My fiance has been struggling a lot lately with this and it’s taking a toll on me. I’m doing all I can and all I know how to do but it’s getting really hard and exhausting to deal with the constant cycle of abuse and then apology and then abuse and then apology over and over and over again for months. Usually day by day. I have convinced her to go to a counselor for help and she has an appointment set and seemed willing but she has kept up the cycle of drinking and I’m afraid she’ll just ignore it or pretend to go. If anyone has experience helping a loved one through overcome this I would appreciate the help. She is an absolutely wonderful person when she is sober and I love her with all my heart but I’m not sure what else I can do and I don’t want the rest of my life to consist of this.
As an alcoholic, you cannot help someone who doesn’t want help. It’s a disease that grabs ahold of your mind and tells you to do things you actively don’t want to do. It’s hard to explain how you can just NOT want to be drunk today but then do it anyways. How you can know you’re hurting the people around you and still do it anyways. Both of my parents were violent alcoholics, but as I’ve grown and dealt with the issues of addiction myself, I’ve learned to have empathy for them.
Whatever you do, don’t marry this person unless you’re 100% sure you can deal with this disease. It may get better but it will definitely get worse for a time. There is no “former alcoholic”. There are only alcoholics who choose not to take the first drink.
I hate to say something so harsh but it’s the truth. I’m glad my girlfriend has endured me but I’m trying. There was a time I was downing 2 pints of bacardi gold every day, waking up and filling my coffee cup with it and drinking all day, sometimes passing out, waking up and drinking some more. I’ve cut back but I made.the decision myself. My girlfriend definitely pushed me in that direction and I’m jot trying ti take credit away from her trying, but everyday I make that decision myself.
You can push your fiance, but they have to make that decision. Everyday.
I know, we’re both predisposed to alcoholism, we’ve both had family die to it. I’ve struggled with it a little bit myself in my younger years. I know that if she chooses alcohol over us then there’s nothing I can do about it. And honestly it’s right at that point now. I love her and I always want to be there for her, but if she pushes me away I…I mean I know I deserve better and I know I can’t live like that but I’m just going to do my damndest for as long as I can. She’d do the same for me.
My wife and I have known each other for almost 10 years now, since our first date in our early 20s. We’ve only been married for 4, and we have a kid.
She is also an alcoholic, but luckily for me she turned it all around. The previous commenter is on point with everything they’re saying. You can’t help her until she fully internalizes that she needs help.
I think the turning point was when I realized I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to go through all of the stages of grief before I accepted the possibility of our relationship ending if she didn’t take steps to address her problems with alcohol. Then I realized that by trying to “be there” for her I was instead creating an environment where she didn’t need to change. So the most supportive thing at that point that I could do was to be firm and tell her that her last chance was up. I made it clear to her that I still loved her, but that I could not continue with the relationship as it was. And I told her that I’d be there if she wanted to come back after she took steps towards recovery.
I got lucky, but you need to be prepared for this relationship to end in order to save it. At some point forgiving her becomes almost selfish. I didn’t want to loose the good things I had with my girlfriend which made me tolerate her spiral downward. Once she realized she didn’t have that anymore, she made a change. Yours might not. And you have to accept that. You can’t fix someone who’s not ready to fix themselves.
I wish you all the best. I hope you take care of yourself.
It’s not a girlfriend but I have a friend who is in a similar situation. He has a bad drinking problem (among other things) and gets very destructive when he drinks. The rest of us in our social circle were finally able to get him to understand that he needed to quit and if he didn’t we weren’t going to be able to keep dealing with it. He was on the right track for several years but recently started spiraling again after a bad breakup. That’s a recent development so I can’t say how it’s really going to turn out yet but hopefully he can pull through. He’s a good guy when he’s sober and can get out of his own head.
This book This Naked Mind helped me a lot to quit alcohol.
But it was my own decision, not coming from someone else.
Sadly, the stop drinking community on Lemmy is non existent or dead so you have to check the original r/stopdrinking on Reddit. Even if we left that place, this sub is just awesome, packed with useful resources and is something really hard to find elsewhere, you won’t even have to post, just start by reading the sidebar and wiki.
