Sober, he was a woderful husband, father, grandfather…..drunk he was a horibble person.

I’m sad and releaved he is gone and can he no longer hurt himself of anybody else.

My advise to anybody contemplating leaving and alcoholic- is to run, run as fast as you cav and get away from the addicted monster that will destroy you and everybody else i his path.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44147493/ns/health-addictions/#.TklXIV2DiCg

I always thought he would grow and mature in the program and in someways he has. Now, although he is 60, he is hanging again with 30-40yr going to group dinners after meetings, and Concerts!! If you were a fly on the wall he is acting just like he did when he was 35 he just isn’t drinking.

Julie

After some yelling on my part and combative arguing on their part, I eventually realized that they needed to be reassured that I was willing to do just that and that I had even looked for a psychologist a few months ago and was unsuccessful. So I told them I was willing to do just that, but that they needed to understand one thing. I told them that they needed to understand that there is no cure to what I have and that doing what they asked me to do was not going to fix everything. I also told them that I was not to only one who should seek counseling, that the kids should start going to AL-ANON and that Scot should start going to AA. Patrick said he would never do that and Cameron and Scot remained silent. By the way, Patrick was the one doing all the talking and got down on his knees as if to propose marriage to me and looked up into my eyes and said, “Please, Mom. ” So I said okay.

Scot then handed me a piece of paper with some name and numbers on it and I then made the calls and set up two appointments with all three of them watching me.

How humiliating! How wrong! It all doesn’t seem right at all to have me at the other end of an intervention! It should have been Scot! Not Me! Plus, he NEVER should have incorporated the two boys on this. He should have had only adults. Now the kids feel responsible. I did tell them that they each have their own minds and that they should make up their own minds as to whether or not to get counseling themselves. I should tell you that Scot did say during the combative arguing that I was “ripping this family apart”. So I had to tell the boys that was not true. That it takes more than one to keep a family together and it takes more than one to rip a family apart.

Please tell me I am not crazy for thinking Scot was in the wrong for getting the kids involved in this. I feel as though I am losing grip on reality and have been keeping myself in the basement just to keep my sanity. I hate being in this house. Scot has brainwashed the kids and has control over them. I don’t know what I should do. I have fantasies of leaving him and the kids, but I just know he would fight for full custody of the kids and probably get full custody by using my mental illness against me and the fact that he makes more money than me.

I have been married for 36 years to this lady and my life is as crappy as all of yours and I have all the same thoughts and feelings. I deal with it best in the summertime when I can disappear for the day on my FJR1300 motorcycle but the winter time is killing me.

Anyway, enough complaining. She has an appointment on Jan.3,2012 to get help at the St. Leonards society. I sure hope she follows threw with it because she needs something I can’t help her with.

Just curious…..
Dennis The Menace

Sometimes i am so sad I don’t know what to do with myself. We first separated because I had found out about an affair he was having with a co-worker, and after he had disappeared with her for a weekend, the entire time he was gone that weekend I thought he was dead in a ditch somewhere and I had never cried so much in my entire life. I pictured my life without this man and it hurt more then anything I could imagine, having met and dated since we were 19 years old. When I found out about the girl he was seeing, I decided I could no longer live like that.

After he disappeared for that weekend, I was angry, but at the time, in my eyes, he hadn’t done anything that was completely unforgivable, I didn’t know at the time he was with another girl. We tried to work on things, we both went to counseling separately, he tried to do little things to make me happy, working on the yard, cleaning the house, being kind. But he did not stop drinking, and when he drank he was angrier then ever, he was so angry with me for being mad at him for the disappearing act. He had always drank, and he always went out, but he always found a way home, so what he did really had devastated me in a way that I couldn’t really get back, but I was willing to try, despite how he kept me up at nights screaming at me, hitting me, throwing things at me, breaking things, blasting the t.v., music and turning lights on while i tried to sleep at night, and kicking me out of the house, damaging any shred of self worth either of us probably ever had.

A few months after he had disappeared that weekend, I found out he had been seeing someone from work. That is when I decided to finally give him an ultimatum. I had been asking him to stop drinking for years. It was destructive, it was killing us both. When he claimed to be with this other girl only because he was “drunk, and didn’t know what he was doing,” I said if he wanted to continue to be married, he would have to try to stop drinking, either by seeking treatment, or doing something, making some effort. He refused, so I told him to move out. He moved out for 6 months and continued to drink, we continued counseling, but he wouldn’t even consider getting help with the booze.

