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 not trying to 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.
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I’m answering from the point of view of the alcoholic person you’re trying to help, change. I was that person.
Went on for years. People kept telling me risks, I should stop, it was affecting relationships, health, work, etc.
I’d say: I don’t have a drinking problem. I’m able to hold jobs. I drink to help cope with certain things. Everybody uses something to cope, alcohol is mine.
For years. Where things changed, late 30s.:
Getting sicker. Medical 420 became a thing. Finally found med that helped with insomnia. Introduced to dbt, cbt. A good psychiatrist.
It’s good you care, are trying to help. You might be able to. But… the person has to be ready, willing to recognize they have a problem.
Oh, also, alcoholics anonymous never worked for me. There are secular options. Harm reduction, moderation management worked best for my situation.
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.
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.
You are either a professional therapist or have a ton of personal experience with people with addiction
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.
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.
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.
They say everyone has to find their own rock bottom before they can begin to heal, and for me that was true. I had to lose almost everything in my life, my friends, my home, my girlfriend… The only things I had at the end were my dog and my car and junk. You can’t really help someone, until they help themselves.
The only way to help themselves in my experience is for them to recognize that there’s no such thing as a good amount of alcoholic, and go cold turkey straight up. No weaning, no “I drink socially.” Or “I drink on weekends.” (This is dangerous and if they do so, it should be a medical detox with the proper medication and under supervision, depending how addicted they are. They can die from quitting cold Turkey without medication).
There is scientific evidence that if one is an alcoholic, the alcoholism can literally overpower even the strongest of willed individuals. But only after the first drink. That first drink is the one that fucks you. Don’t have the first drink, ever.
By tolerating the cycles of abuse and apology, you’re actively enabling them. You need to set hard boundaries. Before you get hurt badly. For your own safety, do not even exist in the same place as them while they’re drinking. If they have a drink, go to a friends or your families house, and tell them you won’t come back until they’re sober. You’re basically telling them it’s okay to cyclically abuse you if you stay.
A lot of this is AA stuff that was debunked years ago.
Well I never went to AA aside from one meeting where I felt everyone was just addicted to AA instead of Alcoholism, but I imagine some of what I know could have been learned through osmosis from others, and thus may not be as accurate as I’d like. Can you tell me which so I can update my understanding?
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)
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”
