Alcoholic husband

Question
QUESTION: Clyde,

My husband told me this week that he new that he had a "problem" with alcohol but he was going to do recovery his way. He will not enter a program and he will not go to AA. I told him that in order for me to stay married to him that he had to enter a formal treatment program. He said that if I made him do that he would hate me. He said that he was stepping down his drinking and he needed his family to help him get sober. When he is cutting down on his drinking can he be dellusional? Last night listening to him talk he sounds not grounded in reality, he talks anout God showing him the way through a vision of a door and he had us listen to CD that he is convinced that God has told him that these CD's are the way to his recovery. I am a christian and I defintely believe in God and that he does talk to us and counsel us. The way that my husband talks lately about God is not normal. He keeps telling me that I don't understand that he is on an enlightened path. My children and I are getting treatment and have realized that our situation is not healhty and he is mad about that and calling counselors paid friends and Al-Anon a cult that brainwashes. I pray and listen for God's guidance and believe that I need to take our children and leave. This situation has damaged us enough and I am on the only stable parent right now and I feel that our children our counting on me to make the right decision. Our children do not want us to seperate and I know that this will damage them to and I am angry at my husband because this is not a choice that I should have to make. Marriage should be about love, honor, proctecting and loving each other and I feel guilty like I am not supporting him when I leave. I don't want to support an addiction but I want to be there for him if he enters treatment but not until he does that. From your prepective as a man of God and a recovered alcoholic what do you think is happening and do you think I am going about this the right way?



ANSWER: Pam,

   Thank you for your questions and for the explanation.  This is an interesting one - a man who has found God at the center of his recovery and is listening to someone else (the CD's) and knowing that God has shown him something about his life and his enlightened path!  That is quite remarkable for an alcoholic.



   Here is my take on this - you two are caught and I believe caught in fear - you have found Alanon and counseling (two very good avenues for help and recovery) and he has found this person's CD's (also a very good way to recovery).  You fear he is on the wrong path because of what you know in your recovery - he fears you because he knows what he has found to be changing his life.  That is the crux of your situation.



   Here is my story: I always had a deep abiding faith in God or "something out there."  But I could not find anyone who spoke my language and could understand me.  That went on from an early age (maybe 10 or so) until age 37.  A friend of mine who shared his spiritual life with me gave me a series of tapes (back then CD's weren't that common).  These tapes were an absolute Godsend.  I listened to those tapes hundreds of times on my way to and from work.  So many times, in fact, that I had to make copies and wear those out as well.  He gave these to me about a year before I got sober.  But they piqued my soul and they got through to me that I was not on the path that God wanted me to be on.  I had been praying for years for God to "not let me drink today."  I would follow that request with "you are probably going to tell me I have to quit."  This was my beginning of the grief process.  I had to be willing to give up my best friend - alcohol.  The tapes helped convict me.  



   About a year later, I hit my bottom and called AA.  I have been a part of that fellowship for over 15 years and have not waned in my understanding that God got me sober - I did not do it.



   My wife did not believe in any of the spiritual things that had ever happened in my life and we had been married for some 16 years.  We were on very different paths spiritually.  If the truth be known, she divorced me because I felt called to the ministry.  Two years after she left me, I was given the vision and the clear message from God to go to seminary.  My life has not been the same.  So, yes, I do believe in visions and in God talking to me in perhaps ways most people would not find believable.  Too many to recount in this short answer.



   I thoroughly support AA and recovery programs - do not get me wrong - but it is not the only way God works in people's recovery from addictions.  Not knowing your husband, I could not say if he was delusional or not.  I have a strong hope he is not.  He will have to continue to walk down his own path with or without you and the family.  The Bible says that the road is narrow and few will find it.  Maybe he is on the road and you are not.  But, then again, maybe you are on the road and he is not.



   A long answer to your question but I would suggest that you find some quiet time to do some soul searching and really ask God for the strength the courage and the words to have a serious but intimate talk with your husband about HIS walk down this exciting and enlightening path he has been shown.  It would not be my suggestion to talk about your own path at that time.  Show him this question and answer that we have shared today and let him know other people have found his path valid.



   And of course, he will be the one who will need to be telling you the truth about all this enlightenment and he will need to be the one who quits drinking for good!



   One last tidbit:  One of the tapes the friend gave me would always played garbled and I could not make out the words. One day shortly before I was healed of the obsession to drink, that tape played and I heard the words.  The truth is, I could not tell you what those words on that tape were.  But then I don't have to know - for I am a sober man today sharing my experience, strength and hope with other people who are looking for healing.



