The Diary of a Victim of an Alcoholic

I just want to thank Google for making such a great product as Blogger. It is superb and it gives me, in this blog, the chance to just speak my mind, express myself and get things off my chest. This is therapy for me. It is a life saver. It is so easy to begin a blog in Blogger. It all works so well. The Google engineers are the best and there is absolutely no doubt about that. Thanks again Google, keep up the good work. I for one need you. Photo copyright and By jaredchapman

What should I do? Stay living with an alcoholic or live alone? Difficult decision. We had a bust up about 24 hours ago. I said that I thought she had been drinking ( she was sluring her words) and she went off in a huff and that was it. Not spoken since. She said the relationship wasn't working about 1 hour ago and to be honest she is right so I agreed. She provocatively said that I should live with my mother. She said she would phone her!!! For God sake, that really is provocative. I'm 59 years of age and she knows that will provoke me. I said if she phoned her I would leave. She didn't phone her but phoned her sister who knows what she is like. She should never phone family about such a thing. That was plain bad behavior. Keep in the home and deal with it. If you advertise problems to family it doesn't help. In the meantime I have genuinely thought that this is crazy. It is impossible to live with an alcoholic. Look, I'm not perfect, far from it but I am fairly no...

More alcoholic chat . This is pure therapy for me. It's about 5 am GMT here (London) and there were more arguments yesterday all of which are due to alcohol. I swear she is drinking smallish amounts, by her standards (say a couple of miniatures), secretly as always, and at the same time she is going to AA and taking Antabuse. In other words totally fooling herself. I had stopped talking about booze with her because she gets all defensive and difficult, until yesterday when I couldn't contain myself. I had had a glass of wine myself, which fortified me and she was showing clear signs of having had a drink so I (gently) suggested she had had a drink. Bingo, she went off in a huff after muttering, "I don't know where we're going from here......" Meaning I don't know if we can live together. I'll tell you, it is all but impossible to live with an alcoholic but it is worse living alone. Anyway, this proves once again that you can't talk alcohol with he...

Reality is cracked . Jane is still going running at 7:30 in the morning and still coming back in inordinately high spirits and stumbling over her words slightly. Is this me being paranoiac believing that she is drinking while out on the road running? It's the kind of thing she has done over the years. Or is she just running and being high spirited because of the running? You know, when you live with an alcoholic and get lied to endlessly you can't believe a thing for one and you become paranoiac for two. It's just inevitable. Jane is clumsy too. But it is this clumsiness just her nature or is she drunk all the time (slightly) and this is making her clumsy? Don't know. I can't mention drink with her. If I ask if she has been drinking she'll respond aggressively by saying that I am accusing her of drinking. She'll fly of the handle and go into a deep sulk. The mood in the home disintegrates and nothing is gained. So, I just keep quiet and write this blog inste...

There can't be that many people who are long term partners of an alcoholic - I am one of them. I never thought that I would end up the partner of a confirmed alcoholic. When I met her I didn't know as she hid it well (still does). I can tell now when she has been drinking, there are numerous subtle signs at the beginning which become very obvious soon afterwards. The point is this, to be a partner of an alcoholic you've got to be a bit odd yourself. For me there are a number of personal reasons why I have stuck around. Although over the time that I have known her I have gone looking for alternative company many times to try and escape from her. For sure it takes a massive level of patience to be a partner of an alcoholic. They try your patience big time. Yet right now as I type this I am getting a glimmer of hope that she might be on course to stop. Since Christmas she has stayed on course with going to AA daily and takes her Antabuse daily too. She seems more solid at th...

Here's ten warning signs of alcoholism unadorned, plain and simple: You have lost the choice as to whether you drink or not You have been drinking regularly for a long time at a level above the maximum recommended level (5+ years) You tend to drift towards drinking more as the years go by Your health is beginning to suffer slightly and so is your work (or a lot) You only drink in binges and don't consider this an addiction but you do it regularly over a long period of time and the binges are getting heavier You drink secretly You lie about your drinking to people close to you When challenged about your drinking you become defensive and lie You are drifting towards spirits and can drink from the bottle if needs must You can drink at any time of the day or night and not just after a days work These come from me. I did this list in about 5 minutes. It is based on my direct first hand experience of living with an alcoholic, Jane, my partner. Ten warning signs of alcoholism to alco...

