It’s so easy for people
who have never experienced life with an alcoholic to make comments or judgments
without all the facts. I founded a support group for caretakers of end-stage
alcoholics and recently posed a question to all the members. The question is:
What is the ONE thing
you would like other people to understand about living with an alcoholic?
The answers to that simple question are not at
all as simple as the question. Some of the responders couldn’t answer with only
ONE thing. Here are the results:
- A good woman cannot sort him
out. All the understanding, love and compassion in the world is not enough
when one is in the grip of this horrible disease.
- When the question is “Didn’t you know he was an
alcoholic when you married him?” The answer is NO!! I didn’t know he was
an alcoholic. Alcoholism is a progressive disease.
- Alcoholics are incapable of giving back… they are
takers.
- It IS possible to live with an alcoholic while
detaching and protecting yourself. If there is no abuse, you CAN make it
work. Please don’t judge me because I stay.
- You want me to WALK away?? Walking away from my 70 year
old father is like putting a child on the freeway and walking away.
- When others see or interact with the alcoholic, the
alcoholic is on his/her best behavior, at home they relax, drink and the
crazy train gets rolling.
- Unless an outsider is living in it, they cannot really
understand what it is like as alcoholic’s are good at putting on a show.
- They are master manipulators.
- The uncertainty of your future. You don’t know what
will happen next, let alone a year, You cannot plan anything.
- Anyone involved with an alcoholic must light their own
candle, feed their own soul, learn to meditate or the non-alcoholic will
become sick as well.
- One great day has no guarantee on the next and vice
versa. I love my alcoholic mother as I find her and I walk away when I
have had enough.
- The hardest thing is the secrecy connected to
alcoholism. Keeping the family secret of my father’s alcoholism was
extremely stressful. When the secret is out, there is then the feeling of
betrayal to those who wanted it to remain a secret. But, you don’t stop
loving the alcoholic as a person.
- The alcoholic will say and do anything to get their
fix. They are driven, but only toward booze and not toward anything that
would take them away from the booze.
- In one person’s opinion, alcoholism is a form of mental
illness. For many, a horrendous event may have happened to drive them to
want to “not feel anything.”
- The almighty bottle is the most important thing in
their life, even though they don’t really want to be in it. Many
detrimental things can happen such as a loss of the marriage, jobs,
children, friends; they may serve time in jail for DUI’s; suffer from injuries
and illnesses; and they will still want to drink.
- It is mentally taxing on the caregiver.
- Even a happy drunk has an evil side that is abusive and
destructive. Alcohol is a mistress who destroys everything in a slow,
manipulative and steady manner. It’s a cancer. Early detection has higher
percentages of recovery. But let the cancer grow and it will consume not
only the alcoholic but everyone surrounding the alcoholic.
- One person said she wished someone had given her a clue
that they had a hint of what she was dealing with in a supportive
non-confrontational way. Knowing I wasn’t crazy or alone in dealing with
the insanity would have been the best gift towards the healing journey.
- Leaving or staying is not a simple as it sounds. Before
deciding for me what the outsider thinks I should do, they should know all
the pros and cons of each direction.
I thought their answers
were very open and honest. I also hope that anyone who wants to make a judgment
about decisions made by caregivers of an alcoholic, think twice about the
question that is about to be asked.
To join either of the
two support groups, either the one on Facebook or the one on the independent
site, please e-mail with your e-mail address to:
immortalalcoholic@gmail.com
Please up "support group" in the subject line. Both these groups
offer support and resources to family and friends of alcoholics without
judgment or criticism. OARS F&F = Our Alcoholism Resource and Support
(for) Families and Friends.
3 comments:
I'm not sure there's any one thing I'd want someone to know about living with an alcoholic - there's so much to deal with if you want to keep your own sanity. How can you pick just one?
I think the thing that took me most by surprise is how conniving and sneaky the alcoholism makes them. I eventually realized that my husband was leaving the office to go home and drink (we run a small software business), although he always has an excuse such as running an errand or grabbing something he "forgot" at the house (his cell phone and laptop power cord are his favorite MacGuffins), but I recently found out that he'd been sneaking vodka into the office in my canning jars. *shaking head*
I suppose no one can truly prepare you for how ugly things get when you confront them about the lengths they go to hide how much they drink, so I've just stopped saying anything. I guess he thinks he's getting away with it. It really used to irritate me that he would so blatantly lie to me, but I eventually realized the only person he's lying to is himself.
I lived with a violent alcoholic husband for fifteen years. I filed for divorce while he was in jail for physically assaulting me again. Indeed, alcoholics are master manipulators and in front of outsiders they act like angels. Once I went to a marriage therapy session with his therapist and she said, "You deserved all the beatings." I walked out and that day a seed was planted in me that I would divorce this man and I did.
Stopped back by to check in on you and Riley. So glad you're still writing. I found your blog during a really really rough time when my ex fiance passed away at 29, 25 days short of his 30th birthday, due to alcoholism shutting his organs down. He ruptured something and died in front of his grandma.
We had known each other for 18 years, more than half our life. We dated for 7 and planned to get married at one point. The alcoholism became VERY bad over that 7 years and I relate to a lot of what you've had to go through, watching someone you love gradually be eaten Alive by the disease. Missing out on doing things because he was always passed out. No sex life. No romance. Just work, come home, drink, pass out. Eventually the 'work' part took a back seat for him. Things got worse until I finally couldn't deal with it anymore. The person I loved was slowly dying and I had no respect for him anymore. He treated me verbally abusively, and I was too young to realize how ill he was, or how evil the disease was. I still thought he was somehow making a conscious decision of the booze over me, and it hurt terribly.
A few years passed and we ended up back in touch as friends. He had never stopped romantically living me and hoped that we would end up together. He was my first love, and while I love him with all my heart, I told him there was no way that would work unless alcohol was not a factor. We did get to be very good friends again. I even convinced him to go to his first Andy only rehab facility. That lasted 3 days.
He said his sobriety lasted a few weeks, but I doubt that was true because when I saw him again, he was drinking.
Then, chest pains and what doctors called a near heart attack. A few hospital visits later, he was dead.
Alcohol took my first love and my best friend. RIP Josh.
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