The woman who hit and killed my friend Michelle when we were walking together 19 years ago only drove home after drinking "a little" at a company softball game one time. She thought she was fine.

She gets to live with that for the rest of her life. So do Michelle's parents and siblings.

So do I.


TrustDoe-

I'm sure that when tst was in his A that he wouldn't have liked anyone telling his wife something like that. But, since tst is now a FWS, I think he has some insight into the thought process and motivations of a WS, and his advice is invaluable. JMHO.

BullyMom, in addition to Alanon, I would start preparing for plan B and getting your ducks in a row. Your H is a practicing alcoholic who is very self destructive. If you allow him, he will drag you down into the pig pen with him. You CANNOT SAVE HIM. The best you can do is protect yourself from him.

Additionally, I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND that you call the police whenever he goes drunk driving and get him tossed into JAIL. Jail is EXCELLENT MEDICINE to practicing alcholics. It is like giving penicillin to a man with a disease. Your H knows he can't drink but has not suffered enough yet to STOP. He has to hit bottom before that can happen. JAIL may be his bottom.

But in the meantime, I would remove yourself from his very destructive presence. Alcoholics are so putrid and disgusting that you will grow to DESPISE him if you remain together. When you reach that stage it is hard to EVER COME BACK. By removing yourself, you protect any remaining love you might have for him. That way, if he ever sobers up, your marriage might have some hope.

I am so sorry you are stuck with a disgusting alcoholic. They are about the most vile, disgusting creatures there are and they leave a wide path of destruction behind them.

p.s. trying to reason with a practicing alcoholic is a futile exercise. They are so addicted to booze that reason cannot penetrate the fog.

They do respond to PAIN, though. When the pain of drinking is greater than the pain of NOT drinking, they take notice. Things that are therapeutic to alcoholics are JAIL, loss of family, job, money, humiliation, etc. We all have different bottoms.

With some it take some JAIL TIME, with others all it takes is losing their spouse or making an jacka** out of themselves in a restaurant. I suspect your H may be a low bottom alcoholic since he has been playing games with AA for 7 years now.

alcoholic fogbabble! He is SELF WILL RUN RIOT and believes he is entitled to HURT you in pursuit of his own selfish interests. He is a hurtling bus with no brakes. You and your kids are on the bus unfortunately.

Did your wife execute plan B tst? Were you mad?

How did YOUR recovery go??

I do not think my husband is happy for what he is reading on his thread...I am on the downstairs computer and was anxious to read my replies as I saw you told him if he wouldnt pull the plug I should take your advice.

I am sure he won't like what he reads here.

She was a few weeks away from it when I had my surgery (cranial/rectal extraction aka getting my head outta my a$$)

She would have done it sooner, except there were a few things she was trying to get completed first.

IF I had been actively drinking, she would have Plan B'd from the start...probably Plan D'd (divorced) without ever thinking twice.





Very well because I did whatever it took to help my wife heal. I did everything she asked, and she asked a lot. She had a list of requirements that I had to meet before she would consider reconciliation.

If I had been unremorseful, uncooperative, unwilling in the least, she would have moved into Plan B or D. She was not taking any crap any longer.




I'm not interested in making him happy. I'm interested in helping him save his life and his marriage. If that help makes him angry, oh well. It is what it is.

BM, i would not expect him to be happy with what he is reading here. If you followed our advice and stopped enabling him, he might have to sober up. And he does not want his good deal screwed up! We hate it when our spouses get wise to our scheme and no longer go along with the program.

But be assured that your H will get worse at the rate he is going. Alcoholics NEVER improve except with complete abstinence; they always get progressively worse.

I will also tell you that your marriage has NO HOPE of recovery unless he sobers up. It is hopeless. It is impossible to meet the needs of a drunk; alcoholism and adultery are such massive lovebusters that your marriage is doomed. There is no amount of counseling or questionaires that can compensate for active alcoholism.

This is why Dr Harley DOES NOT recommend Plan A with an alcoholic. He will only wear you down worse. The only plan he advises, if your spouse won't stop drinking, is PLAN B. Remove yourself from the abuse.

What to do with an Alcoholic Spouse

I do appreciate all of your posts.

That being said, I don't know where you came up with the fact I am gullible. I admit, I do not know that much about AA, I AM willing to learn it.

Every BS has been gullible, whether or not alcohol is a factor or not. We are here, we want help, we don't want to be labeled. Haven't we been hurt enough?

I do NOT condone what he has done. I am still angry.

Yet still, I do not see how sarcasm and little emoticons of a smiley blowing a nose are helpful on my husbands thread.

How calling someone vile, disgusting, etc is going to help anyone or make them want to come here for help?

Of all the links I read in Dr Harelys alcohol related threads, I have not seen HIM even call anyone names or make derogatory remarks towards an alcoholic spouse.

Why is that ok for you do to here?

Bullymom, as an alcoholic myself, I will tell you truthfully that alcoholics ARE vile and disgusting and putrid. They are stupid, crazy, insane and they stink. They kill people, destroy families, lose jobs, etc. That is simply a true fact and it does not help your H to deny it. Any HONEST alcoholic knows this and will admit it themselves.

