Need help confronting my husband

I don't know what to do or say.

There's no hint of physical violence, so clear that thought away. It's pure denial here.

A friend of mine with LOTS of experience with alcoholics (married 2 of 'em) says he's a Classic Alcoholic. Charming, friendly, intelligent... and drinks like a fish. He can put down an entire 5th in a day, and frequently does, but rarely shows outward signs of drunkenness.

The problem is: not always, but often, the drink turns him into a mean, sarcastic, angry monster. He'll get ticked off at something, anything, and he's off and running. Nothing anyone can say or do does any good - there's no mollifying, reasoning, caring thing. If I do manage to say something right/reasonable/caring, he'll just blink and hare off on a tangent to stay angry. He keeps going until he literally wears himself out and goes to bed.

But he doesn't have a problem. It's all justified. I don't care about his problems, I come off as superior, I have anger issues, I misunderstand him; he's not really angry, yada yada. #######4 psyche games.

He absolutely depends on my sense of fair play. I know I'm not perfect, that I have and create problems and misunderstandings, and I know marriage is a two-way street, that each person has to give, and compromise is the name of the game. But he never compromises! He never admits to making mistakes! Or - he does, little bitty ones, just enough so he can point to them and claim that he does, too, apologize. So it's very easy for him to turn things back on me. I learned through previous experience in counseling to give and take - give a little, recognize your own part in things, and work on them - and expect the same in return. But I'm not getting it.

*** ok, I'm ranting now. *deep breath*

How can I get him to recognize that he has a problem?

How do I handle things when a situation comes up - he's drunk and angry and ranting? Is walking away/getting out of the house the thing to do? Sit there and let him rant without any reaction?

Would taping one of these scenes and playing it for him when he's sober help him realize how he acts? (Anybody got a recorder I could borrow?)

And again - how do I get through to him? He's even denying that he gets angry at all now. I'm mistaking him, of course.

I'm sure of what to do once the denial is over - I just need to get to that point, before I lose my sanity or our marriage. Actually, the only one in danger is the second one. I will NOT live the rest of my life like this. I've already promised myself that Christmas 2006 will see him sober or us separated.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks in advance!

If you have read other threads on this site, or visited other recovery sites, you must get a sense that you are not alone in this. You’re not Lilac.

In reading your post, I could see myself in your husband. My wife suffered my manipulations, my denials, my inappropriate and angry responses to almost anything she did or said. My wrapping myself in anger and resentment until I myself was sick of it.

We know we are in trouble, we know that our behavior is wrong. We are not fools, we are alcoholics. But if your husband is anything like me, he is scared to death of not drinking. When we open our eyes, we think about that first drink of the day. We need it. Without it, we are faced with naked reality, the naked reality we have created for ourselves.

We are in a box of our own making, we can’t drink safely, and we can’t stop. We are being driven before a master we cannot control or bargain with. We are deep in the woods of alcoholism, lost as babes. And sadly most of us stay lost. Recovery rates for alcoholism aren’t too good.

Denial seems to be the primary symptom. It is so very hard to get past, but recovery only begins with admission of powerlessness over alcohol. It is a tough nut to crack.

But there is always hope. I found Alcoholics Anonymous seven years ago, and have been sober ever since.

Have you looked into Al-Anon? It is a fellowship of wives, husbands and loved ones of alcoholics. They understand what you are going through, and may have some tools to offer you in dealing with him.

Best of luck, and like the airline stewardess says, as the oxygen mask falls from the overhead compartment, put it on yourself first, than put them on your kids. Not the other way around. Take care of yourself first, then and only then can you help someone else.

Richard

Thanks for the reply, Richard.

If I can ask, what was it that made you "wake up" to the facts of the problem? What got through your denial and made you seek help?

Do you have any thoughts on how I can handle each individual situation when it comes up? How did your wife handle things when you were off on one of your rages? What helped and what didn't?

Yes, I have looked into Al-Anon, and AA, but I don't agree with the philosophy. I'm glad it worked for you, but it wouldn't work for us. One size does not fit all.

Thanks again for the help.

Pain and fear was the catalyst for change for me.
Fear doesn't own me like it used to, but there was a time not all that long ago when that wasn't so.

I am a graphic designer by trade, and as I sat in my studio one morning staring at an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels, the biggest decision I had to make that day was, am I going to crack that seal open at 9:00 am or am I going to put it off till noon. I was going to open it, of that I was sure, it was only a question of when.

Then it struck me. Naked fear descended on me like a icy fog. I sat there so scared that I thought I might soil my pants. And I couldn't even tell you what I was so afraid of. No. that's not quite true, I know now what it was, I was projecting. I had had a bad week, I had had a bad month, Hell, I had had a bad year. And I was projecting that run of bad luck forward in time. Another 6 months of this was a hard thing to face. Another year was unimaginable. Years uncounted of this brand of misery folding out before me was simply unbearable.

Fear was all over me like the skin I wore. And it's as if everybody in my life could feel it, could smell it on me in some subliminal fashion. They were backing off, and I couldn't blame them. My whole world was falling apart. Everywhere across my horizon were nothing but dark storm clouds. And they were growing fast.

