Maybe you don't need to psychoanalyze your ex-wife. Is it really important for you to decide how to label her? You know she has behaved in ways that were bad for everyone around her. That's really all you need to recognize. Doctors no longer use the term "alcoholic" because there is no consensus on what the criteria should be for defining that term. Technically, the new term is "alcohol use disorder." You really don't need to employ that term either. Leave diagnosing to diagnosticians. It suffices, for your purposes, to know that your ex has patterns of behavior that made the marriage unsustainable. You don't need a psychiatrist to validate your decision to leave this marriage. Divorce is not a medical decision.

Further above you posted about wanting your wife to be given psychiatric testing to establish what's wrong with her and to possibly diagnose her with a personality disorder. No judge is going to decide child custody issues based on some psychiatrist saying your wife does or doesn't have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Just as no doctor anywhere has the authority to declare anyone as being "mentally incompetent." Only a judge has that authority. Making that determination is considered outside the scope of practicing medicine. It seems to be getting popular to try and reduce all human difficulties to this or that medical diagnosis. A lot of what psychiatrists do is very, very subjective. A psychiatrist's opinion is merely an opinion. It might not carry as much weight in court as you seem to imagine it would.

Your therapist says that your wife was abusive toward you. You seem to think that your therapist's opinion matters more than your own opinion. Your therapist didn't live with this woman. You did. You are the expert on how your wife behaves. It doesn't qualify you to select a diagnosis for her. It does qualify you to cite examples of her behavior that are relevant to the decisions the court has to make. All this talk about psychiatry seems rather beside the point.

You say it's hard for you to see your ex as an alcoholic. Yet, you have no trouble painting us a portrait of her as quite a byitch. You get into a discussion of "ketones" that shows you obviously do consider her drinking to be totally abnormal. You seem to want to come across as non-critical of her, so that your judgement of her will seem more objective. No one expects you to be objective. You are fully entitled to have a subjective assessment of your wife. After all, you did live with her.

Another thing that will factor in - relevant to custody - is how your kids feel. I don't know their ages, but your kids are obviously not toddlers. A judge will be interested in where they want to live and who they want to live with. A police officer told me that there's really no way the law can force a kid over the age of 16 to live where the kid doesn't want to live.

Figuring out who the kids will live with has relevance to the financial settlement, as the custodial parent will have a right to child support payments, based on how much time the child is going to be with that parent. If your wife can not be trusted to provide responsible parenting, that impacts what she can get in financial support. Perhaps that is where you might want to concentrate your focus. You can provide the judge with concrete examples of times your wife was impaired in supervising her kids because she was inebriated. You want to keep such examples very factual. A diagnosis is not a fact. It is an educated "guess." What really holds sway in court are facts - concrete examples of irresponsible behavior.