I live with an alcoholic. I've been married to him for fourteen years now, since we were both just seventeen years old. I've watched him grow into this disease. It started with the normal partying that we all go through, drinking with friends, hanging out. He was twenty three when control began slipping way from him, he flipped that so called switch in his brain and crossed over to that point of no return.
It came to a point where he would wake up in the mornings and crave alcohol after a long night of drinking. Hang-over's were a thing of the past for him. Sneaking bottles of alcohol and binge drinking became a weekly occurrence. I would spend hours and hours driving around looking for him during his disappearances. He would drink for days and be unable to stop until his body and mind could take no more and thus would beg for help to stop. I was so full of anger and didn't understand what he was doing and why he couldn't stop drinking. He finally agreed to rehab when he got so far out of control and was beginning to feel suicidal over it.
I thought that would be the end of it, that after rehab he would be fixed. They told him he had to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings regularly if he wanted to stay sober. He didn't like the meetings and didn't want to take the time to do them. He just wanted to get back to work and get his life back. He would stay sober for a couple months, and then disappear again, on another binge. Each binge, I would pray would be his last. He went to rehab one more time about five years after that. It's now been thirteen years since that first stay in rehab, and he's still fighting the disease.
Alcoholism will never go away, there is no cure for it. You have to want sobriety more than anything else in life in order to succeed the addiction. Some say an alcoholic needs to hit a bottom in order to finally give in and achieve sobriety. For him, I have no idea what his bottom could be. He's almost died several times, he was homeless in another state, and lost everything. He somehow pulled himself out of that, and was in a good state of mind for a long time. Then it crept up on him again, took over his thoughts and his brain, and he ended up in jail from a DUI just six months after being so close to death.
That was two years ago, his time in jail. He was terrified during that time, and once again swore off alcohol. Got back with the program, went to meetings, got back with his sponsor. This time he stayed sober for a year. Then the mind took over again, and playing with fire, he got burned. He ended up back in the hospital, got out, desperately wanted sobriety and a few weeks later, gave in again.
It's such a vicious cycle. It's horrifying to watch someone struggle through such a terrible disease. Alcohol is on every corner, advertised on TV, billboards, radio stations and restaurants. How unfair that this is mocked and shoved in the faces of those who can't drink it. It's a disease that is not taken very seriously, like cancer or any other deadly disease is. Nobody jokes about cancer, or shoves it in ones face.
I "m unsure as to why I"ve stuck around for so long. It's been very exhausting to deal with and to see him suffer in such a way. I used to be so angry, I still am, but I have a better understanding of what he suffers through. I can't control it, or stop it, but I can make others aware of how damaging it is. I sometimes feel it's so unfair that I've been one of the chosen ones to have become involved with someone who is an alcoholic. However, how would I ever have known that this was coming when we were only seventeen? I don't even think I knew what an alcoholic was at that age. I do know that I'm thankful that I'm not one.
