The ELEPHANT in the relationship

Alcohol is a problem for many it destroys relationships and over does mindsets. I mean that when someone is depressed alcohol is exacerbates that. This goes for all emotions. I used to drink myself. I do not drink anymore i think its important to address the issues as to why the person drinks. The reasons behind it are worse than the habit itself.

Alcohol doesn't solve problems, it's an escape for people who struggle to problem solve and control their emotions and experience social anxieties. It tends to cause the frontal executive part of the brain to slowly become disabled making it harder and harder to control one's normal capacity to think before they say or act.

Alcohol is the second most common addiction, to pornography. It is easy to overcome because people who drink alcohol tend to do it to try and make themselves feel better and to fill a void.

Hi Prycejosh, I'm pretty certain that tobacco is the most common addiction in the US, per the research studies. Can you explain why you think alcoholism is easy to overcome? No one I know who is a recovering alcoholic would describe it as easy.

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Originally Posted by Prycejosh1987 Alcohol is the second most common addiction, to pornography. It is easy to overcome because people who drink alcohol tend to do it to try and make themselves feel better and to fill a void.

I am an alcoholic in recovery and I assume you it’s not easy to overcome. I’d love to know where you’re coming from.

I am actually glad this thread has resurfaced. A part of my own ptsd challenge is dealing with someone who had this disease of alcoholism.

The one thing individuals who have this challenge get good at is DENIAL. However, they also tend to BLAME OTHERS when things in their life get too challenging for them be it at a job or in a relationship. They may CLAIM to have empathy for others, but truth is THEY DO NOT, instead they tend to be extremely wound up in their OWN emotional challenges. And as they NEVER learned how to deal with their emotions, they turn to ALCOHOL as their method of COPING.

RED FLAG******RED FLAG******RED FLAG******* "I CANT REMEMBER, I WAS BLACKED OUT!!!!*****RED FLAG that means "I AM AN ALCOHOLIC AND CAN'T STOP". Blacking out is a huge RED FLAG that someone is an ALCOHOLIC.

15 Threatening Signs of Alcoholism - Page 16 of 16

The above link requires patience to read because of the pop ups. However, it does a good job at explaining this disease of alcoholism. Sorry I copied and pasted at page 16 out of 16. However, you can read it by scrolling to the next and instead of clicking on the next, click on the arrows meaning back or previous.

Truth is it is the true culprit behind MOST relationship failures, including making the WRONG choices in who to engage in a relationship with. And the MOOD CHANGES are due to NEEDING THE ALCOHOL to at least feel somewhat stable. There is no such thing as a FUNCTIONING ALCOHOLIC either and the longer someone engages the less they can function and the worse their BLAMING OTHERS gets. The TRUTH is seen in how the alcohol literally CHANGES THE BRAIN.

Actually an alcoholic doesn't think a partner who may be drug dependent is a deal breaker or a problem. HOWEVER, what that really means is if a partner is dependent then THEY CAN BE TOO.

An alcoholic learns how to take steps to AVOID being detected. They often choose VODKA as they believe that VODKA is not detectible on their breath.

There is NO TRUE RELATIONSHIP when it comes to this disease, that's because the TRUE RELATIONSHIP IS WITH THE ALCOHOL with the alcoholic. It is also not uncommon for an alcoholic to choose a partner who is also an alcoholic. And FRIENDS are not real friends, but instead others who drink and party which gives the alcoholic a form of company.

The disease of alcoholism is most definitely not an easy thing to overcome.

Often a person has to hit rock bottom, no job, no partner, and being alone WITH THEIR BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL if they can even have enough to get that bottle for them to finally admit that this disease has destroyed their life and they need help.

RED FLAG!!!! An ACTIVE alcoholic will NOT want to read this thread because they do NOT want to know, instead they prefer DENIAL.

I don’t love my (alcoholic) dad, haven’t for a long time but I do struggle with my lack of desire to even try and be friends with him; I know that probably doesn’t help him but honestly, in some ways I think it’s a form of emotional self defence on my part.
Unfortunately I feel I’ve taken on the judgmental attitude and resentment some of the rest of my family have, as I grew up with him being an alcoholic in denial (a virtual echo chamber, now I think about it. I literally never heard anyone refer to it as an illness while I was growing up). I do realise it’s more complicated now I’m older, so my attitude has softened a bit, but it’s still difficult to fully accept that it’s an illness, especially when he says things like “I just enjoy it too much to stop”.

I am sorry (((Roxanne))) and I understand what you mean by distancing because of your need to emotionally protect yourself.

