Hi Everyone
I’m Elizabeth, 48 years old. My husband is an alcoholic. We’ve been together 22 years and his drinking has been a real issue for about 10 years, although looking back, he’s never really had a healthy relationship with alcohol since we got together all those years ago.
In 2020, during Covid, his drinking escalated to unprecedented levels and to cut a long story short, in 2021 he suffered from a full mental break down and developed Tourettes. Despite desperately trying to get him help, including intervention from his doctor, he just wasn’t ready to. And after enduring a year of him drinking heavily from the morning until he passed out in the early evenings, and his behaviour becoming abusive, I eventually moved out in September. I moved into a wee little wooden one bedroom lodge in the country, on a six months lease with my two dogs.
He has stopped drinking for 2.5 months now, and is attending online AA and Smart recovery meetings, but he is still refusing to go to any in-person meetings.
Despite the sobriety, he is still incredibly defensive, angry and difficult to communicate with at times. And he has expressed his resentment about me moving out and not paying for him to go to rehab instead. Myself and his adult son did actually try to get him to go to rehab but he flatly refused at the time.
It’s so exhausting.
I’m due to move home in April, but in all honesty, I just don’t know how I feel about it all. I swing from one decision to the next on a daily basis.
I’ve had one-to-one sessions with John, and he has been utterly amazing. With his help, I was able to look after me first. It took some courage, let me tell you, but I am so glad I have.
Anyway, it’s so nice knowing there are others out there who will understand what I’ve been going through these past few years and I am very grateful for that, as well as John and Lou.