I told him it was over if he wouldn’t get help despite how much i loved him. I thought to myself, what has he not done to me yet? He spends all of our money, he had charged up thousands of dollars on credit cards that I didn’t even know he had, he got drunk enough to pass out almost every single day, he was verbally and sometimes physically abusive when he was drunk. He scared me, I never felt good, or whole or safe.

I always felt alone, always alone because he was drunk so much of the time. I learned to live an independent life (when I could get out of the house without throwing a fit and trying to keep me from going). I would leave a window unlocked on our lower level because often when I would go to see my mom or my sister for a visit, he would call drunk and tell me if i wasn’t home in 10 minutes, he was locking me out of the house, which he did. I was married but alone.

I was able to spend a lot of time with my family, our dogs, my friends, but when I look back on it, I realize i was alone so much of the time, it was like I didn’t even have a spouse. Whenever i asked him to come with me to a holiday, etc., he wouldn’t want to go, and if he did go, he would spend the entire time asking what time we were leaving as soon as we got there, or he would get falling down drunk and embarrass us so badly I just didn’t want him to come anymore. I can’t count the number of times I told family he was “working” just so he could sit home and drink instead.

I couldn’t have anyone at the house because you never knew, would he be passed out in the yard or in the doorway, or would he be screaming, blaring music and fighting with neighbors, or throwing things out the window, breaking stuff in the driveway.
Sometimes i think the cheating was a blessing because even though I was already living through hell, I am Catholic and don’t believe in divorce, or leaving someone because they have a problem, but the cheating was the final straw for me, I just never thought he would do that, though we had our problems. I didn’t see him the same any longer, he had hurt me in most ways possible.

I loved him then, and still do with all my heart, and it was because of the affair that we separated, not because of his alcoholism. I didn’t see a way out, but when he cheated, it’s like it gave me a reason to say “ok, it’s time, and it’s ok to leave, it’s really ok.” I feel sick and sad because he’s not just an alcoholic, he’s a handsome, smart, charismatic, kind, generous and amazing man. He’s just consumed by alcohol. I blame myself, for how his drinking has increased since we first separated, he blames me too. “If you wouldn’t have left, I wouldn’t be this far gone as I am now. My life has gone downhill a million percent since you left, it’s your fault.” He always tells me, so he blames me. And I think it is true, that he would not be this far into his alcoholism if it weren’t for me.

I can picture his smile on our wedding day and remembering it being the happiest day of my life. And he tells me it was the happiest of his too. He drank since I met him, but everyone did, we were 19, 20 and 21 years old, all of our friends went out and drank, I didn’t know. I had no experience with alcohol, i didn’t know that he could drink more then everyone else, I didn’t understand that he wouldn’t quit drinking after we got married. I thought that it was what you did when you were 21, and then when you grew up and got married, you moved onto the adult phase of life, jobs, home, responsibilities. But he didn’t stop. It just got worse and worse.

We were unable to have children, though we started trying when we were 25. We even sold our tiny home that we loved, to buy a home with extra bedrooms thinking we would be able to have kids. By the time we were 28 we went through fertility and were still unable to conceive, though we tried fertility for 4 long years. It was too much to bear. I was emotionally dead inside, and he continued to drink. During that time, the doctor asked him if he drank and of course he said that he did, she said that it was hurting our chances (as well as his smoking), but he would not cut down, and now of course I realize that he couldn’t, he wasn’t trying to hurt me, he just couldn’t do it.

When i found out about the affair, I told him to leave. He did for about 6 months into an apartment less then a mile away. We shared custody of our 2 beautiful lab mixes, who we adored beyond belief. they were my soft place to fall, that is for sure. And honestly, I don’t know what I would’ve done without my beloved “boys.” The entire time he was gone, he drank. During the day he was kind and sweet when we would communicate by phone while he was at work, he would stop by after work before I came home and bring the garbage out and roll it back in, he would let the boys out, and basically take care of us from afar. I can still remember right before Christmas one year, he wrapped up and left a cd for me that he knew i wanted, and to this day, I can’t listen to those songs without feeling sick inside. But at night, he would sit in his apartment and drink. He would call and threaten me. He would call and harass my family. He would come to the house and fight with me, he ripped the phones out of the walls, threatened me, hit me, choked me, screamed and cried. Another day I woke up to him at 4AM looming over me as I slept, standing there with my cell phone demanding i unlock it so he could see who I had been “calling.” I tried getting it back because I was so afraid, I don’t know of what, I didn’t know but I was always afraid.