I won't gloss over the truth about them. I don't know of anyone who is more disgusting than a practicing alcoholic and it HELPS the alcoholic to HEAR how disgusting he really is.

Alcoholics tend to romanticize how wonderful and beautiful[or studly] they are when drinking, when actually they are just disgusting.

Practicing alcholics choose spouses they know they can FOOL so they can continue drinking with abandon. They want to be around other people who won't tell them or don't realize how disgusting they are. They surround themselves with enablers. They want ppl around them who will believe their lies about how they can control their drinking now. I am not putting you down for that, but it is clear he believes he can trick you into believing he can get away with having a "couple of drinks" and hang out in bars.

He did not choose me so he could continue drinking. I met him when he was sober. He specifically asked when we moved in together that I NOT bring alcohol into our home because he was sober. I respected that.

I am definitely not a person he chose to enable him.

Is there alot of truth to what you said? Oh hell yeah! I am not going to enable him. I intend on going to Al anon this week as there is a meeting when I am off.

One thing he did say was, *IF* he does have a problem, going to Al anon will give ME the tools to bring it out. He said many alcoholics did not seek treatment until their spouses were already going to get help themselves.

I do not see it as...."You go first, dear and if I have a problem it will get to me to go" But rather as self preservation for myself.

He keeps saying he can put it down. That he can walk away from a bottle. And I have seen him do it with me.

BUT...alcohol is a trigger for me. He has driven when he shouldn't have THREE TIMES. He has bedded another woman because he wasn't sober and he has left to go drinking when he is angry.

I told him I don't HAVE to respect that he ONLY drove three times when he shouldn't have. Hell, my best friend only drove ONCE this year drunk, in January. She gets to start driving again at the end of this month.

And she only got drunk and drove ONCE.

Numbers mean nothing to me. Once was all it took for her, and I am not waiting for #4 to be the one that may be the one that spells out the problem.

As far as I am concerned, 1,2, and 3 are/were/forever shall be a HUGE issue for me.

I want help. There is plenty to find here. I am just respectfully asking that name calling stop.

Bullymom, I won't stop saying the truth about alcoholics, that helps no one. I left my denial behind 20+ years ago and can't turn the clock back. They are disgusting and that is simply a true fact. Calling him a PEACH will not change reality.

Do you know that alcoholics can NEVER DRINK and should NEVER hang out in bars? Only complete abstinence will ever suffice. An alcoholic can never be a social drinker. And your husband knows this.


All alcoholics say this, talk is cheap. But the proof is in the pudding. You can see with your own eyes that he is still drinking. Saying you can "walk away" from something and never doing it is just empty babble. Something alcoholics are famous for. He still drinks so apparently he can't walk away. Your H was in AA for years so he knows this already. He also knows he shouldn't be hanging out in bars.


And I respectfully decline to pretend that alcoholics are something they are not. No, thank you.

BM, I would suggest that the help this site has to offer can only be useful AFTER your husbands alcoholism is arrested. A program of recovery is useless with active alcoholics until the drinking stops. Recoery for his alcoholism has to be the first step. There is very little help that MB can offer until that happens, just like Dr Harley stated in his article.


edited to add:


See, what this statement says is that your H is not being honest about his alcoholism. He went to AA for 7 years so he knows there is no *IF* about it. He knows he has a problem, but he gets away with saying things like this and saying he "can walk away from it anytime" when it is obvious he is not doing that. He knows there is no "IF" about it but believes if he continues to deny it that he can continue to avoid repsonsibility. And he has told you here that he will not take responsibility for his alcoholism but is leaving it to you to find "the tools to bring it out." He is in serious denial and is playing games.

Using respectable language to make him feel better about being a stinking drunk is not the answer, BM. It just keeps him in a state of denial, making ridiculous statements like "IF" he is an alcoholic. His denial is DEEP AND STRONG.

Your H wouldn't DARE say this kind of stuff at an AA meeting, just so you know. He knows they would laugh.

My counselor wasn't helping.....here is my letter to her.

But my husband is in AA and is hitting alot of meetings. I feel like a weight has been lifted. His new friends and sponsor are awesome....they call each other daily and they do many fun family things as well. Even he sees that those are better friends than the ones he sat with at the bars.

I feel like those people are Angels.

I went to an open meeting with him and the lead speaker could have written our life. I understood how hopeless his wife felt.

Things are so different. I was so close to leaving. He is a totally different person.

Anyhoo, I did send an angry letter to my counselor....

See below.

Diana,

I just wanted you to know that David and I will not be back for counseling. I do not feel like we did anything other than spin our tires in the 6 months we were there.

David picked your office as he did not want to go to my therapist who has known me for years. I was actually relieved when I looked at your site, to see that you also specialized in drug and alcohol problems as well.

He told you he was a past alcoholic. At one point, you were going to do an assessment on him, but never did. You felt that counseling with both parties was better and we could work thru our issues that way, rather than see him separately.

