HOW DO I GET THROUGH BAD DAYS ?

You know the sort of days I mean ...

• you wake up to find him/her asleep on the lounge and smelling of alcohol - been drinking all night
• or, you had planned to do something and find your loved one drunk and angry, or asleep
• or, he or she wants to argue with you for no reason
• or, you have a busy day and he or she keeps ringing you with stupid, drunk stuff

What can we do?

• First - realise and accept that the behaviour you are seeing is caused by alcohol
• Second - accept that most likely, YOU are not the cause of the behaviour
• Third - take a deep breath, and tell yourself that this is NOT YOUR PROBLEM
• Fourth - decide to leave your drinker do what they have to do -
  (remember: you are powerless over alcohol - it is far stronger than you are)
• Finally - decide to do something constructive for YOURSELF

What the above steps can do is to DETACH yourself from the drinking (not the drinker) so that you become less affected by what is going on.

Easy?

NO!  But it is the best way of coping with a bad day and can be learned by trying to do it as often as is necessary. It gets easier each time you do it. Try it.

Nothing is easy living with an alcoholic, but DETACHMENT is one defence we have to separate ourselves from what is going on at home.  It can help us stop going nuts, bananas , wacko or crazy.

COPING WITH DISAPPOINTMENTS

Living with an active alcohol abuser ain't for sissies , to take a line from Mae West ("Growing Old Ain't for Sissies") and life is full of let downs, disappointments, expectations dashed, good times lost.

They say they'll stop drinking - but they don't. They agree to go on an outing, or an important event, but be drunk when the time comes and you either go alone or cancel out. You may cook a nice dinner for their birthday and ask the kids or friends around, but they're too drunk when the time comes. They say they'll be fine while your'e away for the day, but you come home to find them drunk again. They forget your birthday, and their own.

That's what it's like - it happens to all of us. But is there something we can do about it?

Well there is, but it's not easy, but I learned to handle this and so can you.

First thing:

• Accept that they have a real, awful mental disease. They are not wicked, just very, very sick.

Next:

• Accept that social things are going to be difficult for BOTH of you to attend. It's not going to happen, or if you do go out they may get dead drunk in the middle of it all.
• Accept that any plans or arrangements you make for both of you are subject to change at a moment's notice.

Finally then:

• Do not build up expectations about anything.
• That means, do not expect things to go the way you want.
• IF YOU DON'T BUILD UP EXPECTATIONS THEN YOU WILL NOT BE LET DOWN, AND HURT OR HUMILIATED - AGAIN.

Sounds defeatist? Giving up? Shouldn't I keep trying?

Think of it this way: your loved one is in the grip of this disease and has lost control of his/her thinking, most of the time. They will have no concept of what is right or wrong, good or bad, only about the next drink. At the moment they are most likely unable to change anything in their lives.

So YOU have to PROTECT yourself - and the above few tips will help you stay sane and less frustrated.

Read over some of the other posts I have made about related subjects. AND LOOK AFTER YOURSELF.

COPING WITH UNCERTAINTY

When we live with an active alcoholic, we never know what is going to happen next. our life together becomes totally unpredictable, disrupted, uncertain.

All sorts of awful things can happen: I have heard of :

• someone's husband walking around the neighbourhood with no clothes on
• someone's wife falling down drunk at a dance party
• someone's husband falling into a gutter and staying there, in the rain
• someone's wife falling down on the floor at home and staying there, in front of her grandchildren
• someone's wife falling down in the street while on the way to buy more alcohol
• any number of car crashes while someone was drunk and driving

We cannot predict what can happen - so making any plans for outings or to attend functions is almost doomed to failure. I don't know how many invitations I had to refuse or cancel out at the last minute because my wife was drunk.

What can we do?

What I did was to stop making plans for the two of us to go out. I just did things on my own. Often I would leave my wife asleep on the lounge and I'd go out and have a nice coffee and stroll around for a while. I'd come home and she would not even know I had been away.

I accepted that she would rather drink that go out with me.  Hard, but I had to accept the power of alcohol over her brain.

So I slowly began to build a life for myself, and left her to her own devices - drinking usually.

Until SHE reached out for help, I learned to look after myself and do some things that I enjoyed.

And kept hoping that one day she would want to stop drinking and reach out to AA for help.

Which she finally did, after some eight years.  I had to learn to look after myself for all those years- how I did this is explained in the HELP PAGES opposite.

COPING WITH FRUSTRATION

One of the things that happens when living with an alcohol abuser is that we get to feel FRUSTRATED:

• Frustrated that the drinking continues despite all we do
• Frustrated because the drinker does not seem to want to stop drinking
• Frustrated that we can do nothing ....

And all of this is what naturally happens to us, living with a drinker.

What can we do?

One thing to think about is : ARE  WE  EXPECTING  TOO  MUCH?

Are we expecting the drinker to feel horrified - as we perhaps are - at all the things that now happen?

Are we expecting the drinker to see what they are doing to themselves - and everyone around them - and really try to stop drinking?

Maybe we are expecting too much from the drinker - they are on a long journey to recovery even if they are trying to stop right now. Their mind is under the control of a cunning, powerful and baffling disease, caused by the excessive drinking of alcohol.

Maybe we should reconsider our expectations - are we expecting too much too soon?

Think about letting go of any expectation you may have that the drinker MUST soon stop.  It probably will not happen, until they start to reach out for help.

It has been said that:  Building up our expectations simply sets us up for disappointments and frustration.

Instead, try to accept where the drinker now is, good or bad, and start to think about YOURSELF.

Think about getting help for yourself - the drinker needs AA and nothing much can happen until they decide to go to AA - forcing them to go will not work - they have to be willing to go to AA.

Concentrate more on YOUR  NEEDS and what help you can get. Check out the HELP PAGES.