"Living with someone with addiction"

I have lived with someone with alcohol addiction for more than 20 years. When it was just the 2 of us and he was drunk, we thought it was funny - or that this is what young adults all did, especially in the community we live in in North Queensland. 

With the years, the effects of alcoholism starting to affect our daily lives more. We had children and I could see my partner becoming more restless, more confused and I started to see that alcohol was now controlling his life, and ours by default. Financially, money would disappear… behaviour would be different. Depression and mental health slowly creeped in as well. Work days were missed for being « sick » when I knew that it was because he was hungover. All these things creeped in slowly into our lives. Then began the « I will fix this » phase of my life. Looking back, I can see I actively tried to fix everything for at least 5 years. Cleaning after him when he made a drunken mess, finding excuses when he didn’t show up to events for our children… excused his behaviour while in social events where he was drunk. I found help with psychologists, made doctor appointments, printed resources about alcohol… made him take his anti-depressants every day… 

Made phone calls… I tried the hard way where I confronted him about his issues, then tried the soft way, being the understanding wife… 

Our lives spiraled - verbal abuse sometimes happened and I became this person with a lot of anxiety, never knowing where the chaos would come from, what I would find when I got home, etc while maintaining this normal life with my children. 

The last 3 years have been hell. Half of his wage went to alcohol and cigarettes alone. Money was taken from the mortgage, he became sneaky, lying about money, how many drinks he had. Suicidal thoughts started, which meant 2 separate stays of one week each in a mental health unit. This whole time I was by his side, wishing we could come off the rollercoaster. He became more irrational, paranoid, blaming me for his life, blaming everyone for his issues. My husband was in touch with Lives Lived Well for months after his stays in the mental health unit. They were amazing but I feel someone with addiction will say whatever the others want to hear. He started missing his appointments saying the counsellor was away - or on holidays… none of this was accurate. In the middle of last year, everything unraveled. Issues with work and his family completely sent him in a spin. He was disappearing for days, spending hundreds, drinking so much… I reached out to lives lived well for myself. We created boundaries which once voiced - meant that my husband had to live somewhere else. We separated and the local Lives Lived Well branch connected me with a family support counsellor. This has helped so much. With our sessions, I learned about alcoholism - different stages of recovery - how to communicate with someone with addiction - how to place healthy boundaries and stick to them in a respectful way, how to navigate everything and explain certain topics with my children…. How to look after myself… it was amazing to have someone who cared, helping me work through it all. Resources were given - and just having someone that listened helped so much. 

I am so grateful for the two ladies at Lives Lived Well who have helped me in the last few months. I always say that I wished I would have reached out years ago, but I’m still so grateful. I now have tools to work though it all, and I am now making time to look after myself and concentrate on doing the best I can for my children.