Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
My husband is in complete denial about cutting back on his alcohol intake. First of all, my husband has PTSD (post dramatic stress disorder) from deployments in the Army and now he's being made to medically retire. Ill give him props that he has cut back, but where he's cut back on beer, he's replaced with liquor. Its gotten to the point that I have to ration his shots every night. I say he's a closet alcoholic b/c no one @ work knows about his problem, he doesn't tell anyone in the family about it and he lies to our 5yr old about it. He and I made a pact on july 4th weekend that he would quit drinking by the 8th, his b'day, and I would quit smoking..... I followed through, unfortunately he didn't. I NEED HELP!!!! Our son is now in therapy for issues the drinking and ptsd combo has had in him; its from the way my husband treats me and the effects its having on our son. If anyone can give some advice to me, that would be awesome!
Billy
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/meetings/a/blalanon.htm
All I can tell you is that from the time that I started drinking at the age of 15 I always drank alcoholically in so far as I rarely went for one or two drinks. That said, I am quite certain that I was not addicted to alcohol in those early days or for a long time afterwards. Right up until the last few years of drinking I had a certain amount of control over it. Then the graph literally fell off the cliff and any control I may have had before was lost totally in a short time.
Are alcoholics born differently I dont know? Perhaps people who are prone to allergic reactions of other types are more likely to develop an abnormal reaction to alcohol also. My guess is that the physical change in the way that alcohol is processed is something that only occurs in most cases through drinking too much. Many people who are not alcoholics drink too much and for a variety of reasons. A high percentage of these heavy drinkers will undergo the physical change that leads to alcoholism.
Regardless of how the condition develops there is no known process that can cause it to be successfully reversed. Therefore, although I think that it is vitally important for an alcoholic to have some understanding of how it happens, the reasons are no longer of any consequence.
I can certainly understand why you would ask the question as I too asked a lot of questions. Most of my questions were of the why does it have to be poor me variety because at that time I had not fully accepted that I am an alcoholic. Once I understood that a more pertinent question would be why not me I could get on with looking at a solution. Then I discovered that what I had foolishly come to regard as a terrible disaster had led me to great opportunities.
Don't know how that last post got in there.
See post below.
I have no understanding of PTSD so I dont know how it interacts with your husbands drinking but please permit me to comment on some of the other points you have raised.
Your husband may or may not be an alcoholic but only he can make that diagnoses. If he is in fact an alcoholic it is vitally important for you to get help on how to handle living with him, for your husbands sake but especially for yourself and for your child. The best place to get that advice is at Al-Anon meetings as the people there will have dealt with similar issues. Alcoholism is an illness which eventually removes the persons choice about whether to drink or not. Because of this you cannot just make a pact with your husband and expect everything to fall into place and neither can you put alcoholism and cigarette smoking in the same category. People can stop smoking, hard as it is, by using their willpower; an alcoholic can rarely stop drinking on willpower alone.
You can in fact make your situation much worse by taking the wrong approach so it is vital for you to learn more. It worries me that you seem to think that you can ration his drinking. If he is not an alcoholic a few drinks will do him no great harm and may indeed help him in some ways. If however he is addicted to alcohol like you suspect, he will drink one way or another regardless of how you try to control him. He will then have one more excuse to drink and he will have a means of shifting responsibility for his drinking away from himself and blaming you instead.
The other thing that stands out in your post is that you seem to be putting the entire blame for your sons issues on your husband and his drinking. Life is rarely as clear-cut as this and in such cases it is wise for both partners to examine their own part in the whole affair. I wish to make it absolutely clear that I am not implying in any way that you have any blame for your husbands drinking. However, the solution to these problems requires that all parties should take an honest look at themselves and be prepared to make the necessary changes.
All I can suggest to you is some form of family counselling if your husband is not actually an alcoholic. If he is, then I would strongly urge you to look up Al-Anon in your area and go to meetings. Add to that some relationship counselling if it is necessary.
Unfortunately, your husband must want to stop drinking for himself and the more you prod him the more he is likely to resist. It is usually better to suggest things to an alcoholic rather than to make demands no matter how strongly you feel about his drinking. That way, the idea that he needs help will hopefully come from his own thinking. There are also some Al-Anon groups on D.S. and you are likely to get better advice from those than you can get here.
Alanon is probably your best option to get advice, and to find others who can totally relate.
Good luck.