Alcoholic living when you binge drink and are trying to control it, as Jane my partner is, means a very tense time for me. With my encouragement and help, sometimes, (I am not seeking praise) she has gone to Alcoholics Anonymous every day since her last binge at Christmas. This is definitely having a positive effect. It seems to have stabilised her. She grumbles pretty well every time she has to go and complains that it takes up too much of the day and that she is too busy (like hell she is). But I keep encouraging her and she goes. But and this is a big but, when is she going to have a binge? She has been binging for 25 years. And I think (and this is a guess) she is drinking small amounts outside the flat and disposing of the bottle (a miniature) outside thereby concealing the evidence. She is also running about 2-3 miles each morning and taking 4 pills each morning. These are vitamins, Antabuse and pills for her joints and bones (she has arthritis coming on). Soon I am going to have...

Alcoholic living is s** ty living. It is half way between living and dying. It is in the twilight zone. It is almost as if the alcoholic wants to die but hasn't got the guts to do it so lives half way between life and death. Sounds harsh, well the reality of alcoholism is a kind of hell. There is one factor in alcoholic living that might be common to many alcoholics. I would be surprised if there were many alcoholics who possess a high degree of self-discipline. Self-discipline means an awareness of your own behavior which further means that it is more likely that you will spot the signs that you are drifting towards alcoholism and take remedial action. The journey to alcoholism is long and there is plenty of time on the journey to alter course. It is much harder to go back and through Alcoholics Anonymous it seems to me that their objective is to go back, to retrain the brain so that it does not pull you towards alcoholism. One of the strengths of AA is that it injects a bit of s...

Lies, Lies and more lies. These undermine a relationship big time. What is alcoholic behavior? Jane demonstrates alcoholic behavior. Alcoholics have common behavior and individualized behavior. Jane has some borderline personality disorders. This is not untypical of alcoholics and I am not being critical. We are all damaged in some way or other. We are all imperfect and that of course includes me. But it seems to me that alcoholics have some common characteristics which dictate behavior. They therefore behave in similar ways. This could be called background behavior. Layered over that there is alcoholic behavior that comes from drinking itself. Call this, drunk behavior. Background behavior It is probably fair to say that often people who become alcoholics are stressed, depressed, upset, emotionally in pain etc. This drives them to drink - common sense stuff. The pain they feel will dictate their behavior. Depression makes you inactive, less productive. Stress makes you agitated, irrit...

I've just lost my cool with Jane (bout 5 mins ago) - thought I'd come to the diary to get it off my chest. My patience is running short. I have flaws like anybody else. God, I've got my flaws. But so does an alcoholic. The point is this. An alcoholic is probably (maybe certainly) going to have personality flaws that are part of the problem causing the alcoholism. What you then have is the alcoholism, which drives you mad plus the personality problems, which also drive you mad. And these come out when she is not drunk. Sure we all irritate each other sometimes. It's all flawed and so on but alcoholics have underlying issues that are normally more noticeable than in a well balanced person. It is these personality problems that can make life difficult for a victim of an alcoholic, when the alcoholic is not drinking. Sometimes the whole thing is on a knife edge. There is a background pressure and anxiety that never goes away. It doesn't take much to for the calm to chan...

Alcoholism - Psychology - Every day that you don't drink when you want to drink is one more moment when you have retrained your mind to stop seeking pleasure through alcohol . You can play tricks on the mind to help stop alcoholism. The mind is trainable, we know that. It can be untrained but it's hard. One example of playing tricks on the mind is the use of Antabuse. This drug takes away the reward element of the action/reward cycle that results in alcoholism. Action=drink alcohol - Reward=pleasure . With Antabuse it's action=the opposite to pleasure (violently sick), so you don't drink. Antabuse could be a placebo and still work (as long as you never drank at the same time, to test it). At the moment, Jane is doing well. Yesterday she said, "It's 15 days since I drank". This refers to her Christmas binge. She is counting the days, which seems a good thing. I say there is a long way to go because she has a gap in between binges of about 15 days anyway, bu...

