The Diary of a Victim of an Alcoholic

This will be short. About 2 months ago Jane had a month long binge with two hospital visits in the middle. She fell over five times in one day onto a hard floor. She broke her wrist and is off work for about three months in total. This is causing huge financial problems for her and it has pretty much broken our relationship, what was left of it. I can't get it back. I lose my cool all the time and I am thoroughly pissed off with her. I really have to leave but I don't want to. I am torn. I will go eventually. There is no other choice. This is sad. Jane's "illness" has finally broken the relationship. It was always destined to be this way. It has been a roller coaster. The last binge was the longest she has ever had and it was after one of the best spells off drink. So you see, the problem (that causes the alcoholism) has to come out. You bottle it up and it comes out more strongly. I am damaged by all this a bit. Al anon doesn't work. It is too chatty an

Take a daughter who should have been a son. The mother wanted a boy. The mother can barely bring herself to name the child. The mother is cold and emotionally dead. The father is good but Victorian strict - too strict. He is too critical of his daughter. The parents are incompatible. They argue. They shout at each other and don't get on. They stick together because there is nothing better for them. The formative years roll out under this umbrella of uncertainty, antagonism and criticism. The objective of a parent is to instill confidence in a child. The opposite is being achieved. The child becomes very insecure. She grows up. She has low self-esteem. An insecure person with low self-esteem automatically finds life a lot more difficult than it already is. She discovers alcohol and it smooths out the rough edges. It makes her difficult and uncomfortable life more comfortable. Her brain warms to that feeling. As her body becomes habituated to ethanal alcohol she needs more

This is an update. Aren't all the posts update?! I think (just think without any optimism as you can't be optimistic about alcoholism) that Jane might be getting better. What gives me a bit of hope? The other morning, she volunteered some information. She said that she had taken a bottle of wine (that was in the fridge for me!), opened it and then decided not to drink it. She said that she had thought how it would affect me and our cats. WOW. I have always said to her that there must be a moment, perhaps 30 seconds in duration, during which she has a choice to drink or not and at that critical time, this time, she has decided to not drink. This shows a conscience piece of decision making rather than blindly giving in to her addiction. That must be a good sign surely? Well, I hope so and I think she feels good about what she did. I believe that the habit of drinking alcohol can be unlearnt gradually. As the months roll by without drinking the habit gradually fades. It is t

Yes, despite all the vitriol, all the pain and disappointment. The piles of agony. This is life and I love her. She has a wonderfully tender interior. It is too tender, too vulnerable, which is why she has a hardness sometimes that is at odds with her true self. When she has a binge, as must be expected, she is a different person. Yes, slightly mad and definitely bad. She admits it. She hates it. She does it and it hurts her self-esteem something terrible. What I like most about Jane is this tender childlike interior, hidden away so deeply inside her and almost invisible; certainly well protected to the point where it is hardly expressed in behavior. But it is there. I must nurture this. I must praise her. I have praised her. Compared to the way she was about 13 or more years ago she is much more stable. She was chaotic in those days, out of control and just hanging on. She, like all of us, finds life hard sometimes. She gets tired and depressed. She expresses a desire to end

When I look at Jane today and last night during a binge of sorts, I see an insane person. I don't mean barking mad and obviously insane but a person who is definitely not normal, v.slightly insane, 10 percent insane, call it what you like . When Jane is drinking she acts like an insane person. I know that none of us are "normal" as there is no definition of a "normal person" but we can tell when a person is not normal. The usual symptoms are borderline personality disorders and the like. And don't get me wrong I am not being critical. I am sympathetic in fact but it needs to be said. She just does not get some things. We will agree that doing something in a certain way will help and the next minute she is back to her old ways. She has no understanding of her alcoholism at all. After 30 years of binge drinking she still doesn't have the faintest idea as to the underlying cause. She had a mini-binge for two days and then stopped and I think she has re

Alcoholism is linked to dementia. I think alcoholism can cause a type of dementia. And it is not uncommon for alcoholics to eat badly too. A lack of a good diet can be an exacerbating factor. Then there are the bloody pills. It seems that if you are alcoholic you might also be depressed and if depressed you might lean on pills more than others. Prozac comes to mind and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline (help sleep and other things). OK lots of pills and booze cannot be good for the brain or the body. Jane ingests all this stuff and she is beginning to pay the price it seems to me and it is very worrying for us both. Although I am not completely sure, it seems that Jane is suffering from at least memory loss but it may go wider than that. There may be cognitive loss too or even dementia. This may in part or in whole be due to a recent botched operation (long time under anesthetic). I think it is a combination of all these things. It is motivating Jane to stop binge drinki

