Posted on 12/03/2018 5:50:00 PM PST by proud American in Canada
Hi everyone. I need a bit of help. I've had a serious drinking problem for a very long time. My husband doesn't drink. But he does hit me. I guess he feels entitled to since I'm the one who causes all the problems apparently. I'm up in bed I haven't had any food for dinner. I need doesn't even want me to come down he shakes me he hits me; I'm supposed to go to rehab on Wednesday for 3 months. Not really looking forward to it. I just wondered if anyone had any advice I'm really at a loss here I just want to move back to the States my son is 23 he lives here without paying anything. Our daughter lives in Montreal and just going to school. And apparently I'm supposed to pay everything from what my dad left when he died. I could tell you one thing... If my father were alive you would kick my husband a**.
I spent thousands of US Dollars going to see him 5 * when he was dying I wish everyday that I could call him. I wanted to just send a card. To GW. It doesn't matter how old your parent is, it's still very tough.
Anyway I need advice please? I would really appreciate it I know a lot of women have gone through this and I just want to know how you survived
So by your own reckoning, your advice should also be ignored, lol.
Pompous much?
Alcoholics tend to have blood clotting issues due to liver malfunction. Don’t mess with that. Call an ambulance.
Praying for you and your family.
Perhaps this crisis will bring you and your family to God for help. Sometimes this is the only way.
Focus on making it to rehab. See if peace can be made until getting there where you will work on healing. Do not make lifelong permanent decisions based on the present crisis.
Perhaps your marriage can be healed too. You and your husband saw something in each other. Maybe you can get that back if you both work on fixing the addiction and anger issues. You have probably built up a string of negative memories that are eroding the positive memories in your marriage. You can reverse this incrementally if both of you work at it.
People and marriages have been healed that were in worse shape. Realize that urgent change is required, God is essential, and there is hope.
no advice just a prayer
1. Go into the Rehab. It will give you a place to start from. You’re going to HAVE to admit all to the underlying issues of your drinking before you can even begin to get on the road to recovery. This will include admitting the fact that you’re making excuses for your husband beating you. Unless you are actually hitting him, there is no reason for him to lay his hands on you. If you ARE hitting him, he needs to have you charged so you can then start going through the process of working on rage. If you are NOT hitting him, then NO reason is a valid reason for him hitting you.
2. Get with an attorney. Start setting up accounts only you can touch. It’s not going to guarantee they won’t get split in a divorce, it’s just about YOU being the one to control the money your father left you.
3. Quit making excuses for your son. Use the 3 months to have him move out of the house. If he insists on staying, go to plan B and get a small place for yourself WITHOUT your husband. The assumption is that your husband wants your son in the house as another way to get monies out of you.
4. You need to learn in your head and heart that you are teaching both your son and daughter it’s okay to be both an Alcoholic and a Violent Enabler if you stay in the house.
So. Drag your bottom into that Rehab for a WONDERFUL 3 month learning lesson. Remember, remember, REMEMBER, there are those who are missing limbs, brain dead or just plain dead who don’t have the opportunity you have in front of you.
I have not mentioned praying. When you finally hit the bottom and are ready to cry out to the Lord God for Grace/Mercy, you will do that on your own.
Until then, you simply MUST begin the walk in that direction......
Those on this site who allege they are Christians should be lifting you and all members of your family up, albeit for different mercies/disciplines from the Lord God.
1.) Give a 100% effort to your rehab.
2.) Be 100% honest with yourself and those around you.
3.) Pray hard, then hand your problems to God.
Everything will become clear to you and you will know what to do.
Did rehab for a year back in 2001 it gave me a life beyond my wildest dreams
Congratulations! I hope your life inspires many people who need what you’ve got.
Leave him
It’s not your drinking
He’s a scum. Men with honor NEVER EVER hit or touch a woman harshly
Stop.
She is a drunk. Her inner demons may very well using victim hood to rationalize her abuse of alcohol. God only knows but one thing for sure...she has a dangerous addiction to booze. The son and husband are a matter for when she’s sobered up. Now she needs immediate medical care to help her cold turkey stop drinking and save herself from death.
This please!
Call 911 to get away from the hurt, and to get somewhere to find help!
Wonderful testimonial FRiend.
Um...I think I read her husband hits her. So I don’t think he’s going to give a damn one way or the other.
You're not supposed to. I'm not saying that as a lecture, I'm saying that ... few leaps forward in life are moments of 'yay!'
Normally, they are full of fear, doubt, and 'this sucks.'
So I am very glad you are not looking forward to it :-) it bodes well. So long as you are sincere, even when you don't like it, or think they are crazy or telling you BS. (hint, one day you will realize they are right, you will see what they said to you in a different light.)
