The Diary of a Victim of an Alcoholic

I wonder if there is such a thing as fit alcoholics? Sounds absurd and it is all relative. But one thing for sure is that Jane is running in a charity race tomorrow and it is a 5 kilometer race. Jane has been training for it and I (the world's master trainer :-) have been supervising nutrition and training! Jane can certainly run much further than me. She can do the 5 k distance in about 35 minutes. Now that is pretty damn good for an alcoholic!! I actually think that the purpose and target that training for a race such as this imposes on the person is good for an alcoholic. It injects a distraction and a focus. These are very important as in my experience alcoholics (and non-alcoholics of course) can tend to drift a bit and think negatively. A more positive outlook and a goal helps to clear the mind and drive out the demons. It also helps to delay or at least put a temporary break on alcoholic binges. This is particularly the case if the race is a charity event with people sponsor...

Emptiness born out of continual disappointment - photo by Tch0la =) Alcoholics disappoint all the time. It happens over and over again. As a victim of an alcoholic you think that you can start living even a little bit normally. Just a little bit of normality is all you ask. It is all you crave. And when you think that you are getting there, bang, she screws up again. Jane hardly ever keeps her word. She will promise and never deliver. These are the ways of alcoholics. Or at least the one I am living with. But I think it is pretty normal across the board. Alcoholics disappoint in part because they are constantly being driven by the first priority in their life: where and when to get the next drink. This rules their lives. They probably hate it but I reckon most don't even have an opinion on it. Their mind is full of the desire for that first rush after the neat vodka hits the brain. And then they can't resist the urge to repeat it. Jane does this until she falls asleep. Jane pr...

Photo by nicdalic How to help an alcoholic? It is almost impossible. Or at least it seems like it. They all say that in the end it is down to the alcoholic to decide to stop and that is correct, obviously. But, and here is the good bit, there are things that can be done that lead the alcoholic down a route during which he or she develops an awareness of the alcoholism, develops a strengthened mind to combat it and shifts away from alcoholic habits. Because a lot of alcoholism is down to routine and habits. Unless the alcoholic is drinking all the time (continuously), the brain starts thinking about alcohol at a certain time because in the past on countless previous occasions the person drank alcohol at that time after, before or during a certain type of event. To change drinking habits is as long a process as becoming an alcoholic. It may take years and probably will. Over the years before becoming an alcoholic a person would have drunk alcohol in small doses and gradually wanted and t...

Try a Kiwi Colada instead - photo by MadMan the Mighty I wish my partner had liked non alcoholic Pina Colada! (to be proper....it should be spelled Piña Colada - the lady in the second video down pronounces the word correctly by the way). Or I wish she liked non alcohol vodka! Actually, she does very occasionally like to drink non alcoholic beer. But that is not really her style. The Pina Colada was made famous (for me) by Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses (a UK comedy TV series that finished many years ago but which is still extremely popular). It was one of Del Boy's favorites, all dressed up in a cocktail glass. The recipe for the pina colada is: 1 measure white/golden rum 2 measures pineapple juice 2 measures coconut cream Garnish: A slice of pineapple and/or a maraschino cherry or a slice of orange Here is Del Boy - no reason except it is hilarious: Here is the recipe for Pina Colada in a video: The recipe might be a bit different to the one above in words! Non alcoholic Pina C...

Photo by THEfunkyman What about the good old alcoholic DTs? Jane has certainly suffered those but I have not seen her have all the symptoms of the DTs (delirium tremens). Alcoholic DTs (they can occur for other reasons than through consumption of alcohol) occur when the person stops after a long bout of drinking. In Jane's case this would happen after a particularly heavy binge. And by that I would mean drinking over a bottle of neat vodka a day (sometimes up to 2 bottles per day) for a period of about 7-10 days. She is asleep nearly all the time and wakes up to eat something and drink more vodka. When she stops because she is bored (!) she asks me for some booze (has she stopped?) to ease her off the binge. Coming down from a binge can be very heavy indeed and in the past (much less now) she might spend a full month recovering from a single binge. After stopping for about 12 hours she would sometimes cry out in her sleep; obviously having a terrible nightmare. I would wake her. Ot...

