I found this site yesterday by accident. My wife, who died recently, was a member here in the alcohol support section under the name of walkingtall. I saw a message from daily strength and logged in, I knew her paswords. I could write a book about our relationship, but will keep it short and to the point.

My wife of 11 years and I had shared a wonderful life together, doing everything, the good and the bad, as a team. Life was good until things started to change. My wife began to struggle with alcohol about 5 years ago. It started off that we would have a drink after the kids went to bed. She had 3 autistic children and by the end of the day we were usually pretty frazzled. She had devoted her entire adult life to caring for her kids and making sure they had services and any help they needed. Over time, with the constant stress, she developed anxiety, depression and PTSD. Drinking became her release. It went from 1 drink to 2 at night and increased from there. I started noticing that when I came home from work she was more tired than usual and went to bed earlier. I knew she was experiencing a lot of depression and suggested that she see her Dr and find out what was wrong. She tried different anti depressants over the next year, but none seemed to work. She talked with Psycologists and Psychiatrists, but apparently wasn't telling them that she was drinking on a regular basis. She was telling me that she had a vitamin deficiency and that was why she was tired all the time. This went on for several years. She was hiding her drinking from me and couldn't admit her problem and ask me or anyone for help. She was embarressed that she had this problem.

As the drinking continued to increase in quantity and frequency, It became apparent what was going on when I was finding her passed out on the floor or the couch when I got home from work. We tried to get help, but the state of Florida has some of the worst healthcare in the country and the area that we lived in had only one source of help. This Dr was horrible and never returned her calls when she needed help, he never showed any concern or tried to get her other help, he just pushed a different pill on her. This just depressed my wife even more. We tried in-patient facilities twice. Once again, what FL has to offer is quite sub-standard. They would check her in and put her in a detox ward, which she didn't really need yet, and refused to do anything about the root problems that caused her to drink. After 3 days, they would send her home with no support or recommendations. She was trying to get help, but no one would help her.

She went back to her primary Dr who prescribed antabuse a pill that is supposed to make you very sick if you drink. This was good incentive and worked for 6 mos. At that point, she apparently had a very stressful day and felt compelled to take a drink. She didn't get sick. Let me say here that my wife had had gastric bypass surgury 8 years prior. Apparently, the part of your intestine that absorbes certain medications was the part that had been removed. Once she knew she could drink without getting sick, she went off the deep end. She was drinking every day and couldn't stop even though she knew she was loosing her family and friends. She had tried AA but it didn't help. She said it made her want to drink even more that it was a trigger for her.

We tried the tough love approach that her therapist suggested as a way to keep her from getting alcohol. I took her money and her car keys away while I was at work. If she did have to go somewhere one of the kids had to go with her to make sure she didn't stop to buy alcohol. That approach didn't work. She would tell the kids that she was going for a walk and go to the closest liquor store over a mile away and drink it on the way home so she could get by the purse check when she got home. One time she didn't come back and after searching the neighborhood we had to call the police to look for her. They found her passed out in some bushes. Other times she would ask neighbors for a ride to the store. She told them her car wasn't working. She got so drunk one time, that she couldn't even get out of their car when she got home. When we were able to get her out, she couldn't even stand up. We called the ambulance to take her to the hospital where she stayed till she sobered up then signed herself out.  

This became the last straw. It had been building for 5 years now. I had to ask her to leave. I couldn't take the daily stress of wondering what I would find when I got home or one of her kids calling me at work to say mom was drunk again. She had given up on getting help and just gave into the drinking totally.

She and the kids ended up moving back to her parents house in another state. We talked on the phone, emailed and video chatted almost every day, but I could tell that she was still drinking. This was supposed to be a temporary thing. We thought that this would be her bottom and she would now acknowledge her addiction and be able to get better help in another state. Wrong...terribly wrong.

I got a call from her father about 2 mos after she left that they found her dead in her bed. She was 44. 

This just crushed me and her children. We had lost the one person we loved so dearly. How had things gone so terribly wrong? I went to help with funeral arrangement and just sobbed the entire time that I was there. Going through her things to decide what to keep and what to donate was just awful. Her kids wanted to come back to live with me so I brought them back with me. 

I know from reading a lot of the posts in this section that this is not the typical scenerio of how their loved one died, but it is every bit as painful if not more. Alcohol can be every bit as deadly as cancer. I guess I thought, wrongly so, that the shock of her life ending up where she was and loosing everything she had, would be enough to turn her around. I was wrong. 

Guilt overcame me for quite a while. I ran through all the coulda, shouda, wouldas daily. I started blaming myself. I should have been more understanding. I should have tried harder. I beat myself up constantly. I didn't really have anyone I could talk to about it because I wanted to hold on to her privacy that no one knew about her addiction.

It took 4 months to finally get myself back to some kind of normalcy although her presence will always be there. I can think about her now without totally breaking down. 

I thought I would share my story of how this type of death can be every bit as devastating as any other. 

Thanks for listening