Good luck, my problem with alcohol cost me my 13 years marriage but I got out of it mostly thanks to that subreddit, so anything is possible.
Yeah I’ve tried directing her to the /stopdrinking community but she doesn’t want to do that. She’s had some bad experiences with people online. And I guess people in general. She does like to read though, maybe if it’s a book she’d be more open to it, thank you
Yeah my idea was not to send her on Reddit but send you there so you could find good resources and maybe ask the same question if you feel like it.
I hope you will find some good reading material there that you can gift her (and she will love to read).
Oh duh, thank you, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself sooner. Yeah maybe I’ll go there too. Though I haven’t even opened that since they killed RiF
I feel you, I still have Apollo installed on my phone…
If you want to do AA without the god bit, the Satanic Temple has something called Sober Faction (in case you didn’t know, Satanic Temple is an atheist organisation and doesn’t actually worship Satan)
I do know the satanic temple yeah, neither of us are religious. She might actually be a bit jazzed if it’s from there honestly, thank you, I’ll look into it
You can do AA without subscribing to a god. I chose nature for my higher power
How did that go for you? I know it’s a personal thing but if you would be willing to expand on your experiences there in AA a little I would appreciate it, thank you
It went great, i went to meetings and actually travelled a bit to share my story with people at other meetings. The whole point of a “higher power” is to acknowledge there is something bigger than yourself. I’ve been sober about 4 years now.
The main thing I think is important for people to get help is that they have to make the choice, if you force someone to get sober tbey will resent you for it. It is a lot of work and I am tremendously lucky I had my wife by my side. Hopefully that helped, i’m happy to answer dms if you have more questions
+1 this. “A higher power as you personally understand it”
Every large city has atheist/agnostic/secular AA groups.
Fucking neat
https://al-anon.org/al-anon-meetings/
Al Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous [AA] are two different organizations. AA is for the people who want to get sober, and Al Anon is for the people dealing with the drinkers.
The only requirement to go to AA is to have a desire to stop. Someone can go to AA meetings even if they haven’t managed to stop using. AA doesn’t charge any fees. There are atheist /agnostic meetings for people who don’t believe in God.
Al Anon is about setting up boundaries and supporting people without enabling their drinking.
Thank you very much, I wasn’t aware of the distinction, I’ll look into that. I have been debating calling the national alcohol abuse hotline myself and just seeing if they can give advice on how to deal with this myself.
Two things:
- Threaten to leave her after a fallout with alcohol. When she is the lowest with a bad hangover this will help her realize it can get even worse!
- Leave her if she does not stop.
My wife did the same to me. Only thing that really worked.
She needs to decide it is time to stop drinking. Otherwise it will never happen.
Maybe move in with a relative to show you are serious and only come back after her first session with a therapist.
That was my move tonight yeah. I’m just looking for help on what to do moving forward. I had issues with alcohol myself when I was in my early 20s so I can empathize with what she’s going through, and I got through it, so she can too
My dad chose the booze in this scenario. From tenured university professor with a family to dying alone, homeless, on the other side of the country.
It may work, it may not. You are not (hopefully) the only one who wants to help her. Find the help, don’t take on the burden alone.
Don’t make a threat you are not ready to follow up on. If you go back on your word, then she can too.
Unfortunately she doesn’t really have any support besides me. At least, none that she trusts herself. I’m trying to encourage her to make friends and branch out a bit but she’s very anxious and shy which, I get, I am too. And yeah I’ve been really bad about saying “no more drinking” and then letting her convince me with “oh baby it’s just ONE I PROMISE it’ll be fine tonight” and it never is. But I put my foot down last night and I do intend to stick by it this time because I’ve tried a gentle caring lax attitude and that didn’t work so this is it now I guess.
Then it’s a journey you are both on. There is no victory, only constant vigilance. Stop being in the position where ‘only one’ is even an option.
I say this having seen my sister go through this too- fortunately more successfully than my dad.
Good luck man, find help. If not for her, then for you- it’s won’t be easy going alone.
