First post, I'm new here, but I probably should have been here years ago.  I tried a few in person Al Anon meetings a few years ago but never came into contact with anyone I felt I could relate to.  Maybe I'll find that here, maybe not, but if nothing else the massive wall of text I'm sure I'll be composing here in a moment is at least cathartic to put out there.

I met the woman who is now my ex-girlfriend online via a dating website in July of 2011.  I was a recently divorced full time single father of two young boys (3 and 4), so online was my way to meet people.  We hit it off incredibly well, she was here staying with her mother on Summer sabbatical from school in NYC where she lived.  The only thing I found a bit odd was that she was always wanting to drink every evening, and some liquor that I had around the house (I barely had 1 drink a week myself, I've never been a drinker) seemed to be missing.  I didn't think too much of it, I just figured she liked a drink to unwind, not knowing how much she was really drinking.  She decided to stay in FL and moved in with me, getting a job and quickly becoming part of the family.  Things were going well.

September 2011 is where things took a nose dive: she told me she had epilepsy and would suffer seizures from time to time, which I witnessed.  She also told me that she had to go away for a 5 days to stay in a hospital for treatment.  Little did naive me know, this was to go into detox and the seizures were actually alcohol induced.  Sobriety lasted a few days after she got home, and she relapsed, hard, ended up having a massive seizure at her job (she was drunk), going to the hospital, and this is when the cat really came out of the bag.  I was angry for being lied to, both by her and her family (who knew her problems very well but kept quiet) and I took her to treatment.  She came home after 2 weeks and apologized endlessly, promise she'd be better, things I'm sure a lot of us had heard before.  3 weeks later we find out she's pregnant.  With twins.  At this point the choice whether to stick it out with her is made for me, I have to for these children.

She relapses again, once, in December, goes to treatment yet again, and then stays sober until two weeks after the twins are born at the end of June 2012.  Thankfully they're both perfectly healthy. Two weeks later, though, she's back to drinking, and again enters treatment, once again with promises things will be better.  She's staying home with the twins at this point while my older two are in school.  My boy twin, I'll call him S, enters the hospital in late November for failure to thrive.  Looking back now I see that it's because she was out of it most of this time while I was at work, but he wasn't gaining weight and the doctors are concerned.  She stays with S in the hospital, hiding her drinking while she's there, and comes home drunk with him on Christmas Eve.  This eventually leads to Child Services becoming involved, but that only lasts a few months.  

Sobriety this time lasts until May of 2013, where she's drinking again and I'm feeling helpless as to what to do.  In April of 2013 S is fit with a Mickey Button, essentially a feeding port in his abdomen directly connected to his stomach because he will not eat.  This is the only way he is able to receive nourishment.  She's baker acted by her therapist and another CPS case is opened when she's caught drunk at the hospital with S, this time with her being ordered out of the home and only allowed supervised visits with the twins.  Apologies and promises once again become the norm, and by October she's allowed to come home, but still not allowed to be unsupervised with the children.  She begins to use Kratom.

April 2014 this CPS case is closed and she's given unsupervised access to the children again.  Almost he week the case is closed she ups the Kratom use, but with that starting to not work as much she starts ordering Herbal "happy pills" online in large quantities.  From October 2013 through July 2014 she spends nearly $6,000 on these pills and various prescription drugs, primarily Xannax, from shady international sites.  In July 2014 she is arrested for her first DUI, on Xannax not alcohol, and spends a few days in jail.  From this point forward she is not left alone with the children at all any longer (with help from both my family and her's), something I had been fighting to do for a long time but the rights of an unwed father in Florida are flimsy at best.

August 2014 she relapses on alcohol hard and is taken to a treatment center, where she stays for a few weeks before attending outpatient for a few more weeks.  October and November she's sober and then come December 2014 she has DUI #2, again on Xannax, this time running a red light and totalling the care.  Through some miracle nobody is injured.  At this point I'm beyond done and tell her she has to leave.  She knows it's an idle threat, that I'd have to have her evicted and even that in Florida can be very hard to do.  She drinks away the remainder of December, with me taking her to detox on Christmas Eve and gain on New Year's Eve.  Thankfully New Year's was a more permanent thing, as she went directly from detox to a sober living facility, where she'd love until late May 2015.

Come late May 2015 she feels she doesn't need to be there any longer and simply comes home, with me protesting the whole time.  She comes home on Friday, just at the beginning of the long Memorial Day weekend, and proceeds to get blitzed out of her mind no Xannax and, while out celebrating my birthday with the children at my mother's home, she trashes the house.  Closets emptied, pictures off walls and broken, food all over the kitchen, the works.  At that point I send her to a detox again (if for no reason other than to get her the hell out of the house) and go to a lawyer.  I need to get sole custody of the twins and assert my legal paternal rights, a she's also stating that she's going to take them away.  As crazy as that sounds, legally she could, even with her history, since we weren't married.  I try to get things moving without the lawyer, but she's in and out of the house all of June 2015 and still expresses that she wants to take the twins, I finally file a paternity action in early July.  When she's served she's angry, and a week later she files a false Domestic Violence Injunction against me, knowing full well that it would give her 100% custody of not only the twins, but my home.  I, along with my two older children, then 7 and 8, had to move in with my mother for 5 weeks until we could see a judge and get the DVI thrown out as baseless.  I had immediately called child protective services as soon as the DVI was filed and she was told that she had to live with her mother and that they "strongly advised" that she not be left alone unsupervised with them.

I had weekend visits with the twins during that time, and once I was back in my house and the DVI was gone I was doing everything in my power to get the legal process moving to get them back full time, but her lawyer was doing everything he could to draw things out as long as possible.  I wouldn't have to wait too long, though, after her 3rd arrest in 3 weeks (one for obstruction, one for custody interference, and finally a third for batter for assaulting her mother while drunk) Child Protective Services finally involved themselves again and I had the twins back with me full time in mid October.  During the shelter hearing I was finally declared the legal father of the twins (there was no objection from her), finally getting my full legal rights for them.  She spent from October through mid December in jail, visited them once (supervised by her mother only at this point), and then relapsed for yet another month and missed a January court hearing before sobering up again.

So that brings us to where I am now. And wow, that was long, and even still I probably left out details.  I'm now raising all four of my children by myself, she has supervised visits twice a week with the twins, and she's been sober since late January.  Needless to say I'm done with her as far as a relationship goes, and that will never change.  I'm far happier, and I know my older two children are.  CPS will still be involved until at least August, and she's fighting tooth and nail to get the twins back.  I'm honestly petrified that she'll succeed.  Even with all of the above, even with her being broke and unemployed with no car without a place to live (she's in another sober living facility for the time being), even with one DUI conviction and one knocked down to reckless driving, I'm petrified that she's going to succeed.  From my experiences the last few years I have zero faith in the system, a system that tries to give 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th chances to people like her.

I guess my biggest hope in posting all of this is to hear from someone who's had at least a similar situation, at least as far as custody.  I look at her as a lost cause at this point, as cold as that might be.  She's already claiming after a few months of sobriety again that she's a recovered alcoholic (not recovering) and no longer in any way at risk.  I know there's no way that's true, but that's a fight with her that I no longer possess the energy to have.  At this point I look at her as a danger to my children and I need to do whatever I can to keep them safe.  She may be sober today, but there's no guarantee for tomorrow, and that's not  risk I can take.