Assuming you're going to a good rehab, listen to them. When I started out, I hated when they said 'you can't really trust all your thinking right now, in fact, it's you're best thinking that got you here ... meaning ... got you to be a drunk, you life unmanageable. It's a big pill to swallow that your choices got you here, so don't be too quick to think other peoples' recommendations, those trying to help you, well 'that's just not for me' ... because we already know what "hey that's for me!" got you.
Drunks have huge ego's. Sometimes the huge ego masquerades as a victim (and actually becomes a victim.) So not all huge ego's are obnoxious loudmouths dominating and abusing people. It's just as big an ego that become a victim and martyr, allows themselves to be abused.
So be very humble, open and willing at rehab. You will have moments of enjoying it, and it's OK to look forward to it being over. But while you're there, be as engaged and aware moment to moment as much as you can. Realize that while you might not be a total failure, something (not just the drinking) is broken in your thinking ... about yourself maybe ... about life ... about your faith (religious or not.)
When you are suffering at rehab, remember: it's not rehab that's making you suffer. It's your choices, most dramatically around alcohol, but also the person who let alcohol creep in and take control. You knew it was getting the best of you, but you still needed it. That's OK. In the end, we all knew that was true. Doesn't make you bad or weak.
If you make it through this (and don't worry if you fall on your face 30 times) ... you will make it through because you became humble enough to say 'I have to not just stop drinking, but I have to change myself' ... and to figure out what you must change ... it's not all in an instant that you will know what it is. What do you have to change? You have to learn how to make yourself joyful and at peace. You have had your mind on the wrong things. You can have joy and peace without alcohol. It just won't seem that way at first. In fact, you will not be able to imagine it. So whether religious or not, you have to have faith. In other words, you must come to believe that something is possible, even though you can't see it. You have to trust all the other people (like me) who tell you, I couldn't see it either, but when I finally stuck it out and faced everything, not necessarily perfectly, but with humility and resolve, took the blows, day by day the cloud lifted, the obsession to drink went away on it's own, one day I said 'oooh wow I feel good', and then I felt bad again, sometimes worse, but as time went on, the good days began outnumbering the bad, and now ... MOST of the time, I feel the way I had hoped booze would make me feel. I wasn't really looking for a buzz, I was only looking for something to take away the negativity, the angst, the anxiety, the tightness, the restlessness, the fear, the need to think so hard, to control the world and my life to turn out the way I wanted. Essentially, no real faith, hence 'oh sh*t I better do it all for myself.' It's a little different for everyone, but ... it's something like that. We don't/didn't know how to simply live in a way that caused us happiness.
If I felt that way -> I'd drink too. I just don't feel that way any more.
AA is not for everyone, but MOST people who reject it do so out of an ego problem. It's most importantly a fellowship of people. Doing the steps with a good sponsor at worst will be wasted time, but it won't be that if you do it sincerely and take it to heart.
When you go to a hospital with, say a broken bone, MOST of the people there are sick, BUT ... also ... that's where the ones who can heal you are. So don't reject AA because many there are sick and always will be. For some, they are 100 times better merely for not drinking. Some are just mentally ill. Find someone you admire, who has found happiness, who relates to AA in a healthy way, understands that it's not meant to be perfect. What you need IS there, but it's not necessarily the only place what you need is. But don't turn your back on it because you can point out 1000 looney things about it. I can too. Also, I look forward to going to my meeting, I don't hate going, and I'd be a moron to ever stop going. I understand its place in my life. Once I did, I turned it into a place where not all, but many of the finest, most talented, strongest people in my life also go.
If it doesn't kill you - the booze, it WILL ruin your life, until it kills you. You can't win.
I don't like to call it a disease, and in the early days, they didn't call it that. They called it an allergy. That's what it is. But it's like a reverse allergy. With a shellfish allergy, you get all sick and fear it. You have a biochemical difference from other people with an allergy. With booze, same thing, but reverse, you crave the hell out of it after you have one, you don't understand people who stop it two, those whackos, and no wonder, since sugar is about the strongest drug in the world, and booze is biochemically super sugar that happens to attach to certain neuro receptors differently with you than most. So, your f*cked!
But you're fine if you never touch it.
You will be on the road to happiness when you realize that it's bigger than you, the biochemical allergy. You wouldn't eat shellfish if you knew it would kill you. For some reason, I had NO PROBLEM admitting to myself that arsenic was stronger than me, but for some reason, it took many many many years of misery, life set backs, doing stuff I was ashamed of, 2 or 3 times that should have killed me, to finally realize 'oh! Duh! It's stronger than me!'. I'm NOT crazy, I'm not a bad person, I'm just an alcoholic. That means you are like people who have peanut and shellfish allergies. Only they have an advantage because with their allergy, well they don't happen to love their allergy.
