When Is Enough Enough??!!! What To Do About My Husband's Continuious Cycle of Alcoholism ...

by me

Well I have asked for advice many times before and have benefited from great wisdom of others who have been through similar experiences. Well my husband has slipped over the holidays and has gotten a fourth DUI. I knew it was coming but wanted to believe he was getting better.

He had only three months of a limited license left and it has been a hard experience. One I would think he would learn from. He does electrical work and drives a van and seems to be a magnet for the authorities to stop. He has lost license ... and for the past five years on and off been on house arrest and I have had to transport him for his job.

It is hard to do my job and his too, plus he does not like my driving? We go to AA meetings( when he will go) and everything in between. I don't mind but he doesn't get better. He does just enough to get by and this time I don't think he is going to get out of.

I feel he will have to serve time and start over with DUI school, community service, addiction counseling, and no license for five years and on and on. I have three children ... 2 in college one in high school. And he is my 4th child. I love him but can not physically or financially take care of him. I have no insurance and he needs to go to a rehabilitation center.

He says he is willing but he knows we do not have the funds. I think he has been using me for the past 25 years. How do I get out of this cycle!!!!!

Answer

How do you get out of the cycle of your husband's alcoholism? Unfortunately you don't - because only he has the power to end the cycle of his addiction by taking the appropriate action to get help and find a program that will help keep him sober.

The insanity of your husband's addiction is that he continues to drink despite all the negative and potentially dangerous consequences that especially driving under the influence entails. So until your husband manages to break the cycle of his addiction, realistically he's just going to keep on repeating his current pattern and you will continue being unhappy.

What the trigger is for your husband to decide he's ready to change and commit to achieving lasting sobriety, no one can say. In some way, maybe things haven't gotten bad enough for him yet to take his recovery seriously.

So having been living with an alcoholic for so long, you no doubt now realise there isn't a lot you can do to control your husband's drinking. Alcoholism is his illness and he has to want to change if he's going to turn his life around.

That only leaves you with having to answer what you can do, while realising your happiness is entirely your responsibility. Do you think you can find happiness while staying with your husband (irrespective of what he does) - or will you need to re-evaluate your marriage and start afresh to break the cycle you find yourself in and give yourself a chance at living the life you desire?

I know many people who have said that starting afresh and ending their destructive relationships was the best thing they ever did. Others have stuck it out and are glad they did. So you need to be honest with yourself about what you want and how most realistically you'll achieve that. In doing so, hopefully the answers you're looking for will come to you.

Best Wishes and God Bless

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