by Daveybot I am not married to an alcoholic but I live with a person who is an alcoholic - no difference really. The life is completely different to what one might call "normal". I have forgotten what normal is. I have lost touch with what a normal life might have been. Jane is a binge alcoholic so the impact on one's life is different to living with a full-time alcoholic. I should say that I moved in with her knowing full well that she was a binge alcoholic. I had known her for about 10 years or more before moving in. I knew it would be a form of hell and for the first 2 year it was, But at the moment, although the she gets drunk, the long very damaging binges that took place regularly some years ago are now less severe - touch wood. However, one of the worst aspect of living with a binge alcoholic is not knowing when the next binge will happen. It is all so unpredictable. Although there is a certain kind of pattern, the exact type of binge and its duration cannot be a...

photo by brain_blogger (new window). Jane does not suffer from the classic alcoholic blackout these days or has not had a blackout for about two years. A blackout is when the person cannot remember events during the time he or she was drunk (en bloc blackout - sometimes pieces of information can be recalled). Jane does, though, suffer from general memory loss or it seems to me that her memory is not good and certainly a lot less good than before. As it is a gradual change it goes unrecognised for a long time until one day it dawns on you that your memory sucks (to use an American term). By then it is usually far too late to do anything about it. Apparently there were times in the past when she had an alcoholic blackout but on rare occasions. These days she always binge drinks in bed so no harm can come of her except falling over when going to the toilet or out buying more drink (considerable harm can happen when falling over of course). What I mean is that she doesn't go out to dr...

A sign about alcohol not signs of an alcoholic -- nice photo by Mr. T in DC People ask what are the signs of a person who is an alcoholic? I am simply going to refer to my experiences with Jane, my alcoholic partner, in answering this question and not look for general answers on the internet. As background information I was meeting up with Jane for about 10 years before living with her for about 2 and a half years. I still live with her. The first day we went out together Jane was drunk but I didn't realise it. She picked me up at a London railway station and she drove the car back to her flat (apartment). She was well over the drink drive limit and was a severe danger to me and herself and I had no idea at the time! Only about 6 months later (I forget exactly when) did I realise that she was drunk on that first date and that she risked my life! In fact, she got lost getting home, a journey of about 3 miles across London so I guided her, which I felt was strange (strange behaviour ...

Phymatous rosacea Alcoholic nose is a red nose and a bulbous nose that we think is associated with consuming excessive amounts of alcohol. The most famous person with such a nose was W.C. Fields. However, it seems that there are three possible processes at work and an alcoholic nose is, in fact, not simply a nose disfigured and reddened by alcohol. Reddening Alcohol causes the blood vessels to dilate (get bigger). This applies to the small capillary blood vessels near the surface of the skin. When dilated the person looks flushed and red. It may be localised. This is an underlying state. Petechiae There may be petechiae on the face. These are red spots on the body including the face that are caused by a minor bleed of a capillary vessel. This may, it seems, be caused by reduced liver function due to a liver damaged by alcoholism. The liver produces clotting factors which help control bleeding. If this function is reduced, minor, harmless, bleeding of capillary vessels may t...

Liver biopsy - Author of work Nephron - published under license. Jane is a long term binge drinker and has no symptoms of alcoholic liver disease. It is thought that binge drinking allows the liver time to recover, while long term chronic drinking of alcohol (near continuous) is the type of alcoholism that causes liver disease. The symptoms of alcoholic liver disease depends on the severity of the disease. There are three types of liver conditions caused by drinking too much alcohol: fatty liver (fat build up in the liver cells) hepatitis (inflammation of the liver) cirrhosis (liver tissue replaced by fibrous - scar - tissue) These conditions can occur at the same time. Fatty liver Alcohol consumption is a common cause of fatty liver. Fat build up occurs within liver cells in a lot of people who regularly drink heavily. It is also known as fatty liver disease (FLD), steatorrhoeic hepatosis, or steatosis hepatitis. The treatment of fatty liver depends on what is causing it, and genera...