When I started this thread, I wanted to find a way to respect this problem as a disease and that it is very hard for someone to climb away from and commit to living their lives sober. Yet, at the same time to also respect how loving someone or having a parent, spouse or friend with this disease affects the person living with them too. One thing I know is that I simply cannot engage with or be friends with an active alcoholic. I have truely suffered too much emotional abuse by an active alcoholic. However, when someone is finally admitting they have a problem and is committed to learning how to live their life sober and begins to actually realize how THEIR disease has hurt others, I am very supportive to that healing process.

An individual that has been in recovery and has gotten to the level where they are willing to admit the things they did that hurt others will not have a problem with reading my thread here, at least that was my hope. In fact for someone who is in recovery and helps others to also recover will agree with much that I have shared. Actually perhaps even more so because if they are trying to help someone embrace living a sober life, they do know first hand that this is no easy task. Not only that but they also learn that at times the individual they try to help ends up going back into engaging the disease, so they see the other side of the equation where caring for someone with this disease can be painful.

When someone is an active alcoholic there most definitely is a lot of cognitive DISTORTIONS involved. Along with this are the shifting moods and tendency to act on IMPULSE. And blackouts CAN BE SCARY, especially when the Hyde part comes out.

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Originally Posted by Open Eyes The one thing individuals who have this challenge get good at is DENIAL. However, they also tend to BLAME OTHERS when things in their life get too challenging for them be it at a job or in a relationship. They may CLAIM to have empathy for others, but truth is THEY DO NOT, instead they tend to be extremely wound up in their OWN emotional challenges. And as they NEVER learned how to deal with their emotions, they turn to ALCOHOL as their method of COPING.

I disagree with some of this. I have always had empathy and never denied my alcoholism or the hurt I caused. If anything I was harder on myself. It was the physical addiction that was hard to break as I was already in therapy the whole time I was drinking.

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An alcoholic learns how to take steps to AVOID being detected. They often choose VODKA as they believe that VODKA is not detectible on their breath.

Nope. I was a merlot girl- three bottles a day. I oozed alcohol and knew it.

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There is NO TRUE RELATIONSHIP when it comes to this disease, that's because the TRUE RELATIONSHIP IS WITH THE ALCOHOL with the alcoholic. It is also not uncommon for an alcoholic to choose a partner who is also an alcoholic. And FRIENDS are not real friends, but instead others who drink and party which gives the alcoholic a form of company.

Again this may be your experience but it isnt mine and from my meetings its not the majority. I have a wonderful husband of 25 years who never drank or did drugs. All of my friends are "normal" and sober. Even when I was drinking was one of the only ones. My relationship with my husband is very true- in fact literal love at first site and I wasnt always an alcoholic.

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Often a person has to hit rock bottom, no job, no partner, and being alone WITH THEIR BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL if they can even have enough to get that bottle for them to finally admit that this disease has destroyed their life and they need help.

My rock bottom was weeping at 4 in the morning and I had full support of my entire family.

Sure denial is a big part of addiction but it is with just about anything uncomfortable within ourselves. Denial over being too fat, too thin, too dumb, too ugly, a million things. Some of us accepted it completely and so desired a change but were physical slaves to it.

@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.

My father was an alcoholic. We never called it that and I don't know why. Just hearing the can pop open would make me so angry and I had to get away from him. Maybe my parents didn't refer to it as alcoholism bc of denial. He was also and still is very self involved and emotionally unavailable and emotionally unintelligent. Our relationship is very complex and the way I feel about my dad is very complex. I don't usually tell him I love him, and while I do care about him, I don't know if I love him. I definitely didn't in the past. He has stopped drinking (at least, in front of us), and is more manageable to be around.

I think a lot depends on the generation @WovenGalaxy. The consumption of alcohol was more acceptible in my parent's generation for example. It's really understandable that you have these complex feelings you describe about your father.

Actually, what I learned about is how statistically the marriage ends in divorce after a period of a spouses sobriety. This is due to how the nondrinking spouse does CARE about the alcoholic spouse and once they feel their spouse is gaining they finally feel confident enough to walk away.

What you have shared is common in that "often" the parent who is alcoholic is not emotionally available to their child/spouse. This disease itself is consuming and the alcoholic tends to be very self absorbed.

That being said it's very complex in that often there is an underlying personality disorder as well. Or, some other mental health issue where at first the alcohol is used an escape or self medicating coping method.

I know that for myself, I had to learn that my husband's emotional maturity level was around the age of 13 when he began using alcohol. I was told he would push my buttons to mother him and that I would have to resist these buttons.

What is hard for the child of the alcoholic is that without knowing it they become codependents where they often parent the parent who is alcohol dependent. They are also encouraged to be enablers not even knowing what that means.