Alcoholism puts the alcoholic betwixt life and death. It places the person in a kind of twilight zone that is not truly living and neither is it death. Although the person pushes the door to death ajar from time to time, he or she usually doesn't pass through. Eventually knocking and pushing on the door enough times results in the door opening and the alcoholic passes to the other side. Jane has been in a near death situation on a few occasions. This is usually due to pancreatitis. Heavy drinking damages the pancreas. I am not sure how and I can't research it right now as my internet connection is extremely poor. If the pancreas stops working so do we it seems. From my perspective the alcoholic removes themselves from the world when drinking heavily but not quite to the point where they kill themselves. As I said it is a sort of in between zone. Well that is the case with Jane. She just doozes throughout a week long binge. What is unfortunate is that the alcoholic places th

Alocholism puts the alcholic betwixt life and death. It places the person in a kind of twilight zone that is not truly living and neither is it death. Although the person pushes the door to death ajar from time to time, he or she usually doesn't pass through. Eventually knocking and pushing on the door enough times results in the door opening and the alcoholic passes to the other side. Jane has been in a near death situation on a few occasions. This is usually due to pancreatitis. Heavy drinking damages the pancreas. I am not sure how and I can't research it right now as my internet connection is extremely poor. If the pancreas stops working so do we it seems. Form my perspective the alcoholic removes themselves from the world when drinking heavily but not quite to the point where they kill themselves. As I said it is a sort of in between zone. Well that is the case with Jane. She just doozes throughout a week long binge. What is unfortunate is that the alcoholic places the

Briefly (as I am about to go to the gym with Jane) here is an example of how a bad alcoholic experience can generate some good. Some time ago Jane found herself in hospital after a binge and had an unnecessary appendix operation (she had stomach pains) that went wrong causing real health problems with breathing and cognitive abilities. This has kick started a training regime to regain her health. How good is that? As I go to a gym attached to a really good hospital every Friday, she is joining me this morning. OK, once a week is not much but it is better than nothing and if done consistently over a long period real benefits can be accrued. For Jane it is very important. Not just going to a gym but the whole process of being positive and improving health. It is great for her self-esteem. Low self-esteem is a factor in alcoholism. Hard exercise has a fantastic effect on the state of the mind as well as the body. You feel better, more up for the challenges of the day. This is

Is it possible to turn around alcoholism? You may have heard of the The Priory Hospital Roehampton. It is about 20 minutes walk from where I live. Jane has been there a few times. She was there for a month or so many years ago. The whole thing was paid for out of health insurance. Personally I don't have a lot of faith is places like the Priory Hospitals. They make a lot out of health insurance, pushing the premiums up. People who have attended the Priory (and a good number of famous people have attended the Roehampton branch) say that the success rate is very low. I forget the figure but lets say if 100 alcoholics attended The Priory Hospital Roehampton on a full blown course intended to stop the addiction, about 5 might stop - 5%. It is something like that or even less. For the hospital, which is private by the way and therefore heavily commercial in culture, it is more about milking the insurance companies than curing addicts. On that basis, the chances of turning around

This is a quick update. For the time being things are going OK. I almost walked out though. Jane had a binge about three weeks ago and I decided to leave as I said I would. I inspected properties to move into (rental) and paid a deposit. Then I backed out! When tested I just find it impossible to live alone anymore. I have lived alone a lot and I find I get depressed. Simple as that. On balance it is better with Jane and she seems to be getting better, which, if I am honest, I did not expect. It is a joint effort really. She does drink a bit still but at the moment the binges are much less often and things are more manageable. I have constantly pushed her to stop. But what I think is the defining influence at the moment in her possible improvement is not me (although I think I play a part) but the fact that her health seems to be affected. Her memory is less good. If this is due to alcoholism and I am not sure it is, it is worrying for us both. On the upside it is a great motiv

Parallel Universe -that is where I am - photo by yhancik If you have been an alcoholic for say 30 years and are say about mid fifties, I believe that you are more likely to become a worse alcoholic if you are not so called "recovering" (a euphemism for managing to control it - just). This, I feel, is the case with Jane. Her binges are slightly different. There is more an air that she has given up. And giving up is not the thing to do if you are an alcoholic. As I write this she is in the 8th day of a binge. As a reminder, for her, a binge is: to lie in bed almost permanently to consume about one 75 ml bottle of vodka per day (wine bottle size) ( update: this means 75 cl or a wine bottle size) to eat extremely little to lose weight (she is a poor eater and thin anyway) to make herself sick to sleep in an horrendous smelly mess to make death rattle noises in the night to give me the feeling that I am living with a corpse to go out to the shops to buy more booz