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Alcoholism Relapse

Alcoholism relapse has happened. To recap; I have today collected Jane from the hospital at about 3pm. She had gone to hospital after her last binge.

She said that they (the doctors) had to do some tests for pancreatitis and that she had it. Although as the binge was short I am not sure about this. It normally occurs when she has binged for a long time say 7-10 days. This is going to sound harsh but she lies all the time particularly about booze and everything to do with it. Pancreatitis can kill you.

At about 5:30 pm she is drinking again, but as usual it is done in a totally secretive way. And she doesn't know that I know she is drinking - best to keep quiet to avoid arguments.

Some Vodka had been left over from the binge. I had put it out of way in the kitchen, high up so she might have difficulty seeing it. Although it doesn't matter as it is impossible to stop her drinking.

Anyway, I know how much was left in the bottle. I guess I would, being a victim of an alcoholic. Marking the bottle is something you habitually do. Only I don't actually mark the level of the booze, I just use something on the bottle to check the level. It has gone down.

Every time she goes into the kitchen she takes a slug as the level goes down. When I went to the toilet briefly I heard a banging and noise. I guessed she had walked into something (being drunk) in the kitchen while reaching for the bottle. Sure enough the level had gone down again.

I don't talk about it with her - no point. She'd go into a huff and become very defensive and blame me for something. She is acting drunk, making silly comments. I can spot that even though I have had a couple of glasses of wine myself.

So, she has re-started very quickly after stopping. This is probably the quickest re-start after a binge in the 8-9 years that I have known her. It's probably because the binge was very short (3-4 days) and was stopped almost artificially after she telephoned the police saying she had been mugged.

Photograph reproduced under creative commons copyright tunelko

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