When I began this thread, I wanted to do so with respect for this disease as I mentioned. Yet, in my own life I have suffered due to someone in my life that had a problem with alcohol. Because of that there are times where some personal anger comes out not so much for the person, but for how this disease affects that person and how their disease and behaviors affected me personally.

With that, I am not trying to come off as a professional or know it all. Instead I have had to learn to understand this problem and I even reached out for help with therapy too. @sarahsweets, I appreciate your perspective too because you have had the challenge personally so you offer a different perspective.

It's complex because people with different challenges can develop alcohol use disorder. A person can have an underlying social anxiety challenge, or have bipolar and begins using alcohol only to become addicted. A person can have a personality disorder and use alcohol to cope and develops a dependency problem. There are narcissists that develop alcohol dependency. So it's not a all X's are because it's actually more complex and the only thing that is common is the progression of the disease and the damage it causes to someone physically and psychologically. These changes can be very hard on the person who is the child or the spouse or family member.

@sarahsweets the weeping is because alcohol is a depressant and reduces serotonin in the brain. You were trying to chase the dopamine and all the while slowly reducing your serotonin levels. Your body was dependent on the alcohol to function, all the while it was making you more and more depressed. And a person also has to consume more and more alcohol to gain the dopamine euphoria they are chasing to feel good.

@RoxanneToto what is important for you to consciously realize about this is that you don't have to love your father. We tend to think we have to love a parent and if we don't it's our fault somehow, but that's not true. A parent has to earn our love, and a parent's behaviors can be bad for us and it's ok to decide to emotionally distance ourselves and set personal boundaries.

This is 100% spot on. I'm dealing with this with a childhood friend. I just had to set a boundary with her this week and the guilt is hard. But I've been reflecting on a lot and suddenly I'm seeing so much more clearly now. Literally ALL the things you stated are true with her. It's really very heartbreaking. Thank you for this post.

Yes, you shared this challenge here in this forum. Yes, this is upsetting to see happen in a friend. And the fact that she always calls you when she has been drinking shows how when she drinks she doesn't really care about the needs of others, instead she is most likely at a stage of inebriation where everything needs to revolve around her. This is why addiction in someone has symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. It IS heartbreaking!!

No one sets out to have this challenge. The person finds out how alcohol not only reduces their inhibitions, but also helps them feel good because alcohol increases dopamine production in the brain. The problem is that the more often someone consumes alcohol to chase this dopamine high, the more alcohol it takes to obtain that high. And also what the person fails to realize is that alcohol damages and reduces the brain's serotonin levels. Lack of serotonin causes depression and irritability. The other thing alcohol does is the more a person consumes the more the alcohol affects the person's frontal lobe where the person makes conscious decisions about what they say and do.

Your friend calls you while intoxicated because your friend has relationship problems that causes her discomfort. The problem with your friend is that she doesn't have the awareness that her addiction is the ROOT of the relationship problem in the first place. Your friend BELIEVES that the alcohol helps her cope, she doesn't RECOGNIZE that the alcohol IS THE PROBLEM.

You are working very hard on your own sobriety. It IS A LOT OF WORK to learn how to live your life SOBER. You want to care about your friend but the truth @hopeless2015, is that you need to focus on YOURSELF. What you need is the support from others that understand and RESPECT this challenge you are dealing with and do not expect you to give something you can't give where you instead need to stay focused on helping yourself. And the problem with your helping this friend when she calls you under the influence is all you are actually doing is ENABLING her. And even becoming a codependent.

Your friend is living her life under the umbrella of addiction and she is COGNITIVELY DISTORTING because of that addiction. You are not able to actually help her and I know that's sad. That is the upsetting aspect of this disease.

@hopeless2015, do not allow yourself to feed into guilt feelings. I know that is a challenge but you cannot help this individual. This individual HAS TO face the fact that she has a problem with alcohol and the only way she can get into a healthier direction in her life is to FACE this challenge and finally choose to do something about it.

The Science Behind People Who Get Angry When They're Drunk

I think this problem is scary. It's very important NOT to fuel this problem when someone is under the influence.

Having thoughts after a conversation I had with my older brother yesterday after he talked about my father and his drinking and getting so drunk he fell in the bathroom and hit his head bad on the toilet. He would go out with my mother, drink and ignore her and she would drink because she felt so hurt. My brother told me this story three times and each time he said "I was so frightened". My brother has anger about the things he saw when my father drank. I don't say he already told me what he witnessed either, I already know he just needs to tell me and I need to comfort him. My father denied he had a problem and never admitted he had a problem, not even after he fell down the stairs so drunk and broke some ribs. He even decided that if he drank wine it was not the same as drinking hard alcohol. Well, a person just gets drunk faster with wine because it's absorbed in the esphogus instead of how hard liquor has to go through the digestive track.