Alcoholics may be able to benefit from neuroimaging in the future. Functional Imaging (an aspect of neuroimaging) is a process whereby the processes of the brain functions can be seen and therefore studied. The idea as I understand it is to study the reward process (a person drinks alcohol and gets the reward of feeling better; action = reward ) to see if it can be adjusted or interfered with to stop the addiction or gain more control over it. The ideal would be some sort of pill that alters the brain chemistry, blocking the addiction. That must be the holy grail of alcoholism treatment. Neuroimaging may be able provide some clues as to how the action/reward process functions in the brain and therefore help to find a solution. photo copyright camerge

I have told some alcoholism stories on the blog but the actual story of how Jane became an alcoholic makes less interesting reading. She became an alcoholic about 25 years ago. Before she crossed the wire to alcoholism she was drinking more and more, just just like anybody else. She enjoyed it. It helped her forget. She says her mother didn't want her and wanted a boy instead. She says her mother could hardly bother to name her. I think someone else suggested her name and her mother took it as the first available and easiest route. She failed to spot the danger signs as she drank more and more. There is always a moment some time before you conclusively cross the wire when you are aware that you are approaching the wire (meaning the moment when you have no choice whether you drink or don't and there is no going back to the days of choice). Since the time she became an alcoholic she has in my humble opinion not given enough importance to controlling her drinking. She almost accep...

One reason for the increase in alcoholism in women could be the mental friction caused by the conflict between her innate programmed desire to be the home-maker and the current peer pressure to be an independent career woman. Whether we like it or not men are programmed through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to be the hunter gatherer. The female is likewise programmed to be a home maker. The former goes out and kills for food. He makes his way back home. He may travel far. The argument goes that in order to track an animal and get home he developed better orientation skills than the female. Those skills now translate into better map reading :-) The female developed better socialising and communication skills staying at home. In modern society there is pressure on women to be more than "mere" home makers. Some women (perhaps many) will not want to be more and achieve more. This may cause friction. Of course, for those who do make a career they are sometimes force...

A Definition of Alcoholism might be: The stage at which a person loses the choice as to whether (s)he drinks alcohol or not. Once this condition is reached the person concerned will inevitably drink too much alcohol as the reason for losing the choice (through addiction) is because the brain thinks that alcohol brings pleasure or a release from pain (one and the same thing in effect). As human animals we will always chase pleasure, which equates to an improvement in survival. The person will go on drinking more until the equation (drink more=more pleasure) is turned around to drink more=less pleasure (through immediate pain for example). When the brain has forgotten the pain drinking brings the binge (in the case Jane my partner) starts again.

Alcoholism in women is increasing because they want to be like men. That sounds an outrageous statement but there is probably some truth in it. I have tried to find figures to confirm or disprove that alcoholism in women is on the increase or not. And I can't readily find the information. There are piles of websites on alcoholism and piles of scientific information, but it all looks very old, very off putting and difficult to read. It basically states the obvious, that alcoholism hurts the body, mind, the family, your finances, your life etc. but in fact for many alcoholism or borderline alcoholism it is a natural consequence of life because life can be so damn difficult. Life is more comfortable for many but it is still difficult (perhaps more so) in the head - mentally. It may seem extraordinary that so many people find life so difficult but it is actually completely normal. Life is often unpleasant and the older you get the more tired of it you get so you tend to head for the bo...

Alcoholism can cause tremors similar to Parkinson's disease. For alcoholics the development of a tremor is due to damage to the part of the brain that coordinates movement. This sometimes leads to poorly controlled movement and a chronic tremor. In Parkinson's Disease the major symptom is a tremor, which is caused by damage to the brain as well. This time it is damage to the brain cells producing dopamine. In fact Jane, my partner has a tremor mainly in her right hand. I don't think this is caused by her alcoholism. However, when she comes off a binge it can be so bad that she not only hyperventilates, she also panics and has hallucinations that are so real she cries out. She has on occasion had a fit, although I have not seen this. When she is binging she'll insist I get some more Vodka if it has run out (it always will). If I don't comply she will say that she'll have a fit if she doesn't get more booze quickly (meaning an epileptic type fit). That,...