So you have enough evidence at this point in your life. Probably you will do what most do, which is to 'do more research' on your allergy. Meaning go back to drinking a number of times until you're convinced. Or, like a few, maybe you already are.
Also, it's not your fault. People far better and far stronger and far smarter than you or me have ruined their lives with it. It's very tricky. You will hear 'cunning, baffling, powerful.' That's what it is, because it grabs onto the most important pain and pleasure chemicals in your brain. And for YOU, since you have the allergy, it's just ... different ... from how other people experience it. You're not weak or to blame for being where you are. But, you do have to wake up, or your drinking will cause yourself and those you care about a LOT of suffering. A LOT more than it already has.
You WILL die or ruin your life if you don't get through this.
That is the choice you face. Sorry! Tough draw! Actually, I'm glad I was dealt it. Navigated well, it can be the seed of a life better than most who don't find themselves staring death in the face. Twisted as it is, as much as it cost me, I do consider it to have been a gift.
I am at peace and joyful and love my life MOST of the time. I DID have to work for that. When I don't, not only is it not an option to drink ... I very sincerely don't desire it. It's like when I was 5 years old and didn't know it existed. But that takes time for your body to forget it. There is some struggle before you get to that, but it will only be as hard as you make it.
Your future IS entirely in your hands, but you must be humble, take advice from people you respect, be humble, be humble, did I say be humble? And it will take everything you have ... but you DO have enough. You will not beat it, you can't win. You can only not die. How do you do that? You admit defeat.
You say 'OK, booze, you win!' ... but saying that means you understand that you will never win. Then ... each day you just don't drink no matter what ... and it gets easier ... and your chances are better if you develop a fellowship with people in your same boat, even if they are loons (you don't have to take advice from them all, you can reject 99% of what you hear, as long as you listen. Frankly you don't even have to listen half the time. What needs to sink in will sink in when you're ready).
Regarding AA, I realized 3 years into fighting the booze and rejecting AA and losing over and over that I DID need an abstinent community/fellowship, and I didn't want it to be AA. Eventually I came to see that you can find plenty wrong with AA if you want, but it would be tough to find another better, bigger abstinent community. But frankly, you can find plenty wrong with ANYTHING, AND you'd be right. But if you seek people out at AA, you will find the right people. And if you decide "AA's not for me" that's fine too, but you'd be turning away a very powerful ally, MOST LIKELY for egotistical reasons even though you wouldn't see that at the time. In that case you might be 'Right ..... dead right.'
Begin to allow yourself to have faith in yourself again, slowly trust your instincts - the one's you know are good - the 'still small voice' that can tell you what you don't want to hear without beating it over your head. At the core, you are fine, but your core is all covered in dust, so you can't see it. It takes time for the dust to clear. It will only clear if you STOP, but it WILL clear if you stop. Completely.
You lose! When you realize that ... you will quit the stupidest fight in the world, your obsession with that fight will slowly go away ... and then you will see the jail you couldn't see out of was, as cheesy as it sounds, a jail of your own making, but not conscious making, and that jail had a LOT of help from a biochemistry that makes booze for you as strong as heroin for the normal population. (Drugs were not my thing, but in my travels I've met many of them, be glad if alcohol is your only addiction.)
You are dealing with the chemistry of the very thing that does your thinking for you. Realize that booze has comprimised your ability to make good decisions EVEN WHEN you are not actively drunk. That's why, when at rehab ... you have to walk that fine line of ... yes, maintain your own ability and responsibility for thinking for yourself, but ALSO, be VERY SUSPECT of your mind when it says 'oh well, I mean I drink too much but this stuff they are telling me is complete BS.' Is it really?
Ok enough outta me! Go do the right thing!
I would agree with your assessment. In its truest form in is a demon. It has a specifically harmful effect on some but not to the same extent on others which only contributes to its deleterious nature. I have tried many times myself to drink like a “normal” person but can’t. I am praying for you and have faith that God can restore your life and also bring healing to your physical body.
Go to rehab. Soon, you’ll wake up to a very beautiful day and feel better than you thought possible. Your mind will be really clear and powerful then, and you’ll have confidence. You’ll see the people around you, including family members, very differently. On that day, you’ll begin to know what to do.
For later.
Willy Nelson was drunk and passed out once. His Wife sewed Him in the bed sheets to trap Him. Then She got a baseball bat and started beating Him with it.
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