He moved back after the 6 months he was gone, and it was one nightmare after the next. He drank more because we were still “separated,” I moved to another bedroom, and refused to have sex and he considered this not fulfilling my wifely duties, but he would not stop drinking so i refused. I was so angry at him for the pain and heartache he had caused and he just expected me to continue our lives as is even though he had made no changes?? He verbally and physically abused me and scared me so much during those next several months, One late night i woke up to him standing above me, sharpening a big butcher knife. I told him he had to leave or I would have to. He refused so I moved in with friends. I missed him so much and our dogs that I cried in the shower every single morning before work. I went to counseling and the counselor told me 30 days without contact and he then has to show marked progress of no drinking, otherwise there should be consequences. Well I had contact by phone, because I loved and missed him, and loved and missed our boys so much my heart was broken and I was so torn up inside. i would try to come home every day to see the boys and kiss them good night while he was passed out drunk and i would tell them “I’ll come get you when I get a place where I can take dogs.” I told them that for a year and a half, and eventually I would just stay at the house with them off and on, whenever I could, whenever he was gone, or passed out, and I would take them every weekend and have them at my parents house where I could keep them for the whole weekend. It’s where i should’ve been staying all along, but as with so many things, i didn’t want to put them in the middle of my shitty life, I felt too embarrassed and ashamed. One more thing to add to my list of regrets.

After a few years, we were still at an impass, he would not stop drinking, or being crazy and abusive, he lost his job, he started dating a stripper, he drank more. I filed for divorce. He came to sign the papers and we held hands and told him we didn’t have to do this if he would just try to get help, please. He said that i was trying to take his “best friend” away from him, that friend being alcohol, and that he did love alcohol more then me. I died more inside. We cried and cried and he gave me some of his unemployment check for the house payment and we walked outside and he bought me a bunch of flowers from a sidewalk stand. He said he loved me and I said I loved him. I never wanted it to end. 4 months later, I was on my way to pick up the boys on a bright Saturday November morning, and I had been out the night before at my sister in laws birthday party when i received the phone call that my beautiful yellow lab mix had died, at only 9 years old. I had spent the night before with them and he slept so close to me that night, when I said goodbye to him in the morning, i didn’t know he would be dead 12 hours later. I had hugged and kissed him. I have never been so sad and devastated in my life. It’s now been 4 years going on 5 and I still feel sick to my stomach when I think about how I could’ve been with my dog, but he died without me. He was with his “dad,” and i realize it probably would’ve been worse if i had seen it happen, but i am still so sad. I don’t know when or where or how my life is going to start again. there are so many things i regret, i have so much guilt and sadness and devastation. I miss the love of my life, I miss my beloved dog.

I now live with my dad, and my other dog who has survived all this time, right alongside me. I am lucky and fortunate I have a place to live and get to have my dog with me to live out his remaining years. My ex lives in our house and has now lost his job again. I help with the house payment and house expenses so i can’t afford my own place, plus it’s hard to find a place that takes pets. It is getting easier, but the heartache never goes away. I married the love of my life, I started with the life I wanted and it turned out in heartbreak. I constantly think about him and hope he is ok, and wonder when I will stop missing him and our home, our dog and our life together. He is no longer really in his right mind, even when sober. I think he has done that to his brain with his drinking. We still talk, but I can no longer watch him kill himself. He’s been to detox 4 times, and outpatient treatment once, but didn’t completed it. At this time, i know he will die of alcoholism, but only God knows where and when. I need to find a way to move on but don’t think I deserve happiness because I had a chance and it didn’t work, i don’t believe you get more chances like that in life. I wish I could help him I wish i could help myself. I have been to more counseling, to group meetings, I am on medication. I don’t know why I can’t get past this.

I am grateful to have found this site, and grateful to all of you for sharing your stories. I didn’t know there were so many of us out there, i have felt so alone for so long.

If anyone has the chance to get out, do it sooner rather then later. You may save yourself more heartache then you ever want to imagine. I still love my alcoholic. How long until my heart is free.