There is only one type of alcoholism, the addiction to the rush of pleasure felt soon after drinking alcohol. After that fairly brief moment it is pretty much all downhill. This shows how on such a short term level the human mind works. Almost all we do is driven by short term gain. There are, though, many causes of alcoholism, meaning the reason for arriving at the position at which one is addicted to alcohol. One of the reasons for Jane is that she dislikes herself. This emotion about oneself will, it is certain, make life almost impossible to live. It is tough enough living in the world we have built but to dislike oneself at the same time - forget it. Her dislike of herself leads to the desire to punish herself. In my opinion she has been trained by her parents to be punished for being naughty. She is punishing herself by drinking neat Vodka. She knows that this will hurt her. She doesn't even like the stuff. She knows that it will cause upset and that will lead to me being an...

Alcoholism chat is what a lot of this Blog is about. It's meaningful chat though, from the heart, direct and honest. It's the only way to tell the world what it is like to be the partner of an alcoholic. Jane is a very needy person. Yesterday she was depressed and had difficulty in doing things. Certainly she had difficulty in going to AA but eventually went. I took here there and she got the bus back. She felt better after the meeting, which shows the usefulness of Alcoholics Anonymous. It always pays to actually do something about the problem no matter how hard it is initially to do it. It takes a lot of effort sometimes to get off ones backside up off the floor and do things but it always helps the mood and gives some hope and motivation. Yesterday, Jane was depressed when she went to bed the night before and went for a run early. When she came back from the run she was in better spirits. This could be the effect of the run or she could have bought a miniature of Vodka on th...

Alcoholism and nutrition don't go together. This is for a number of reasons. Jane is both borderline anorexic, borderline bullimic and alcoholic. She is also depressed and anxious. She has low self-esteem. Do you think she eats well? The causes of alcoholism result not only in alcoholism but also (often but not automatically) in poor eating habits and diet. Add to that the fact that alcohol is a food (empty calories) and you are less likely to be hungry. You have a recipe for ill health through poor nutrition as well as the damaging effects through the ingestion of ethanol alcohol (booze). I think that women who are alcoholics have the added burden of dealing with the image culture of slim women being attractive. There are many arguments for and against the negative effect of skinny models and how that can encourage poor eating and anorexia in the worse case scenario. But poor self image (linked to low self-esteem) is probably once cause of anorexia and also alcoholism. The two are...

Alcoholism Psychology is complex and I don't think that the psychiatrists working in the field of addiction are doing that good a job. Jane is seeing a psychiatrist at the moment and for the life of me I don't know what is happening as she won't tell me. It was my idea that she saw one to deal with the complex underlying reasons for her drinking which are in my humble opinion primarily her low self esteem, which results in depression. I am convinced that she was neglected as a child by her parents. Her parents, I believe criticized her too much (her mother mainly). Jane heard too many arguments between her parents. This taught her to be argumentative. The excessive criticism of her caused her to believe that she was no good. It also made her defensive. She thinks that she was the cause of the parental arguments because she was no good. Jane dislikes the world (so do I as it happens, but I love the natural world i.e. nature). This is not surprising as it has been hard for h...

The most important question that we can ask in respect of alcoholism is, "what causes it?". If we know the answer to this question, we can cure it, stop it call it what you like. Certain people have a propensity to alcoholism. This means that under the same conditions a person more susceptible to alcoholism will succumb to it more often than one who is not susceptible. This doesn't tell us about the underlying cause. Humans are self-conscious animals. We can evaluate ourselves. We can assess ourselves. I understand that our cousins the apes can do the same thing. Humans think that the other animals on this planet are not self-conscious. When we evaluate ourselves we conclude that we don't like ourselves. We also conclude that we don't like the societies on this planet that we have created. As a result we subconsciously want to destroy the planet. This is manifest in the mindless violence of the young who express themselves and the mindless destruction of the peopl...

Jaundice is the only clear outward symptom of long term alcoholism that I know of, other than looking and behaving drunk. Jaundice causes the skin the go yellow. I can clearly remember a moment when I was working (I won't tell you what area it was, but it was providing advice to people). A mother and daughter came to see me. The daughter's problems where to some extent caused or exacerbated by the mother's controlling influence. The daughter was noticeably yellow. It is quite surprising to see someone so noticeably yellow. She was a long term daily alcoholic and is possibly dead by now. Jane my partner has been yellow too. The skin and the eyes go yellow. It doesn't happen that often for her, though. I can only think of one or two occasions in 9 years. This is because she is a binge drinker and a binge drinker gives the liver time to recover from the effects of processing an extreme quantity of alcohol. Jaundice starts at the face and works down the body. Jaundice is ...