I voiced my concerns many times over his drinking and increasing frequency, his dangerous behaviours. I feel all that got glossed over and he was given clues and triggers to watch out for to be a better husband, but yet, the drinking wasn't addressed. In fact, I was advised that I wasn't his mother and I shouldn't voice my concerns that he could better use his time and money doing something better, rather than sit in a bar.

And I did my part. Which Al anon would have told me to do anyways, I cannot be responsible for his drinking. But what he heard was permission to do as he pleased without consequence.

Every two wks, he was going out, getting drunk, being selfish. I voiced the fact that you never did the assessment and you said you would do one if he wanted one. I guess I am suprised as a practice that specialized in such problems was not giving someone that test. Especially a person who was sober for 17 yrs and started drinking again!

Would it have solved anything? I don't know. But I feel that not addressing the alcohol problems I brought forth every session and telling him (an alcoholic) to be more empathetic and more caring was trying to nail a square of jello to a tree. Is there such a thing as an alcoholic who cares about the people he hurts, or are they selfish and self centered?

He came home, yet again, two wks after we saw you, puking in the toilet. I came downstairs and I really thought he was going to die, that I needed to sit with him so he didn't choke on his own vomit. He drove home that sick. At least he didn't kill anyone on the way home.

He finally admitted he had a disease and that he didn't want me to see him like that. I was so mad I went to bed, but not before I told him remember what he just said, acknowledging he IS an alcoholic.

He has been to meetings (on his own) Since Dec 1st, and goes and looks forward to meetings, he hits at least 5 a week. He went on Christmas and I have gone to meetings with him as well.

You told him he acted like he has a person on the side the way he interacted with me. Totally into himself, selfish and self absorbed. It wasn't a person, it was the drinking.

I do not believe one can successfully go thru marriage counseling while one is an alcoholic.

I learned to regard my husband as hopelessly lost to his alcohol,(on my own) and that any effort I made to try to please him will not be reciprocated. His lover was alcohol and that's that. I have never had a chance for a normal marriage with him and would never have had a chance as long as he's addicted.

Thankfully God made sure he didn't kill anyone that last time and got him to admit he has a disease.

Hi BM,

So, what I hear you saying is your H has been sober for 30 days??

Is that right??

Yes!!! That is exactly what I am saying!

And my oldest daughter said what I already saw myself. He is a totally different, more caring person to be around. Which boggles my mind as he didn't drink all the time, but it affected his attitude all the time.

I realize this paves the way for us to heal and work the steps on Marriage builders, there is more work to do. But at least now we can work on the issues.

I guess the counselor got my email...she has been burning up the phone lines to talk to me. Interesting.

Do you guys think she ignored the elephant in the living room, or was my letter to her way off base?

That's wonderful news.



Staying sober is the primary focus for the alcoholic.....it is the same as NC for the WW....

But, yes you are right, you can now begin to work on the marriage together. It can be done if both you and LIO are willing.


I would suggest you or LIO fire this counselor.....just my .02

Find a counselor that will help you work the MB program or call the Harley's and set up phone counseling.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{BULLYMOM!!}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

you listened to us!!!!!

She didn't ignore the elephant in the living room, she didn't know what to do with it. Unless she is a recovering alcoholic herself, she probably doesn't have a clue! That is why most counselors send their alcoholic patients to us at AA. The counselors come to AA for help for themselves..

BRAVO!! Thank God you heard us!

If I were a sentimental, sappy person - which I AM NOT - this would bring tears of joy and gratitude to my eyes.

The counselor has been burning up the phone lines to talk to me.

She called our home and when I didn't answer, she called hubby who was at work and he gave her my cell, which I did not answer.

Honestly, I am not interested in anything she has to say.

I feel like she hurt us more than helped us.

Our sessions consisted of him being told to be more caring and considerate. Of me complaining about driving by bars to see where he is at and why he isn't home. And some other very scary alcohol related brain farts.

All my concerns were glossed over and he was told how he should act (and of course he is selfish when he drinks so that isn't happening!) and that I should not give my opinions on how he should spend his free time or who he is spending it with.

Geeez. Never mind that he had his ONS when he was intoxicated and that is how the whole thing started.

Every session had a new alcohol event for me to tell her every two wks.

I was very close to throwing in the towel.

He wanted to drink on Christmas, BUT he didn't tell me. He asked when we were on the way home from visiting family, if he could go to a meeting. His sponsor would take him home if I dropped him off. So I did.

He thought I would be angry that he would want to spend part of a Holiday there and I was not angry at all. I am comforted that he has a network of friends he can talk to.

It's funny. He was embarrassed to go back and said he would maybe hit one meeting a week. He is looking forward to going to meetings and goes at least 5 times a week.

Its amazing how this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Dr Harley would advise. First off, he wouldn't even counsel your marriage until the alcoholism was treated. I haven't heard of many counselors who would ignore an active problem with alcoholism as yours did.

Secondly, he very much advocates that you should give your opinions about his free time! How else will your husband know how to make you happy if you don't give your opinions? [and vice versa!] A good marriage consists of listening to the other and making decisions using the policy of joint agreement.

You did good, BullyMom. Bravo to your husband for being brave enough to go back to AA.