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.
It’s not exactly a switch you can just flip off, and your loved one probably doesn’t think they have a problem. Personally, The amount of time it took for me to start pumping the brakes to quitting 100% was about 2 years.
What I know now, and what it took me so long to figure out, is that I can’t have the same relationship with alcohol that you might see in movies/tv. I’d quit for a couple days, maybe even a week, and then I’d drink on a Friday and inevitably I’d take it too far, and then I’d be drinking again. I thought a “healthy” relationship with alcohol was possible for me, and it simply isn’t.
I also didn’t realize that I had formed so many habits around my drinking. Hanging out with friends? Gotta drink. Doing my hobbies? Drink. Feeling thirsty or hungry? Drink. Feeling anxious? Again, drink. Giving up drinking would throw me into a very very deep depression, because I couldn’t find enjoyment in anything anymore.
What really helped me out was weed/delta 8 gummies. I would come home after work, and I’d be super depressed, and all I’d want to do is lay down in bed and not move. I’d eat half of a pretty strong weed gummy and watch bad anime… and that was enough to tie me to my bed and not drink. Over the course of months I then had to relearn how to find enjoyment in anything.
In retrospect, giving up drinking was the best decision I ever made. I didn’t fully appreciate how awful the long term effects of alcohol are, and how much of a general malise it put me in. After the first year of not drinking at all, I lost a ton of weight, I started sleeping better, and I was sooooooo much less of an anxious mess. But you need to understand what you’re asking of this person… you’re asking them to take the first step in a months long depressive slog where they have to relearn how to live like a normal person.
My advice to you is to imagine you’re dealing with a profoundly depressed person who’s only barely keeping it together. Do you want to have a screaming match with a depressed person while they’re trying to get a few scraps of enjoyment in their life at night? Do you want to make an already depressed person cry when they’re their most venerable during a hangover? Your goal should be to convince your partner that giving up drinking is what they want, and take it from there.
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.
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
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 suggestion I can make is to get her to the Dr and get naltrexone prescribed. The nice part about it is if she follows the plan, she still gets to drink. She just needs to wait the 90 minutes and redose if an when relevant.
Sinclair method or protocol is what I would suggest but it requires buy-in from everyone.
Would also recommend you guys come to an agreement that no spirits/hard liquor is allowed. Its honestly an uphill battle until she’s on the weaker stuff
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.
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…
you’re in a tough situation. ultimately the decision to change is hers: either she will or she won’t and there’s nothing you can do to change that.
good luck, take care of yourself
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.
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 cultural assimilation, and thus may not be as accurate as I’d like. Can you tell me which so I can update my understanding?
So the rock bottom thing, it comes from the AA idea that people are helpless to fix themselves and must submit to god/a higher power. It’s completely untrue that you must hit anything and plenty get help very early on having realised they have an issue.
This is a more detailed breakdown - https://www.smartrecovery.org/the-flawed-psychology-of-forcing-people-to-hit-rock-bottom/
An abstinence only approach has also been debunked. Again, it comes from the AA teachings that you are powerless. Some people may choose abstinence for a wide range of reasons, it sounds like it’s worked for you and thats ace but it’s not the only approach to problematic drinking and many succesful programs now work on moderation or other methods of reduction.
This study found that abstinence and reduction programs have similar levels of success - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33188563/
The powerlessness comment, I think I’ve covered through the other points.
Finally, this article I think covers the points I’ve missed (and the ones I haven’t tbf) - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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