One encouragement to become an alcoholic is the price of spirits and alcohol generally. Spirits are arguably too cheap. If the price of a bottle of Vodka for example was increased through increased taxation to about £30 it would be prohibitive to many. This would discourage drinking. Of course the root cause of the drinking would remain. This would produce stresses for the alcoholic. But to start to control drinking is stressful anyway. Booze is relatively cheap in Britain. Especially bottles of Vodka. The same arguments about the ease of access of alcohol extends to the opening hours of the pubs and bars in the UK. The hours have been extended and there have been calls to go back to the previous hours as there appears to be an increase in alcohol related violence and disorder. A certain amount of self discipline is required to control drinking and obstacles to drinking make it easier for self discipline to take effect. Photograph copyright plattfisch under creative commons

Definition of Alcoholic fuzzier? Rubbish. The person putting forward the view that the definition of an alcoholic is now difficult to specify is wrong. This person talks about the wide spectrum of drinkers and how their drinking affects their lives. Some people drink relatively little with a consequential large effect on their lives and visa-versa. This is correct but it has no bearing on how one ascertains whether a person is alcoholic or not. The only question to ask is whether the alleged alcoholic is unable to control his/her drinking. Is the pull/desire to drink such that she/he has to drink at a certain time or is he able to say "No" and do something else. In short, is he addicted? If, yes he is an alcoholic. That is the definition. It is likely that an alcoholic drinks a lot before he becomes addicted. It is in fact certain as it takes a long time to train the brain to become addicted. I really think that this person who is saying these things is just doing it for a b...

If a person regularly falls asleep just after breakfast she is possibly an alcoholic. This is because she has had more than a stiff drink early in the morning. Although, alcoholism signs for the family are hard to spot in my experience. What is my experience? It's being the partner and now (2008) a "live in partner" of an alcoholic for about 9 years. Update: I am still her partner but no longer living with her in 2024 which is 16 years after this page was first written! The first section of this article is by me based on experience. The second part is by Bing's Co-pilot after researching the internet. At the end of the article are some pointers as to whether the person in question is an alcoholic. When I first met Jane I didn't know that she was an alcoholic. At that moment in time I was an innocent to the world of alcoholism. It took me about 3 months to realize that she was an alcoholic. What lead me to this revelation? When I didn't know she was an alcohol...

Alcoholism stories I have got in abundance. Here's one. Jane was staying at my house, which was a town house, with the living room on the first floor and the main windows on the first floor. This was some years ago and I wasn't living with her at the time. I was working at the time. I had locked the front door when I left for work despite the fact she was in the house and drunk. I did this to try and keep her from getting more drink when the booze ran out. She has a habit of going to the local shops looking like a tramp, completely drunk and wide open to being mugged etc. Anyway I left the key in the kitchen. About lunchtime I got a call from the fire service. They asked some questions to identify me and explained that Jane had called them to say she had been falsely imprisoned and could they release her. They came in force and erected the ladder to the first floor window and carried down from the window. The police where also there. All this in full view of the neighbors etc. ...

A new drug for alcoholism? I'd be the happiest man in the UK if there was. In fact there'd be millions of extremely happy people. But no - there isn't, as far as I know. When I did a Google search for this the listing that was at the top of the page was one date 2004 about a drug called Campral (acamprosate) approved by the FDA. At that time it was the first new drug approved for alcohol abuse in 10 years. Campral has been around in Europe for 18 years or so. It doesn't stop you drinking but helps prevent relapse appparently. Why haven't we been told about this. I have known Jane for a good 9 years or more. This is the first I have heard of it and I should know what is available as Jane my alcoholic partner is seeing consultants, GPs and psychiatrists all the time and they would tell her. That said I'll ask around. But it would be shocking if this was available and no one told Jane the number of times she has been in hospital. I can only assume that it was a f...