Thankfully I have a fairly large support network of family and friends I can rely on. I’ll be okay no matter what happens. I just want her to be okay too
Former alcoholic here, although I abhor the term, Ill use it for simplicity. Imo, excess drinking is a symptom of other problems. I quit because I didnt want to die like that which is the inevitable outcome. But I had to get my other problems dealt with in order to quit, because for a while, like 10 years, I don’t think I cared, so I needed my doctors help with that. Mainly, I didnt want my grandkids to remember me like that, dying of alcohol-related problems, nor did I want my spouse to die like that, bc we were drinking partners. So I had to get her to quit too, which eventually came down to alcohol or me, so she chose me.
The only thing that one human being can do for another human being with an addiction is to love them as honestly and as consistently as possible.
It’s really about focusing on the self, more than focusing on the other person. Basically, you need to give them some hope that the world might be a worthwhile place to be. And you do that by being your best self.
I know it sounds vague, so I’ll try to be more specific. You need to make your side of the interface with that person as clean and as healthy as possible.
Specifically:
- Tell them the truth (including bad news)
- Keep your promises to them
- Don’t make promises to them you can’t keep
People get addicted because their moment to moment awareness is too full of pain to withstand.
For some people, the pain is simple. Their back is in agony, or the withdrawal from their last hit is grinding at them. For these people you can do nothing.
For others, the pain is harder to see and understand: the world is meaningless, their life is hopeless, they are surrounded by a world of shit, they can’t trust, etc. For these people you can’t do much. All you can do is make your little part of the world functional, so that in you they find reason to trust, evidence of meaning, a possibility of a world that isn’t shit.
99% of the work is still hers to do, not yours. But that 1% consists of being consistent and healthy in your dealings with her.
Now here comes the hard part. This is where you face your own real demons, for your sake and for hers. And I think the place to start that journey is:
What is it that you have to heal within yourself, so that you are no longer the kind of person to accept abuse?
Is there any way that you simultaneously stop accepting her abuse of you and give her greater hope of a world worth living in? I think there is. I think, in fact, it might be the same thing.
But it’s going to have to start with a serious, deep look into your own darkness, into the stinky, rotten parts of your own soul that are so scary to you that you’d rather accept abuse than look directly at them.
You are either a professional therapist or have a ton of personal experience with people with addiction
It sounds really beautiful and all, but the abuse will stay unless real consequences wake them up. Consequences that they cannot talk themselves out of, since they usually are real good talkers.
So take care of yourself, leave them be in their misery or stay a victim. I know what I would choose.
I was an active, functional, alcoholic for many, many years. I stopped drinking for good seven years ago, haven’t touched a drop since. There has been a lot of good advice here, however I wanted to offer my (possibly unconventional) two cents.
One of the things that got my attention during my drunk years was being confronted with how much money I was spending on alcohol. That was eye opening and really, my first dim lightbulb moment of ‘oh shit’ I might have a problem. Maybe showing her how much money she is throwing away each month on hooch?
Second was the realization that all my hobbies revolved around alcohol in some way. Getting involved in some new fresh things that didn’t inherently involve alcohol was a big step. Maybe you both could plan alcohol free activities during the hours she normally drinks the worst? Go for a walk in the park, hunt some Pokemon? Get her out of the house and somewhere poeple aren’t drinking. Even if it means an emergency 11pm trip to Target for candy.
Third, I would highly recommend therapy. I was drinking to fill a hole in my life alcohol was never going to fill. Once I was on the correct medication, I realized I was just using alcohol as a crutch for my mental illness.
My last advice which I hesitate to give, but which worked for me, is to switch addictions to something a little less damaging. I’m much happier being a evening stoner than an evening drinker. Maybe she would like vaping, or mircodosing on shrooms for a mood elevation?
Again all of these ideas involve her wanting to change, but if some part of her does want to change, than this will help. Also DO NOT KEEP ALCOHOL IN THE HOUSE. Nothing. Not a drop. Throw out the vanilla extract and mouthwash if you have to.
Good Luck Buddy!
