The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I am still pretty new here and spend most of my time reading everyone's posts to try to get a feel for what everyone else is going through. The feeling I am getting is that as far as having hope for our A's possible recovery, it is usually a false hope. For us, our future is one of trying to simply get along in the world as best as possible while living with our A's lack of trying, consistant failures, and erratic behavior or leaving our A's as a last resort. Am I wrong? How much hope is there out there that an A can beat the disease without regressing. If there is little hope, then we must reconcile ourselves to living physically together and try to injoy what sober times there may be, and being apart emontionally when the drinking is going on. Please help me with this if you can. Thanx!
I think the statistics are pretty harsh. Less than 3% get sober and stay sober. But there is always hope that they will get better. Yes you can learn to deal with it using the tools of alanon or you can get out. Those choices are always there. I would wait at least one year before you make any decisions. At least that is what I was told. We will all be here to support you whatever you choose to do.
There is always hope , never give up . Get the focus back on you and your needs and allow the A to do what he has to do , no point in trying to stop him anyway , but I am sure u have already figured that out. I got tired of just coping and decided to live instead. Al-Anon showed me how to do that.
In our opening it says that changed attitudes can aide recovery (mine) if I get happy regardless of what he is doing he might want to come along for the ride and make some good choices for himself /herself ya never know. Either way I win , I am happy and living my own life while still living with an alcoholic - go figure.
Sobriety has been in our home for 16yrs and ourlives are changing all the time -for the better and I quite frankly didnt have any hope that we could repair the mess we had made of ourlives.
I have such a hard time with this!! I want to be positive, but I do get so discouraged. I thought it was possible. My a was sober for 3 months after rehab. Then he "fell of the wagon" for a few months, then started getting his act together, now he is back to no meetings and not caring--my a is more of an addict, he hasn't had a drink since August. This completely hurt me a few weeks ago, but then I have really tried to work this program as well as I can, doing what I can for me and not worrying about him. Some days I succeed, some days I fail. But I am thankful for the "sober times" and I keep hoping that one day it will hit him again and he will want to choose life instead of death (which is exactly what is coming). I don't really talk about it with him anymore--last night when I came to bed he was reading his Narcotics Anonymous big book. (Inside I was jumping for joy, but I didn't say a word---I didn't know if he was testing me to see what I would do. Frankly I don't care why he was reading it I was just glad that is what he chose to read).
I do believe there is hope--I pray for peace, patience, understanding, and love until that time.
We need our own program, whether or not he sobers up. Sobriety brings its own problems, it is not a magic heal-all. Even if he does suddenly sober up, and grow up, and start to recover? If you are not working on YOU, you will be carrying the old attitudes from the drinking days with you, not to mention the personal problems that caused you to fall for an A in the first place. Just look at what has been happening to Lou, and some of the other A's who come here, to see how things go when the A sobers up, but the spouse does not get into recovery. Anger, resentment, bad choices.... You will have to do this work no matter what he does, so may as well get started on it now.
My "A" is a ADDICT also and an alcoholic. The drinking has always been there. I just refused to see it as a problem until this past summer. Then he finally shined light on the subject in Nov when he told me he had been using coke for a year.
Hope? I had hope. But then I saw that he used the last $11K of our $45K 2nd mortgage to get high over the last year. I realized how stupid I was in depending on him to take care of our finances. I took it over. I have sold about $15K worth of belongings to pay off debt he has gotten us in to and still have a lot more to go. I am now looking to sell my house to pay off the 2 mortgages & get into a more comfortable financial situation.
He has lost 2 jobs in the last 3 months and is slowly working on losing his latest one by not showing up so he can binge for days at a time.
I let my hope reside in my children. I am hopeful that I can find the strength I need to leave my husband and support my kids on my own. I am hopeful that I will be happier living alone rather than constantly worrying about whether my husband will come home or not. I am hopeful that I will find the emotional support I need from my family & my husband's family. I am hopeful that I will make this change in my life soon before my husband ruins us all.
I repeat the "Serenity Prayer" to myself every day. I have accepted things that I cannot change. I am going to change the things I can and I am seeing the difference between the two.
Welcome to MIP! That is an interesting analysis. It can go either way. Alanon teaches us to not do the dance with them whether they are sober or not sober. And there is always a good chance that they will relapse. What helps me is listening to speaker tapes for AA and Alanon. The real life stories show you the struggles, the successes and how the story ends as of the end of the tape/presentation. The possibilities are endless and not always the way they want.
As others have said there is always hope. If there wasn't I couldn't do this. Keep coming back.
There is always hope. Even if the chances are slim and the statistics grim, we can always hold onto the hope theat they will find their way to sobriety and keep at it.
The biggest hope is in you. There is hope for you and lots of it. You can choose to be happy and healthy. Then what your A does is up to them.
All we can do is to work our won program and do the best we can for oursleves. When we are doing better we are better able to decide what to do about the A in our lives. Either we have accpeted what they are and can live with it, or we can go on alone. There is always hope they will come along.
I agree with you view on the program...I think. Yes, we are learning to love our addicts the best we can and detach from the disease. Some choose to leave, many to stay...that is a personal choice. I sometimes feel helpless that he'll ever get better. We are learning to live our lives with joy whether they get better or not. Our happiness can't depend on them. I keep praying that mine will get better and stay that way. One thing I am learning is that the things I have been doing may be keeping him from the very crisis that could lead him to get help. I had to stop making excuses for him, quit fixing things for him and let him be himself, good, bad and ugly. I may be able to hide money today so he can't use because I think that is protecting him, but tonight something could have happened while he was using that would have caused him to seek help.
I believe recovery is possible for my AH. As strange as this sounds I try not to hope for it, hope to me is an expectation. I hope for my own recovery, because I know I am willing to work on it.
I have spent the last 6-7 years trying to simply get along in a world that was filled with my A's problems, with Al Anon i find I am actually living in THE world in spite of my A's problems.
At this time I find myself living physically with my A, but emotionally seperate for the most part whether or not he is actively using. His behavior remains the same except for being home sober, instead of being missing and loaded ocasionally.
Thanks to all of you for your responses, I really appreciate your views and interest. I have slowly been learning to live with my AW's disease and also learning to let go. I guess I am fortunate that there are good days as well as bad. I too hope that some day she will realize on her own what she is doing to herself and to us. Until that time, I will stay with her and will continue to try to learn and obtain support from all of you. Thanks again!!!!