Which alcoholism stage are you at? Are you a young person getting "ratted" or whatever term you use ("wasted") every Friday. Sure you're having a good time. Not a thought about the potential for addiction. The vast majority of you are right - you'll be fine. But if you have seen relatives, particularly parents and grandparents, succumb to alcoholism you'd better beware as you are gradually, inexorably quite possibly approaching the wire and if you recklessly cross the oh so dreaded wire you'll never get back and your life will be changed for the worse (massively for the worse) and for ever. It is now accepted that there is a substantial element of genetic predisposition towards alcoholism, which means it is likely to run in the family. And if it is not exactly alcoholism that runs in the family it might be depression or some kind of condition such as an obsessive compulsive disorder. A mental state that indicates a predisposition to addiction. The wa...

Of course vitamins don't stop you being or becoming an alcoholic. Rather alcoholism and vitamins go together in a negative way. You don't get enough vitamins when you're an alcoholic and that is why Jane, my partner, has a stack of vitamins that she is taking on a daily basis; before the next 7 day binge :-) When she is not drinking she'll eat OK but too little (in my opinion). When I wasn't living with her she would tend to lose weight and become very thin (below 8 stones for a 5 foot 6 inch tall women). When she goes on a binge she eats very badly indeed, normally eating biscuits, nuts and drinking lots of high carbohydrate drinks as the neat Vodka makes her thirsty as hell (dehydrating her badly). Her main source of food when she is on a binge drink is the calories in the alcohol (empty calories). On some occasions in the past, less so now, she would become skeletal after a binge and it would take months to get the weight back as she eats so little. She takes mul...

At the moment things are going quite well with Jane. She is attending AA every day, goes jogging first thing in the morning, has just started to cook for me and has a job interview tomorrow. Man it doesn't get much better than that. Only, being so hurt as I am and so cynical as I would be having been lied to so much in the past, I can't believe that she isn't drinking a little just to see here through the day. It is almost impossible to spot this as she covers it so well, except on occasions she acts a bit "high" excited etc. which indicates she has had a drink. She is also tired and goes to her room quite a lot. For example, she always goes for a run at about 7:40 and buys the paper on the way back. This allows her to visit the shops to buy a miniature Vodka, which she consumes on the way back from the shops to the flat (so I think could happen). This Vodka makes her drunk pretty fast and takes about 20 mins to have an effect. Likewise when going to AA she seems ...

Alcoholism psychology takes many forms. In this short article I'd like to discuss the psychology of trying to stop being an alcoholic. Since the New Year Jane has not officially drunk. She made a New Years resolution and has on the face of it stuck to it, or has she? Or am I being paranoiac. Is she coming back from Alcoholics Anonymous slightly drunk or is it just her being a little high having returned home from a slightly stressful situation. You know, I just can't be sure. I think she is drinking still though. Together we agreed a range of measures to stop her drinking or at least put some sort of control on it. First was to go to AA every day while she wasn't working. I'd take her there and she could get a bus back or if that was too difficult I'd help again. Although it is a damn fiddle going to AA every day it is better than her being flat drunk for 7 days at a time. Anything is better than that. Also, she agreed to take Antabuse every day. In fact she takes 2...

The idea is that Jane goes to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) every day (new years resolution) and I help her to get there if needed. As I mentioned she doesn't seem that keen despite agreeing with me that the most important thing in her life is to control her drinking. Her alcoholism has ruined her life for the past 25 years or so. It's also messed up mine to an extent but I'm kind of used to it. She has to find work as well (recently redundant). These are the two priorities. The first of which is to deal with her alcoholism. Everything will follow on from that. I just don't sense commitment. She wriggles out of it. She claims she is too busy. She simply is not too busy. And anyway, everything should be dropped to deal with her illness. I'll do the rest if I have too. Because if she is not drinking my life improves a lot so even on a selfish basis it pays to help Jane to stop drinking. Anyway she went to AA at lunchtime on her own. She said she'd be gone about 3 hour...

I took Jane to Alcoholics Anonymous tonight. It was a new years resolution that she made after we had a discussion. I had thought that she wasn't committed enough in her desire to control her drinking. It is also fair to say that I had felt that I had given up helping her. But if I was to make my life better it would pay me to help her. We would both be winners if I stepped in and did my bit. Many years ago I helped a lot but I am now worn down by her alcoholism and felt that it was pretty much a lost cause. You can't give up though. There are a number of AA venues near where we live so it was no difficult getting to a meeting. I am also (once again) supervising her taking Antabuse every morning. We are therefore tackling the problem. These are pretty much the only tools that we have to control the problem.