The material presented
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I have been married for 26 years and met her way before that. I can tell within a few moments if she has been drinking. I have not had a problem with substance abuse or drinking myself but I have plenty of my own issues beyond those. I actually have no idea where to begin but I am at my limits and probably have been for too long. What if I am wrong and am making more of this than it is? I have worked directly with a high functioning alcoholic before and she doesn't seem the same as him. He would go out to his car at lunch to...recharge. His hands would shake and he would get red faced.
She seems like she can go days without touching a drink. We don't talk about it, I am afraid to. if you knew me, you would laugh at that idea but its true. She gets violent and can go off like a hand grenade. She has about 100 'tells' that let me know she has been drinking. She works from home and on the days she drinks, I think she starts around noon. She thinks she speaks just fine, she doesn't. She thinks her logic is normal when she drinks, it isn't. Its only a matter of time before her co-workers figure it out. She can drink a lot and she is only about 130 lbs. Sometimes she will drink everyday of the week and not at all during the weekend because we are together the whole time. She does know I feel, but except during our massive blow up fights I wont bring it up. Her hands never shake and I think her body will let her go without it for a week or so. I think she actually didn't drink once for about a week and i thought she may be going into withdrawals. I feel that leaving her over it would be the same as leaving someone because they have cancer. But I cant deny the impact this is having on me emotionally.
Apparently I am co-dependent, passive aggressive, can be self destructive and suicidal ideations are a daily event. I don't drink because if her violent capacity, if I drop my guard with alcohol it would be bad. I hate alcohol now. As long as she and I have been together, and grown up together, I believe that I have participated in creating this problem. I have to help but I am in over my head. Am I making more of this than it is?
Hi Kimarin and welcome. I have felt similarly while there was active drinking in my home. I could not handle it all by myself, and I realize now that I should never have expected to, as this disease is bigger than any one person. I found Alanon meetings, literature, and this forum very helpful.
I learned that I did not cause it, could not control it, and could not cure it, but I could reach out to others and help to cure myself.
You will get more wisdom and support from others here, but I want you to know you are not alone.
Ji Kimarin Welcome You are not alone. I am pleased that you reached out and shared with such thoughtfulness. Alanon is a recovery program for people who are concerned about another's drinking. Alcoholism is a disease that is not easily diagnosed and so if you are bothered by another's drinking then alanon is for you.
As Freetime suggested, attending alanon face to face meeting is extremely beneficial. Face to face meetings are held in most communities and the hot line number is in the white pages. It is here you will have thr opportunity to discover that under those negative destructive habits that you mentioned, is a generous, kind, loving supportive intelligent person waiting to be free, alanon has the tools to help set you free.
Aloha Kimarin and welcome to the board. Relax there is nothing wrong with you as a victim of the disease. We all know what it like and what you have been thru and continue to be thru as a new comer. So much of your post is also mine and not all and that doesn't matter. Alcoholism doesn't care about us and it needs its victims on both sides of the bottle; drinker, family, friends and associates. Alcohol is a mind and mood altering chemical...we become altered whether we drink or not. It isn't either about right or wrong as alcoholism is a disease a life threatening illness that if left to go untreated resorts in death. It uses her to get to you and if there wasn't a you there would be a someone else who would be as affected and sick.
I was born and raised in the disease and it was beyond maddening ever so much as I also didn't even know it had to do with alcohol. I didn't know and didn't know that I didn't know...I thought that was happening was normal and was supposed to happen that way. In my family of origin we never heard or used the words alcoholic, alcoholism and never drunk for to use drunk was disrespectful and bad. WE just shut up and held our tongues and I found the words years later after two marriages to alcoholics and addicts...I thought I was being normal while normal was insane. When I was at the point where you are at now...questioning and hoping I was wrong I was being harmful to myself and surely harmful to my last wife and the disease broke me and I lost control and she nearly expired. She mentioned to me "I deserve that" and I learned that she also knew what we were going thru and could not, would not stop. She didn't deserve my violent reaction...no one did and still I broke. I lost control and needed a way for form to regain control over myself only and that is where and when the Al-Anon Family Groups came in. I had tried once and left and then on the second time I found my chair and claimed it and it saved my life and hers at the same time because had I not found the program like so many others we both may have reached the fatal nature of the disease.
She eventually got sober (sobriety is beautiful) and we found that we had never had the need to be married except to continue within the disease that ran in our lives. Alcoholism is compulsion of the mind and allergy of the body, can never be cured only arrested by total abstinence. It is a progressive disease that if not arrested will only get worse and the alcoholic has but three choices; sobriety, insanity and/or death. We become as affected as they are except we often don't have the anesthesia of alcohol to block out reality and so we go thru the illness wide awake. We too have the same three choices...Serenity, Insanity or death.
Keep coming back and find the face to face meeting groups in your area. Often the hotline number to the groups is in the white pages of your local telephone book.
I too send my welcomes to you! Glad that you found us and glad that you shared. The disease is powerful and recovery is available - for them (if/when they choose) and for you too. I also encourage you to attend a few Al-Anon meetings - they certainly helped me feel less insane and less alone with my issues.
Keep coming back - we're all usually just a post or so away!
(((Hugs)))
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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