The choice? Is there a choice? -- to accept the craving for alcohol or controlling alcohol cravings. Photo by i_yudai (new window). There are some methods for controlling alcohol cravings. If they can be controlled, in theory, the alcoholic is no longer an alcoholic but a recovering alcoholic and eventually, at least potentially, will no longer be an alcoholic. I believe that every time the alcoholic beats a craving for alcohol he or she is retraining the brain to stop demanding it. It is the conscious controlling the subconscious. The retraining is a long process, of course. This is because the initial training (the slow process of becoming an alcoholic before " crossing the wire ") was also slow and to unlearn that takes a similar amount of time. I list some thoughts below on controlling alcoholic cravings. Ultimately, however, all these methods depend on the will and commitment of the alcoholic to exercise them at the right time. Awareness and discipline This confirms wha...

It is an up and down life - photo by prisonerjohn I guess we know that alcoholism is destructive but it came home to me today. Jane has been doing pretty well really. She still drinks but in a slightly more controlled way. Rather than binges every 2-3 weeks that last about a week to ten days with 3 weeks to recover including hospitalisation she was drinking secretly on the way back from work sometimes, getting home tipsy and going to bed very early and a bit drunk - not bad!. She was able to work like this. Some days she abstained. It is about as good as it can get. The stability was good for the household. There was predictability and a degree of reliability too. These are important factors in a relationship. They help to build the relationship and keep it on track. It was about half way to normal. But as always she screws up and has been on a binge for 3-4 days. Her job is on the line and it unravels all the constructive work in solidifying the relationship. Alcoholism is destructive...

by jef safi Is it that alcoholism affects mental health or mental health creates alcoholism or both? It is both possibly but I don't think that you have to have mental health issues to be an alcoholic but sometimes alcoholics do have mental health problems. One thing that is pretty well scientifically proven is that consistent heavy drinking affects health generally and also mental health. And at the moment I have real concerns for Jane because she seems to be suffering from memory loss and more... I won't and can't go into detail obviously but it seems that alcoholics binge on and on without seeing health problems for years. OK, their lives are messed up but health can seem, sometimes, to remain intact until one day after it has crept up on them, ill health suddenly becomes apparent. And it is a bit of a shock. I have always thought that ethanol alcohol gradually breaks down the body. Think of George Best the footballer. At the end his body simply gave up. The signs of mem...

Living with Jane as I do, I have come to realize that alcoholics learn to be insincere. This is forced on them, it seems, because of their addiction. An alcoholic wants a drink but has to cover that up from friends or loved ones. That means lying and if you do that for long enough it becomes a way of life and part of the person. I think they lose their bearings; the boundary between lying and telling the truth or a belief that they are telling the truth breaks down. In fact the alcoholic learns to rewrite history as well. To turn things around to defend themselves. And the degree of insincerity can be awesome. The point is that they don’t realise it. Jane uses the health services a lot; too much and sometimes in a bogus way in my opinion. I think she leans on doctors etc. as a kind of mental crutch. Health people look after her or at least that is their purpose. Today we went to see a doctor about her general ill health. I went with her. She agreed to this. The main reason why I we...

It has been a long time since I made a post on this blog. One reason why I haven't is because I have some doubts about it; about its morality. When I started it, it was out of desperation . I had to do it to talk to someone. To express the anger inside. The powerlessness and anguish. Every emotion possible. As I may have said somewhere else on the blog, it is like living through a long slow motion car crash. And your partner is dying in the process. When she drinks it is as if I am waiting for her to die, either by falling over on a hard surface (one of her favorites) or getting hit by a car when she stumbles out to the local shop to buy a couple of bottles of Mr V. But I think on balance that the site is fair and useful. Useful to me and to some visitors. I gives a clue to how the victim of the alcoholic lives, in constant fear of the unexpected, the chaos. Pick the worst possible moment for Jane to drink and she will drink on that occasion. It is almost as if she does it delibera...

