@sarahsweets, thank you for your input and sharing your perspective. I do try to be mindful and say "tend to" and "may". Actually, I probably have a lot in common with your husband as I "loved" someone who had a problem with alcohol and I did not care to drink and use drugs. I wanted to find someone who "stayed" and helped their partner as their partner learned how to live their life "sober". I could not find such a person and that is because of the high divorce rate due to the emotional strain on the person who loves the alcoholic. The only person I did find that stayed was themselves a recovering alcoholic.

My personal challenge with my husband is that my husband was a binge alcoholic. So with my husband it was not the typical red flags of an individual that was a daily consumer of alcohol. Over the years of meeting different individuals via my husband being active in helping others learn to live sober, I have learned more and there is more to the challenge in that there can also be an underlying personality disorder or other mental health issue. And you are correct about there being a more daily physical dependence that makes it even harder to break away from. For myself, my husband was not yet totally alcohol dependent where he developed the everyday physical need.

Yes, there are alcoholics that prefer wine as wine gets absorbed in the esophogus and the person experiences the affects of the alcohol faster. My father became a wine drinker and used the excuse that drinking red wine is healthy for you. Thing is, a person can't get away with that when they are in an environment where others at a job can smell the alcohol. So the choice becomes Vodka in hopes to avoid revealing the odor that shows there is a problem.