I’ve been thinking about getting Allen Carr’s book “Quit Drinking Without Willpower”. I used his book " The Easy Way to Stop Smoking" to stop smoking in 2008. I had smoked for almost 30 years and then quit immediately after reading that book, with no cravings.
She has to want to do it. AA can be a great community (depends on group) but the God part shits me off. There are secular versions and online meetings. Other CBT models exist. A good read / listen is ‘Breaking Addiction’ by Lance Dodes. Talks about the underlying background trauma which the addict (of anything) will need to analyse and come to terms with.
Yeah she has an appointment with a non religious help group soon, AA would just make it worse for her I know. The thing is when she’s sober she really DOES want to get help. And then she gets cravings and she caves and it’s always just one but then just one turns into two turns into 6 turns into 12…She hates herself the next morning and it’s real regret. She wants help, and she knows she needs it, but she’s just struggling with actually going through with cutting everything out
Yeah it’s fucking hard and doesn’t really square up with reason and logic in broad daylight. I know.
Try the book. I listened to it while driving, on Spotify. It makes sense and involving discovering triggers relating to past trauma which the addict is trying to escape.
Absolutely, they have to WANT to stop. Otherwise it simply won’t work.
Not to be that guy but OP should seriously consider whether you want to spend the rest of your life dealing with this. It won’t pass.
The folks of AA and Al-Anon have endless experience with this and are there to help you.
Don’t hesitate to reach out in that direction.
Nut up and leave their ass. This sounds harsh, but in my experience people dont change until they have to contend with the harshest consequences of their actions.
They’ll cry crocodile tears and promise that they’ll do better from now on and to just give them one more change and everything will magically be better.
Maybe they put up an act for a bit but it always goes back to square one.
Stop tolerating abuse just because you love them or are afraid of being alone again. You are partially complicit in this by deciding to continue the relationship.
Do you really love this person? I mean really, like truly. Cuz you have to realize that this will most probably be like the rest of your life.
I did a similar mistake, married the wrong person out of pitty for her (I wanted to help her). Do understand, people don’t change, at least not at the age of 25 and above (I assume you’re both not in your teens). Damaged goods is not something I’d be willing to accept again as my life partner. Now I’m stuck with her for the next 15 years or so, till the kid grows up.
Think about having children with this person long and hard and whether you could endure that with a person like that. Marriages come and go, you 2 could get divorced, no harm no faul, but children are for life.
Strong disagree on people not changing, my partners brother was a heavy alcoholic at 30 and he’s now 5 years sober and has children and hasn’t touched a drop. He relapsed in his first week and nearly died.
People can change, they just have to want to. Of course this isn’t applicable to all but generalising your situation to everyone isn’t helpful to people in these positions.
On the flip side so show that I understand people not changing, her uncle has currently lost his family and maybe soon his job. Every time the kids are due to be with him he’s completely shitfaced and the adult dropping them off refuses to give them to him in that condition and that still isn’t enough for him to want to change. I bet he has seen his own children for over a year. He is constantly lying and we think he owes money to people because he’s usually in a bit of a roughed up state. It’s sad but until he wants it there’s nothing anyone can do.
Her brother is still a testament to the way people can better themselves though.
Thank you for this, I know she can get through this and come out okay on the other side. I hope she doesn’t have to almost die for that to happen though
I’m not willing to take that chance again. Got burned once, not willing to try it again.
And I was speaking from my own experience, as everyone else does (yourself included).
That’s fair, I’m sorry that you’ve been through what you have, but you made a heavy generalisation that people don’t change, my experience is that they can and do.
Neither of us want children and yes I really true love her. I’m not planning on leaving her I just want to help her through this. I know she can do this and I believe in her and I’m not going to give up on her until she gives up on herself. I’d take a bullet for her no second thought.
I understand your feelings of empathy and loyalty. I respect that as one of the most beautiful things that can be between two people but be aware that loyalty can also be a trap and that is when it keeps you in a toxic relationship that is slowly destroying you. I´m not saying it has to turn out like that but don´t be naive as I was, be smart. Be there for her, make her feel loved and try everything to help her but at the same time you have to be absolutely aware of a few things.