It is still calm. I have nothing to say. No blood and guts. No near death scenes. Just fairly normal. It seems my ultimatum did some good but this will not last. We are talking about me moving into the main bedroom as a bolt hole so when the next binge does take place I can keep out of the way and live my life fairly normally while the storm blows over!

Peaceful currently - photo by fabry... Here is a quick update, some more alcoholism chat. For the very few who follow this blog, the reason why I have not made a post for a while is because things have been quiet. This is mainly because after the last binge I kinda gave an ultimatum that unless the binge drinking stopped I would have to leave. Jane took that to heart and has put in an extra effort to stop. Also she has been away on holiday on her own for the past week so it has been lovely and quite for the last 7 days. Did I miss her? Yes, despite the waring and the binging and the living hell when she is drinking, memories are short and the terrible moments one goes through when she is binging are forgotten until the next time, when it all comes very quickly back. Jane returns from holiday tomorrow and it is highly likely that she will be fine for a reasonable time as she will need to work for a while to prove to her employer that she is worth employing. Then, when she feels comforta...

This, too, is an extract from French Wikipedia, translated by Google, on the history of the alcoholics favorite beverage, vodka. We can blame the Russians: It is distilled from the fourteenth century, but a century later, Prince Ivan III (1462-1505) prohibited the production of strong alcoholic beverages. Czar Ivan IV (1533-1584), said Ivan the Terrible built the first tavern in Moscow and establishes the principle of distilleries and places of distribution of state. It had a monopoly on the production and sale of vodka, which has enabled the state to reap substantial profits. During this period, the vodka is a very important role in culture and the Russian economy. In 1894, Emperor Alexander III decreed that the standard of the title alcohol Russian vodka is 40 °. It builds on the work of the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who had previously shown that the best vodka headline to 38 °, but the fees for the time being calculated on the alcohol, is the title of which was 40 ° retained to fac...

Ethanol - this is a Google translation of French Wikipedia on ethanol, just for an experiment. It is totally unabridged except for the word catabolisé , which Google should have translated into catabolized or for Europeans catabolised. I am trying to figure out what that word means! Ethanol (CH3CH2OH), the active ingredient of alcoholic beverages, is almost always produced by fermentation - the carbohydrate metabolic pathway of certain species of yeast in the absence of oxygen. It had been argued that alcohol impurities (congeners) were the cause of hangovers. However, it is more likely to be caused by ethanal, an oxidized intermediate form produced by the liver where alcohol is catabolisé. Alcoholic beverages with greater than 40% of the volume are highly flammable. In chemistry, the term alcohol refers to all organic compounds in which a hydroxyl group (-OH) is bound to a carbon atom, which in turn is connected to other carbon atoms or hydrogen. Other alcohols such as propylene g...

Sadness - neglect - loneliness - alone - lost - cold - true - seeking - sadness. Photo by Justin Gaurav Murgai Sometimes I wonder if Jane's alcoholic behavior is rooted in brain damage. And that sounds almost ridiculous. But, you know, even when she is sober (and there are periods between binges when she is sober) she behaves in ways that indicate to me that "something is missing". And please don't misconstrue this as a criticism or a derogatory remark. I am very sympathetic and tender towards all vulnerable creatures of the world including people who are damaged. When people just don't "get it", they simply don't get the most basic of things and you wonder if they are brain damaged. Then you wonder if they are brain damaged because of the vodka. There are no immediate apparent signs of damage by alcohol (ethanol alcohol) in booze but I think it gradually erodes and destroys the body and mind. Does it gradually erode hearing? Jane either refuses to ...

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 ...