in your area and come out to join us. Keep coming back to MIP also...the board and daily on line meetings will help you a ton. (((((hugs)))))
Alcoholism is a progressive disease. With each time they fall off the wagon it gets harder to get back on. Signs and symptoms of withdrawal usually start on day 3 and can be manifested in a headache, high blood pressure, diarrhea, stomach pains.... In my own situation with the "quitting" cold turkey he just hid it better.
Glad you are here. Several things occur to me about this. One is that if he really can just quit and not start again and not mind quitting, then you are both home free and no problem. That situation would be rare, but if he can stay quit, then more power to him. Sadly, most heavy drinkers can't.
Another thing is that he may not have developed a physical dependence, but if he didn't, that doesn't necessarily mean he's not an alcoholic. If he has the cravings, the bad, deceptive, and chaotic behavior, the fixation on alcohol - he is alcoholic without the physical dependence. That is not uncommon, I think.
The third thing is that I'm led to wonder if he is drinking on the sly. My experience with my A led me to understand that A's are almost unbelievably sneaky. I never saw my A take a drink in all the years of his drinking. He will still swear to this day that he never drank. This despite the DUI's, the passing out, the alcoholic breath, the hidden stashes of bottles at various places in the house and yard... He had tiny airline bottles of vodka in his pockets. He had bottles hidden in the car. He had bottles stashed in the bushes. He had a bottle behind the washing machine. He would go out to the corner store for three minutes and come back smelling of alcohol. In other words, just because you don't see him drinking, and he promises he isn't drinking, doesn't mean he isn't drinking.
The good news is that you don't have to guess which one of these it is. It almost always comes to light despite everything they do to hide it. So if there is a secret truth, it will come out. "More will be revealed."
Meetings help us develop the tools to deal with the insanity. I hope you have one or will find one. Take good care of yourself.