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Alcoholism creates behaviours that are extremely hard to break. There is a possibility that she might never stop drinking at all and that it even gets worse over time, no matter what you do to help her or how much love and care you give her. It is beyond of what you can control, only she could and she might not be able to.
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Never forget to keep one eye on yourself and to take care of yourself. Empathic people in difficult relationships often focus so much on managing the relationship and being there for their partner, that they start to neglect the duty of taking care of their own well being. This can take a heavy toll and go on until total mental burnout occurs and can lead to serious psychological trauma, depression, frustration, aggression, emotional instability and so on, leaving you as an injured party at the end.
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If time shows that she can´t change, no matter what, get out and safe yourself, don´t hesitate.
I wish you two all the best and that everything will work out. Take good care of yourself.
Thank you, I did need to hear that. When I called up my brother he said a lot of the same stuff. I know there’s a possibility she’s going to choose alcohol over our relationship and I’m ready to recognize when that happens. But I don’t think it’s there yet. If she doesn’t go to this counseling meeting she scheduled then I’ll have to rethink things, unfortunately. I know from experience how bad it can be and how little you care about other people when you’re in that hole but sometimes you just need someone to throw you a rope down to help you climb up and I’m hoping that’s the case here. And that she chooses to take it and make the effort to climb up herself.
Realizing all these things beforehand will help you a lot in managing whatever you will be going trough. Giving her and the relationship a chance, while being ready to safe yourself if necessary, is the best you can do imo. You should communicate these things with her openly, it might be a motivation for her too.
Again, all the best for the two of you!
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IDK what to tell you… mood swings will most probably be a part of your life. She drank for a reason, it made her feel good. When she doesn’t have that fix, she’s most probably like you experience her now. She might get better with time (less abusive), than again, chances are (from my experience) that she won’t.
Well I had issues with drinking myself when I was younger and I got through it decently fine. I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad experience yourself but I’m really hoping it doesn’t turn out that way here. Though I do know the possibility exists. When she’s sober she still says she wants help. As long as she doesn’t give up entirely on herself I’m not giving up on her either.
Hope is our biggest asset… as humans… and our biggest downfall… I had hope as well.
Sorry for saying this, but from my current perspective (experience), nah, I wouldn’t take that chance. If I was in your place (not having to live through what I have, and still doing it BTW), yes, I most probably would take that chance as well.
A friend of mine once told me, entering a marrige with hope doesn’t end well. From what I’ve seen around me (other examples and my own mother and father), yes, in most cases, it doesn’t end well.
Basically, you’re getting “damaged goods” in the start. If you feel like you’re also damaged goods and need a lot of work (from one perspective or another), that’s fine I guess, but I never felt like that. Sure, everyone has his/her quirks, no doubt there, but this is big. When pushing comes to shoving (as does from time to time in life), she’ll probably just go into recession and start drinking again… and this will happen from time to time, not too often, bit then she’d go to rehab, you won’t be with your partner for an undisclosed ammount of time… I mean, really? Is that what you’d want your life to be like? Talking from experience here, my family’s and my own, trust me. Yes, people can change, but these are rare cases. Most of the time, they don’t.
My 2 cents…
Sorry, had to edit the post a few times.
Another secular alternative is SMART recovery. They have group meetings in-person and online as well as a Family & Friends program. https://www.smartrecovery.org/
Think about this carefully. Don’t fall into group therapy that costly. You can do this yourself.
I don’t understand your comment. I have found SMART recovery to be free, running off of donations and volunteers. They also sell a few books at a reasonable cost. The only money I have ever spent is donating a few dollars after attending some Family & Friends meetings, and I bought the workbook for something like less than $20.
don’t nitpick or criticize or yell or grief them. they know. trust me: they know. it’ll only make things worse if you reinforce the shit thoughts they already have about themselves.
just support and be nice, patient and help.
jack trimpey rational recovery is godsend. allison carr the easy way. 30 day trial is good.
psychiatrist for naltrexone or other blockers are, legit, the secret.
support groups to talk to people things like life ring, other secular groups they can google.
id avoid AA. no, i won’t elaborate