I have seen people that have addiction problems and have relationship problems say "he/she made me drink, smoke pot, and do cocaine" came across that YEARS ago with friends that had partners that had issues. I have seen the fights about the money it costs too. I have seen people blame their drinking addiction on their partner many times. Sorry but, that's JUST AN EXCUSE. I actually live where I live to distance from that and have only come to realize even moving doesn't mean you won't see/experience it.

DO YOU KNOW that alcohol and drug addiction has MANY narcissistic traits to it? Watching two alcoholics/addicts fight is like watching two narcissists fight. I saw that with an old friend of mine where both her and her husband had problems, they are divorced now. She was one that was one angry drunk.

I experience cognitive dissonance when I talk about this disease. I have had TOO MANY people that I have cared about struggle with alcoholism. I have had DRUNKS talk to me and USE me for a shoulder to cry on and then TREAT ME SO BADLY. Oh, my friend, my friend, my friend UNTIL I have a boundary, then it's she is bad, she is bad, she is bad IGNORE her. Alcholism also has LOVE BOMBING in it too. The fake Aww you are SO NICE condescension that is uttered along with the level of high. I know the mood shifts and have seen it so many times in my life. I was a bartender many years ago and how wonderful I am when I serve them that drink. Aww, thank you so much, I appreciate that so much. Then later when it's busy that same person after drinking for a while forgets that and it's "where is my drink!".

The interesting part is when the alcohol is at the level where it acts like a truth serum. I always felt that if I could sit with THAT part and possibly comfort THAT part that's under the curtain showing the part the person keeps hidden, MAYBE, that may help. What reminds me of that is when I read about narcissists and how under that personality disorder is a very troubled child. I never really thought about the science behind how alcohol affects the brain when I waited for this stage to surface.

When I sat with my dad while he drank his wine, that's when he would talk about things he experienced when he was younger. Just before Christmas I opened a box full of pictures from my parents home and I came across some very early pictures of my father. I came across a picture of him when he was maybe a year and a half and he was such a cute little boy. Then I came across a picture of him in his Navy uniform and he was JUST A KID STILL. When I saw that picture of him, I remember our talks as we sat by the fire in the kitchen and he had his wine and shared about the things he saw and experienced in WWII when he served. He sat across from me as an older man, seemingly more experienced than me. Yet, when I saw that picture and recalled the last time I talked to him about that time in his life, I realized he really was just still a boy when he experienced all he shared.

The last time I sat in front of a fire with my dad was at my older sister's house. It was at one of her gatherings and she had a fire going and I noticed him sitting alone and in his own little world thinking, as he did all his life. And I went over and sat with him and asked him some questions because I knew where he was, and he opened up and talked about the War again. And after I listened (this time he was sober) I looked at him and said, "That must have been hard Dad, because at that age you were still really just a boy, still so very, very young yet to witness all that". And for the first time he looked at me AS THAT BOY, that boy that had always needed a presence to comfort that very young teenager who had joined before he even graduated from high school. All his life, inside him was that young boy that experienced things that most can't even imagine. He was sober because he simply got too old to drink. And that one time I got to comfort that very young boy in him and I knew it because when he looked at me, he looked at me as that young teen always trying to find his way past that stage of his life.

There was another time when I went to visit him when my mother was in the hospital. He was alone in his office in the barn and he had been mentally declining and my sister had angrily ordered him to find something and when I saw him he was soaked in sweat as it was like an oven in that office and I talked him out of that dilemma and asked him if he would like to take a break and take a ride to the beach that he loved because it was full of good memories when he was a boy before the war. My sister had already taken his car away so he felt lost and abandoned and dependent without his car. So when I offered to take him for that ride he answered with a quiet lift and sigh of relief and said "ok, that sounds great".

When I took him to this beach and we stood on the boardwalk looking out at the island and this place he experienced so many good things (before the war), he talked about how he wanted half his ashes spread there and half his ashes put on the ship he spent time on where all his shipmates got killed when their compartment was hit by a bomb. He did not go on that tour with his ship mates, and yet that day he let me know how half of him never got over losing all his ship mate friends.

