If you're taking good care of your children, sleeping with your husband, feeding everyone well and keeping your house clean, your friends and spouse will not consider you an alcoholic.
As long as I was holding up my end at home, my friends were clueless and my husband wasn't bothered that I was knocking back a couple of bottles of wine each night to kill the fear that my life was going nowhere and I was nothing. I'd had big plans. I'd gone to journalism school envisioning myself reporting news stories from war-torn regions.
Instead, I was folding mounds of laundry, wiping dirty butts and writing about television commercials. I hadn't even tried to achieve what I wanted to do. Out of college, I took a job as a feature writer at a suburban arts and entertainment paper, became an advertising scribe, got married, got knocked up. I was crazy in love with my children, but I felt like I'd given them my right arm. And that was a lie. I hadn't given them my right arm.
My children were my underachievement scapegoat. My fears of inadequacy sacked my dreams. I drank away the cloud of mediocrity.
I drank away my plans to write a book because it probably wouldn't get published. I drank away my scowling husband stomping around the house spewing toxic vibes. He has no incentive to get sober. If she turns out to be an alcoholic, he will have the complete dependent he wants, no matter how desperately he thinks he wants her sober.
He, too, will cover up her drinking, protect her from public disgrace, and assume all the responsibilities which should be hers. Such distorted relationships are often found in alcoholic marriages, and they inevitably lead to the drying up of the communication which is vital to a good marriage.
We can make verbal communication effective if we never lose sight of the fact that the alcoholic is sick; he has a disease for which it is unfair to blame him or punish him. But he must be told—at the right time and without anger or reproach—what he has done and is doing. He suspects that something did happen and his anxiety and nameless guilt are almost unbearable.
He has a right to know what his drinking is doing to him. And as soon as she had spoken her piece, she excused herself and quietly left me to figure out for myself what I was going to do about it. And when the drunk phase is past, she hesitates to bring up even urgent problems for fear of giving him the reason for another binge. The topic was:. Many of the difficulties of achieving good communication lie not only with the alcoholic but with the spouse as well. The stresses and uncertainties she lives with each day the dread, the fear, the anger have so distorted her reasoning powers that most of her reactions are emotional and often destructive.
Telling him how we feel about the things he does seems to me the same as taking his inventory. But we have to know what we think before we can say it convincingly.
Our husbands have a right to know what we expect from them. Not letting them know how we feel is dishonest. If we want the alcoholic to face reality, we must face it first, and not be afraid to share our feelings. What do you think? I reacted to anything that annoyed me with the first angry words that came to my mind. What emerged out of that meeting was finally summed up by the chairman. We must know why we are saying it.
That would only widen the rift and we want to close that gap! And we can mean what we say only if we stop the rash statements before they hit the air. Telling the alcoholic what we expect and how we feel may have gotten us nowhere. More talking would just be nagging.
So sometimes, we think the action is necessary. This, too, is a form of communication. But I also have that right. I will not let your drinking be the most important thing in my life. Actions speak louder than words.
That would be punishing him. I told her that she was the only one who could do anything about her drinking, but that I could take certain steps to see that her drinking would not affect me and our children as far as meals were concerned. I arranged with a neighbor to come in and cook the dinner. This went on for three weeks, then my wife asked for another chance. Although she still gets drunk nearly every night, now she at least waits until after she has cooked dinner.
A very large order, but communication which has these qualities will accomplish several ends: It will confirm our individuality and dignity; the person who hears them cannot mistake their meaning; they carry no residue of regret for unfairness. What alcoholism is doing to us gives rise to resentment. Resentment creates anger, and our anger must be dealt with, for our own health and growth. Living with an alcoholic can be a frustrating business, producing conflict after conflict.
I was fired from more than one job for chronic lateness and absenteeism. I was never violent or abusive, although my unreachable suffering and neglect of myself and others around me did inflict emotional pain on my partner, which is almost indistinguishable from abuse.
Not that I cared very much — or rather, I cared, but not nearly as much as I cared about drink. Alcohol had fed my natural selfishness and grown it into something monstrous, something that only cared about popping open that next cold can of lager.
A couple of months earlier, on 7 July , terrorists had exploded bombs across the London public transport system and killed 52 people. Like most of the country, my fiancee and I spent that morning glued to the news in horror. But my horror was twofold. That morning she had been due to go to Spain to visit friends. Her absence would mean I could drink freely.
As news of the severity of the attack sunk in and transport networks were shut down, she quickly abandoned all thought of travel. But I could not let it go. If the coaches stopped, I would pay for a taxi.
On the morning of the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK in decades, all I could think about was trying to make sure I could be on my own. Of course, without me that lager would have stayed in its aluminium tubes in the corner shop. It was me. But addiction forces that way of thinking. We seek meaning in events by applying narrative rules to them: beginnings, middles and ends, motivations, causes and effects. But I could never find a clear beginning.
With another drug, it might be useful to remember my first dose, but alcohol had been on the family dinner table long before it became a problem. Another story might begin with a trauma or loss, which would serve the double purpose of cause and justification. All I can find is a series of moments where the fabric of my life tore a little and, each time, more drink poured in through the gap.
At university, I drank almost nightly. My first job, in business journalism, was in a fairly high-pressure environment and involved a good deal of social drinking, and I drank to embarrassing excess more than once. A year or so after starting work I fell out with my flatmate and started drinking alone in pubs in the evening, in order to avoid going home. The smoking gun is somewhere here. I could have changed course.
And when I changed flatmates, the drink came home, in cans. I had risen to being chief subeditor of a weekly magazine and was in charge of a small production team. As my responsibilities increased, so did my hungover latenesses and absences.
I went to my GP complaining of chest pains, which I attributed to stress. I took them and continued to drink. Work was the problem, I thought, not drink. I quit my job, intending to go freelance. Drink gushed into the open space I had made for it. I was Alcoholism feeds on secrecy. It might be a disease associated with going out, but I found that it had the opposite effect.
As I became more aware of the disease, I tried harder to conceal it, putting on more public displays of abstemiousness. I would leave the pub or party early. As well as not wanting to be seen getting drunk, I also had the practical imperative of needing to get to the corner shop before it closed.
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