   I hope this may have helped and write again if I may be of any further help.



Grace and Peace,

Clyde





---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------



QUESTION: Clyde,

I guess that my anger and fear right now is playing apart in my view of him and his new path. I am not responsible for his recovery and I can't be, to put that weight on me is not fair. He has created such sickness in our family that we live day to day under the weight of his alcohol and its consequences. I know him better than anyone, except God, and I do believe that he is lying and manipulating me because he is still drinking and he is desperate to hold on to the reality that he knows and he wants to keep us under his control. I don't believe a word that he says and that is not my fault it is the atmosphere that he has created in our home and in my heart. I do not trust him with my future or our children, I trust God and Him alone. He talks about a enemy in our family and that Satan is trying to tear us apart, what he doesn't realize is that his own family sees him as the enemy and his addiction has allowed Satan to be welcome in our midst. I had stood in the gap for him and now that gap is closing in on me and our children and I cannot hold it up anymore. I am out of energy and I can no longer physically or mentally take the emotional manipulation, lies and false hope anymore, it is not in me, there is no compassion and understanding left just hurt and anger. I am afraid that I am already gone from this relationship because of the pain the unwillingness of him to recognize that pain and loss. Have you ever been on the receiving end of an Alcoholic relationship? It's a killer like no other, killer of marriages, killer of dreams, killer of love, killer of everything that you hold dear. It is like standing and facing a tidal wave and not being able to move, run or hide, it just hits you and leaves all kinds of destruction in its wake, not looking back or caring what is left there just subsiding and leaving destruction. There is devastation in our family and being the only sober one, I am wrecked and left to deal with what is left. Talking with him is impossible because he does not hear me, he does not get it. We may be on 2 different paths but I truly believe that the path is not the problem it is his inability to totally admit that the has a problem because of ego or pride and denial and his paranoid outlook that all we want him to do is humiliate his-self in public by going to AA. He wants to keep this a secret and telling other people about this and going outside of our family (me and the children) is a betrayal. I need support outside our home from a Christian counselor and a program, from someone that did not cause the problem and can help me objectively see how I need to deal with this and my own recovery through this. He makes excuses and accepts no responsibility, he accuses, hides and shifts responsibility. He is not ready for recovery but I unfortunately need him to be because when you have come to the end then you have come to the end. I am not the reason for his addiction and I will not be blamed, belittled and lied to anymore because it is not in me anymore. I have no self esteem left and almost no dignity, this is what has been taken from me with no regard in doing so, from the man that promised to love, honor and protect me. No one deserves what has been done to me and our children, I see his pain and I feel it, he does not see our pain and it does not move him. I have stepped up in this marriage and stood by him only to remain alone and discounted. I matter because I am a child of God and he matters for the same reason, the difference is I know that I feel that I matter. He expects me to make him feel loved, that is something that no one can do for you, you can offer love but it has to be received in the heart, it has to be nourished, cherished and tended to or it dies. Thanks for your insight, I appreciate the gift that you have for helping others and I am sorry for the loss of your own marriage, I know that it must have been hard for both of you.



God Bless,

Pam


Answer
Pam,

   Thank you for the additional insight into the situation.  I can sympathize with you on the pain and hurt that alcoholism has dealt you and your family.  I equate it to the devil himself.  Too many people are being duped into the lie that alcohol perpetrates on the alcoholic's mind.



   I have not been on the receiving end of an alcoholic relationship but i have been on the receiving end of other dysfunctional family issues.  I remarried but that wife also left me four years later largely because she did not believe in recovery programs or the power for God to work in someone's life.  She is a pastor as well, and that was always a mystery to me as to how God is such a foreign concept to her.  Go figure.  There  were many issues from her early life with which she could not and would not deal.   Recovery with God's help is always the answer in my book.  Don't get me wrong - I am not saying that I was perfect because I was far from it.  But I am human as well.



   But when I learned later that she believes the Christmas story to be a "myth", there is no Virgin Birth, and there is no bodily resurrection, I was convinced (after accepting the sadness and emptiness in that theology) that dealing with the grief of losing a second marriage to someone whom I deeply loved was better than living with those heresies.  I did not divorce and I would not have divorced in either situation as I believe that God placed me in them for a reason.  I may not always know why or what but somehow God redeems even those things we would call tragedies.



    I do not share that with you to tell you what to do, but I know that if you walk close with the God of your understanding, you will know the next right step.  If that is "I'm done" then you're done and the next thing may be to realize it is time to make the move towards separation or divorce.  



    Thanks again for the follow up.



Grace and Peace,

Clyde