The Diary of a Victim of an Alcoholic

Photo by dosmosis Alcohol is not bad per se. One benefit of alcohol is that there is a window during the time one is drinking alcohol when there is a genuine period of enlightenment; sounds weird but true. I have first hand experience! This narrow window of opportunity happens at the moment when we just start to feel a bit drunk. The mind is freed up and some great thoughts (genuinely good thoughts) come to mind. Unless we write these down or dictate them they are lost for ever. Another benefit would have been the fact that the former president Bush would not have been elected president if he had not forsworn alcohol. If he was known to have liked a drink he wouldn't have made it and, hey, it would have been a better world. There have been some fine politicians who drank a bit more than usual. Churchill, voted by the British as the best in the history of the country had the simple rule to never take a strong drink before breakfast! He was a bit of a drinker and it didn't hurt.

1904 Advertisement I have always wondered if alcoholism is a disease . Is this just some sort of idea someone dreamed up years ago as a method to make a buck. You know it could have been that way. People think diseases are either curable or that the symptoms can be controlled to an extent where the person can live pretty normally. The signal sent to alcoholics by the idea that alcoholism is a disease is, "I can be cured by a pill" or "there is hope". And they go off and search for a cure to this mysterious disease...... It may be a disease, though. What is the definition of "disease"? It is an abnormal condition that impairs bodily functions with accompanying symptoms (after Wikipedia). Or here is another definition: An alteration of the state of the body or parts of it interrupting normal function (mine after ThinkExist.com). These are broad definitions. We usually think of diseases as say a virus that infects us and causes illness; the common cold is t

Photo by Mexicanwave Victims of Alcoholics Need to Talk or write about their experiences. Not long ago I went to Al-anon. I don't go now. Perhaps it was the wrong group for me. I found that I sensed from the silent reaction of the others that I was either saying too much and/or it was too near the bone; I was too outspoken for that group. It wasn't benign and passive enough. Fair enough, but I like to talk the truth, to express my feelings and vocalize what I think I have learned. Some of it will be wrong and some right but expressing ourselves is important to relieve stress levels, which are likely to be higher in victims of alcoholics, that is, people who are not alcoholics who are living with alcoholics. The idea of talking about one's problems as a means to dissipate them is, after all, well known and is supported by recently released research carried out at the University of California. Apparently writing about a bad experience (as I am doing in this blog) is often ca

Photo by James Donavon Jane is OK right now, as right as she and I can be. But the alcoholic's invisible battle with the urge to drink is constant. What I mean is that I do not see her struggles. I don't know how she feels when she comes back from work or when she is driving back from work. At what point during the day or the week or month is it that she feels like a drink and struggles with that (if she is trying to remain sober, which is the case at present)? Jane is a binge alcoholic so she is not on "trickle booze" but "binge booze". She stores up the desire to drink until it explodes inside her and then all that denial is unleashed in an almighty death defying binge in which she can literally kill herself. Sure she will drink occasionally in between binges (sort of mini-binges) but it is the 5-12 day big ones that is her hallmark behavior. When does this feeling to binge come on? Does she ever deny it, battle with it and win? Or does she always give in

Here is what it is like Living With An Alcoholic . Whatever a normal relationship might mean, it doesn't exist. It is snuffed out by the dreaded Mr V (vodka). One of the first things that comes to mind is that alcoholics are known to be unreliable and just plain liars. And I am not being critical of alcoholics. I am just describing the facts. Alcoholism drives the alcoholic to lie and deceive. It becomes a way of life. And broken promises abound. Promises to change and stop. These are all well intentioned but can never be kept until the alcoholic is what AA calls a recovering alcoholic. Recovering alcoholics are alcoholics who are able, for the time being, to control their alcoholism. It is as good as it can get for them and their partner. So living with an alcoholic is a very fragile existence, the relationship always undermined by a breach of trust or a potential breach of trust. Then there are the rows. These occur during the binge drinking or continuous drinking (if the alcohol

Clown Fish and Sea Anemone a symbiotic relationship - photo published under Wikimedia Commons - author Janderk I don't do any reading when I write these posts so this one about an Alcoholic Partner and Codependency comes straight from my head (or bottom). It occurred to me that codependency need not be one alcoholic to another, which I take it is the most common form in the alcoholic world. It might be that one partner is the alcoholic and the other not an alcoholic. But the one who is not is still dependent on the alcoholic partner. Under these circumstances, the question that is thrown up, is why is the non-alcoholic dependent on the alcoholic? This is my reason. It is simply down to practicalities as nearly all these situations are, ultimately. It is about survival at a basic level. The alcoholic will find it difficult to sustain a partnership with someone for obvious reasons. The other person will have some sort of defect (and we all, I believe have some sort of defect somewhe

More alcoholic chat - a quick update. Hi to those loyal followers of the ramblings of a victim of an alcoholic. Right now it is no alcohol. We are in that trough or peak between binges. Everything is fairly normal. Did I say normal? There is the ever present fear of a restart. The day Jane comes in from work (yes, she is back at work) drunk will signal the start of the next binge, I suspect. The pressure will mount too. As the days go by the pressure to drink will mount and bingo, we're off. I don't expect a change but I did make it clear that I was making moves to move out , looking around and exploring the possibilities etc. Jane is aware of that. That knowledge may be having an effect, of sorts, but it cannot change behavior because very little in the way of external events can achieve that. It must come from within, from the head of the alcoholic. As I said, though, I may, due to practical reasons, find a compromise solution and move into a bigger room in the flat and

by atinirdosh I feel (no, I know) that Jane has never rearly learned how to live. She has never learned from her mistakes. We improve our lives by learning from mistakes and avoiding them. We progress. I wonder if the lack of ability to learn how to live by learning from mistakes is a characteristic of alcoholics? I have learned how to live. I understand how to live. But I am losing the strength to put into action what I know. Is this how a non-alcoholic gets to be stuck with an alcoholic? When I am with Jane I sometimes feel that I am with a juvenile, a teenager. It is as if she is my daughter. This compels me sometimes to wrongly talk to her as my daughter. Is this arrested development in Jane because she has failed to learn from her mistakes and failed to learn how to live? The quotes, below, came with the photograph, above, which is from a Flickr photographer -- atinirdosh . I hope she doesn't mind me publishing them here, they are apt. It is not hard to learn more. What is har