I screwed up as much courage as I could manage, and I told my wife that I was scared all the time. I never mentioned my drinking. I would never put that at risk. She got this look in her eyes like, "Oh no, I'm yoked in harness with this man, two kids, mortgage etc. and he's stumbling bad. He's fixing to fall flat on his a**." She looked scared too.

I made up my mind right then and there to never say anything to her about those feelings again. That left me pretty much alone. This went on for maybe six or eight more months, and all the time stuff was getting bad. Stuff got real bad toward the end. At that point I believed I had to drink and drug my demons away. I woke up in the morning and I couldn't stand the way I felt. A few drinks eased that never-ending feeling of impending doom, and after a bunch more, oblivion. That's all I had at the end. Ether a pain I could not tolerate, or a blind stupor. What a sorry deal. Alone and sinking fast.

But life has a strange sense of humor.
The finest gift than I could imagine showed up in wrapping paper that looked like pure misery.

A good friend of mine used to tell me that his alcoholism was his best asset. I thought he was crazy the first time he told me that. I know what he meant now. That crisis in my life was the turning point. Out of that crucible of active, painful, and pitifully incomprehensible alcoholism was borne a new man. And it is a gift that I never fail to say thank you for.

That’s my story of alcoholic redemption.

My advice on what to do the next time he goes off, and take it for what it’s worth, is this:
Let your husband fall. Don’t cover for him at work. Don’t clean up behind him at home. Let the full weight of his actions fall on his shoulders alone. Let him sink as far and as fast as he will. Don’t argue or try to reason with him if he is loaded and gets belligerent. One can’t reason with a drunk.

Deep and abiding mental and physical pain are the touchstones of change for an alcoholic. Until his drinking becomes intolerably painful for him, and for him alone, he won’t even consider stopping. It is a hard thing, but like I said, pain seems to be the key.

AA is not the only path to sobriety, it is in my opinion the best, but for what it is worth, here are a few links to other programs that don’t use God.

http://www.secularhumanism.org
http://www.smartrecovery.org
http://www.rational.org
and I throw in this last one in the spirit of being thorough, but I don’t believe an alcoholic ever learns to drink safely again. But look into it if you wish.
http://www.moderation.org

let us know how you are doing.

I doubt he will want to, but if hubby wants, he can e-mail me directly if he wishes. I will share with him what I know about this business, one drunk to another.
Shadowalker164@aol.com

Richard S.

Thank you for being so candid, Richard. I think he's a long ways away from the kind of rock bottom you describe - he never drinks on or before the job; it's never affected his job or social life; there's never been anything to "clean up" at home or out of it. The only place it really affects us is when the monster comes out and we have these horrible arguments.

I'm going to get this tattoed somewhere: "You can't reason with a drunk." Write it 500 times on a black board. And then figure out some way of recognizing when we've reached that point and acting on it. Preferably as gracefully as possible. But then, gracefully hasn't gotten me too far with this yet. Maybe I should try ungraceful and in your face: "You're too drunk to reason with. We'll talk about this tomorrow." and then shut up. Leave the room or the house if necessary. Does that sound right?

Thanks also for the other web sites. I've looked into most of them, and I like the looks of Rational Recovery. If I can get him that far, that's the one I'll point him towards.

In the meantime, we did manage to have one civil (early morning) conversation about it, and I managed to get him to promise to cut down, at least. (Of course, later and with a snootful, he threw it back at me that I had a "superior" attitude then, so I'm not sure how much of that promise he's apt to stick to.) But at any rate, I might try the Moderation.org site first. It's worth a shot.

Thanks again for everything, and if you or anyone else has more ideas, please post them! I will keep in touch, too.

Thank you both for this wonderful conversation! I am learning so much from your stories.

Like you Lilac, I lived with an alcoholic until the disease took over to the point where my son and I had to move out. She has been in detox several times, lost her home, cars, jobs, credit in the past 2 years.

Her new boyfriend has the same history (but more of it) and they try to keep eachother sober. This hurt me at first when she jumped right into another relationship. It does not anymore because it is NOT MY FAULT - which was hard for me to realize. It is also NOT MY JOB TO SAVE HER - which I have finally realized as well. I have myself and my son to take care of. I have responsibilities. If I care about her, I must let her figure it out.

Shadowalker- your advice has been very helpful. Thank you!

Lilac - I pray that you, your family and your spouse will get through this.

Good luck in 2006!

An update: things have been going somewhat better the last three months, mostly because I have been attempting to disengage and de-escalate the rotten scenes. And there've only been a small handful of them.

I haven't been entirely successful, though.

The worst one was Superbowl weekend. ... Meh. I started to post a long description of what happened, but it doesn't really matter. The point is simply that the emotions ran amok again.

I've been doing some reading on alcohol's effects on the internet - do you realize how much people who write about the effects of alcohol focus on physical ones, and neglect emotional effects? Only a fraction of such sites mention them at all, and then only briefly.