I came across this article where Anthony Hopkins shares his many years of sobriety. He talks about learning to not be afraid, and ironically my father looked a lot like Anthony Hopkins, especially as they both aged. My dad never found sobriety until the last years of his life. And when I think about alcoholism, as I see the suffering it caused my mother, myself, and listening to my older brother who is always angry. I also think about this young teen that struggled all his life with all the things he saw and experienced much too young in that War. And when I went to visit my parent's home where my sister would not leave me alone and was so incredibly intrusive and mean, I walked around and could see stacks and stacks of books about WWII. I tried to find the one book my father asked me to buy him where I sat and listened to the author talk and my father said it was the best written book he ever read and it turned out to be the last book he ever read too. I had it signed by the author too and it was one thing I had asked for but my sister hid it with her creepy way of aluding but denying she said she kept the signed books aside and that was the only signed book my dad had and it had value as the author passed away. I wanted to read this book my father liked so much. And I have my father's war box that my brother asked for, and sadly my sister made it a point to take out anything of value in it proving she did not even care about desecrating something about my father that deserved to stay intact.

This has been a challenging thread for me in that I try to respect the disease and yet at the same time it destroys relationships and leaves some deep hurts and resentments. I do hear that when my brother vents his anger about "dad was an alcoholic selfish man". Yes, there is that aspect that comes with alcoholism, I have most definitely experienced this first hand.

So here is the link I came across that reminded me of my dad and the effort to stop running away by turning to alcohol that reminded me of my dad and this disease this morning and how it has affected my life.

Anthony Hopkins celebrates 45 years of sobriety after nearly 'drinking myself to death'

I have been on the receiving end of this too many times to count. It really hit home with me when I read about how alcoholism has many aspects of narcissitic personality disorder in it.

I have loved people and hated what this disease did to them It definitely has a place within my ptsd. Many here are familiar with my long ongoing challenge with my older sister. One time my husband witnessing how bad she can get, turned to me and said "She acts like an alcoholic, is she still drinking, maybe she is a closet drinker?" And then he said "She may be a dry drunk", all I know is she can sure go into some damn scary rages. I do know that for a while she did drink and get high a lot. I don't see her enough now to know either way.

Came across this article about alcohism and not only how prevelent it is in hollywood but again how it destroyed a relationship.

Ben Affleck On Alcohol Addiction And When He Began 'Drinking Too Much'

Open Eyes, I have been thinking about this more and more as I have someone in my social circle that I keep safe distance from who is a closet alcoholic, and it's really hard to watch the people in our circle enable them. Not much I can do. I draw clear boundaries around it, and I don't enable it, but I get really frustrated watching our friends enable them and then watching my friends get upset when they inevitably hurt them because their addiction is more important that their friendships. I only say closet because we all see and acknowledge the problem but no one will deal with it directly and bluntly. I'm not really close enough with them to say anything, but I don't tiptoe around it when we are in groups together either.

It's hard to watch them essentially abuse their friends. I'll probably not be hanging around them much anymore and that will just be my boundary.

It's wise to keep a distance because when it comes to this disease a person tends to be "there" or present for themselves. I found this particular article in what Affleck shared interesting because he shared how alcoholism is actually very common in Hollywood. Truth is, Hollywood has pretty much always been that way too, and what was common was to take measures to hide this reality and maintain "the image" that the general public would pay to see and think was "special".

Truth is, that even though his wife loved him, it got to be too hard for her to live with because SHE knows first hand what it's like to see him drunk and careless and utterly self absorbed in the disease. Truth is, they don't think of you, especially when they are consuming alcohol or drugs. They don't remember how they chose to say things or do things that hurt you or how they USED you at a time that you were struggling with something important to you.

Notice how Affleck is STILL talking about himself in this article? I, I, I and not yet seeing how his wife suffered? He is still grieving for himself and not for his wife.

Did you ever have someone hurt you and decide it was ok to ask you about this or that while consuming alcohol and not REALLY see YOU but what they needed themselves? How they chose to HURT you and say mean things and NEVER stop to think how their behavior HURT you? How they may talk about appologizing but you KNOW that they will NEVER appologize to you and really see how their behavior was wrong? No, they cannot see where you are but instead ONLY WHERE THEY ARE. That is why this disease has a lot of narcissistic behavior patterns.

Constantly in the "I" still and mourning for "self". It's part of the recovery and something I had to learn to understand. A long time ago I sat and watched a movie with Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan called "When a man loves a woman" and it's still hard for me to watch that movie without crying because of how much I can relate to the husband and what he went through while the wife got sober.

I came across an article that talks about what happens when someone consumes alcohol that many who have a problem do not realize. Also, what a person who is physically alcohol dependent experiences if they stop drinking that's important to know.
A timeline of symptoms to expect during alcohol withdrawal and how to get proper treatment

It's very important to understand that the problem DOES NOT just go away on it's own.