Lost to Alcohol - How It's Destroyed My Family

by Michael Bland
(Monticello, MN USA)

I am sitting here crying about a loss, shaking because I am so isolated, I was arrested several weeks ago for domestic violence, when I was released from jail the judge told me I couldn't go home, couldn't have any contact with my wife and children, not even by third party means.

Yesterday my wife filed for an Order of Protection, this will be for two years, I can't go home for two years, if she decides to stay in the house. I can't talk to my children, nor most other family members who still communicate with them. The torture of alcoholism has plagued my family for over seven years now. Tearing the emotional attachments apart and laying waste to the love we built on for over 22 years. I have a son, 19, he is so indifferent to this whole mess that he won't talk about it, he's also afraid that if he talks to me I might end up back in jail.

My 16 year old daughter has decided to stay with her mother, because her mother tells her that she is all she has left. The OFP filed includes my daughter, she will not talk to me either. Most of my wife's family is against me and I believe would like to see the worst things happen, i.e. my family break up, the dis-allusion of my marriage, you know, typical stuff.

I love my wife dearly, we often talked about our vows and how "for better or worse" was important in understanding that we had to work at keeping it together. Of course alcohol has broken down that vow and opened the flood gates of animosity and disgust. I regret hitting my wife, it was a loss of control provoked by a drunk who didn't understand what she was doing....

That's right I am not the alcoholic, my wife is. In my attempts to help her I have failed her, and now because of the domestic charges I will loose her and my kids. I wasn't strong enough to do an intervention, which I should have done long ago, but those who profess to love her, (her sisters) wouldn't come to her aid, they still to this day enable her to keep drinking. My children enable her to keep drinking.

I have pleaded with the advocates who work diligently to destroy my family in the name of stopping abuse, to put her into treatment, all they do is help her to get away, they don't do any assessment of her condition other than her physical condition, not her mental state.

Honestly it is my wife who has been abusive, verbally, emotionally and sometimes physically with I and my children. Day after Day she would fall into a drunken rant and target whoever was near. That is why I was arrested, I wasn't strong enough to walk away from her, and in the hurt and pain of her verbal attacks I broke down and lost control. She wasn't hurt in the incident because I called the police, knowing that they would protect her from me. And they did.

Now because of my own actions I have set into motion the destruction of my family and our lives together, and the alcoholic walks away unfettered and able to continue her addiction unabated. It is hard for me to see tomorrow in any way other than utter darkness. I am lost.