However, the ones that do say the same thing: alcohol heightens emotions and at the same time disables emotional judgement and loosens inhibitions against displaying them. The alcoholic cannot recognize if his emotions are even appropriate to the situation, but just runs with it, blubbering all over the place, all without any recognition of what effect those emotional displays are having on the people around them.

All this is buildup. We had another small tiff over the weekend, that I managed to keep contained mostly by virtue of claiming a horrible headache (no lie, I think it was a rare migraine; at any rate it sure didn't respond to the several different medicines I threw at it over the course of the day) that kept me from being able to think and respond coherently. So I just let him rant. Even let him have (several) last words.

The GOOD NEWS is that the very next morning, long before any drinks had passed his lips (he's not a 24-7 drinker, thank goodness, there are a few hours in the morning before he starts cracking the beers), we had a good long deep personal talk. I laid out what I had found out, pretty much what I just wrote in the above paragraph about emotional effects. And I could see him actually absorbing this info and thinking about it.

I must interject a bit of background here - we just moved across the country, after having spent 3 years in an area we did NOT like, and never fit into, him working horrible jobs that didn't even pay our expenses and dealt some real blows to his self-esteem, physical and mental health. He's now got high blood pressure and a lot of supressed anger. He brought that up himself during this talk, and said that he thinks that anger is coming out during those times.

I caught his eye and said very quietly, "and you're taking it out on me." Bam. I could SEE that hit him.

We talked a bit more about all this, and he pretty much acknowleged that his emotions are getting out of hand during these times. We also agreed that stopping such scenes somehow would be a good thing, and that I am allowed to tell him when I think this is happening, and I want to table whatever serious discussion we (think we) are having until the next morning.

The hard part is going to be actually doing that and making it STICK. Seeing's how he's so reasonable during those times and all..... [/sarcasm]

We also need to find more appropriate ways of channeling that anger, hopefully to get rid of it eventually. Now that we've moved, and he's in a MUCH better job for a MUCH better company, one that has good, friendly people and a responsive boss, there's much less reason for more anger to pile up on top of the old. Except that now he's kind of in an "anger habit", you know what I mean?

[Wry rant] Why are you guys so piss-poor at handling your emotions? [/wry rant]

Crap. I didn't realize I wasn't logged in when I posted that. The above post is from me, guys.

If a forum administrator sees this, could you put my name on that post somehow, or merge it into this one and delete the other? Thanks very much.

Lilac…
You asked, “Why are you guys so piss-poor at handling your emotions?”

Well I’m goin‘ to #$*&%&* tell ya why we are $#!*&^ pissed off with &%$#!*& like you when we are %$#!*& drunk.

You have been doing your homework, alcohol does indeed wreck the body, but we really drink it for the mental effect. Here is the deal for a hard drinker like myself. It has to do something FOR me before it can do anything TO me. That is an important distinction. And what it does is turn this hostile, threatening and colorless world into a Technicolor wonderland. And it does it fast.

And I went back to it a bit too often for my own good.

But like you observed, it also lowers our inhabitation’s. Deep seated anger, or any other emotion will bubble to the surface. As my momma used to tell me, a drunk man always tells the truth. We act on our impulses, there is no effective mechanism to stop us from acting on every thought we hold. And the thoughts we hold are truly who we are.

I never had a bad idea when I was drunk. (Wry wink)

When I was fully in my cups, I was without the veneer of civility. I did as I damn well pleased, when I damn well pleased, and screw you if you don’t like it.

But because I was not stupid, and I could remember the look of hurt in my children’s and wife’s eyes, I was wracked with guilt and remorse. And that pissed me off too. Guilt and remorse was a buzz kill. It was easier and more fun to be pissed.

Anger is a form of fear, resentment is a form of fear, and fear is the opposite of serenity.

Lilac, Rational Recovery makes a few good points about cost and benefit analysis. And how to evaluate our choices based on a logical scale of if I do this, I get that. Very logical, very rational.

Where they miss the boat, in my opinion, is in the simple fact that alcohol really isn’t our problem. Sure it is when we are drinking, but in the final analysis, we suffer from a disease that runs a lot closer to the core of what we are. Alcohol is just a symptom of that disease.

I won’t get into it too deeply here, but fear, (your husband is full of it, even if he doesn’t know it as such) remorse, and anger are the products of this disease. And as strange as it sounds, when this underlying disorder is effectively addressed, more than our drinking gets better.

Richard

Actually, Richard, I'd like it very much if you would get into that some more. Please explain, if it's not too personal. Any information I can get to understand my husband better - and help him understand himself - is greatly needed and appreciated. Thanks.

Edited to add - I've realized something recently. I resent a whole lot about this problem - there's a whole lot to resent - but one of the things I resent is that his behavior has taken the joy out of drinking for ME. I hardly ever drink anymore, and never get buzzed, because I'm afraid of what it may lead to. I'm afraid of losing control myself and escalating the situation if he gets confrontational. And that pisses me off. I liked the buzz, too, you know!