lingering emotional tendencies after longterm sobriety

Question
My wife and I have been married a little over a year.  She professes over 20 years as "clean and sober".  She is very outspoken about her drinking years, as well as the 10 years or so she spent mentoring other women through AA. While she appears to have overcome the debilitating dependence which nearly ruined her life years ago,I have observed she is still in denial about her ongoing attraction to alcohol.  Once every month or two, she still really enjoys allowing herself an occasional drink, but usually wants a second or third. When I try to discuss my concerns, she invariably denies or understates how many drinks she had. There have been a couple of occasions where she went to visit a girlfriend because she just needs to talk with a woman.  When she comes home, it is obvious she has had more to drink than she will acknowledge.  But even more than my concern for her desire for alcohol is my concern over behavior long term patterns that may linger long after the dependency on  alcohol has come under control.  I read where other husbands of alcoholics talk about wives inability to discuss any areas they need to work on, "always turns the conversation around and blames everyone else for her problems", etc. As any recently married couple, we need to work on our marriage and both be willing to hear one another.  Whether discussions start out as her wanting me to listen to what she has to say or me wanting her to hear me, it invariably ends with her emotional outbursts where she accuses me rather than acknowledging there is any area she needs to work on.  Can you address what might be typical long term residual personality traits after the actual addiction to alcohol is no longer the primary issue, and what I can do to be helpful, loving, and supportive without enabling?


Answer
Hi John,



Thanks for being so detailed and thorough in your question.  



As you mention, your wife has been through AA and therefore understands the principles of that support program.  She must know that AA does not utilize or recognize a harm reduction approach, acknowledging universally that those who are formerly alcohol dependent cannot be casual users.  It's exceedingly unlikely she would distort the meaning of that program in sponsoring other recovering women.  In other words, if they were to do as you say she is, she would quickly censor their actions and exhort them to refrain from casual drinking.



AA is full of stories of people who "once again" attempted controlled drinking, only to fail at it and fall back to heavy use, with catastrophic consequences.  



For some reason, your wife's relationship with alcohol is powerful enough still - that is, alcohol remains an asset to her despite her "recovery" - to overcome any self-evaluation of the risk involved.  



Your wife may be on a path to a major relapse.  I wonder what has led her to believe she can be a controlled drinker.  If this had ultimately evolved as a possibility for the thousands of clients with whom I've worked, I would not be able to argue against occasional use as an option for those who still wished to maintain a relationship with alcohol.  It's not me, or you, or a treatment counselor simply wanting to convince people this is just the way it is for the heck of it.  It is what experience teaches us based on the hundreds of thousands of people who came before your wife and tested the controlled drinking experiment.  Failure is the status quo for the controlled drinker in recovery from chronic alcoholism.



Twenty years of clean and sober should generally bring about a full recovery, which I define as a total re-engagement in life with all it has to offer: all its frustrations, joys, losses, stresses, disappointments, and small victories.  If your wife has some mental health concerns at this point (certainly any that would generate self-medication tendencies with alcohol) these should be acknowledged and addressed. She seems to be defending her use of alcohol strongly with a "non-problematic casual use" rationale.  I wonder why she wants to engage is this degree of risk.



Marital counseling may be a way to shed light on this issue.  Bring your knowledge about controlled drinking into the discussion.  Attend meetings with your wife so you can both hear about the "controlled drinking" experiments that led to disaster.



Look, in all fairness, your wife may be the rare recovering person who can be a controlled drinker.  I can't say positively there are not exceptions.  My approach is simply to manage risk, because one must absolutely succeed in this experiment, if one is going to try it.  There's no room for failure, and even highly controlled experiments of all kinds, presided over by experts and scientist of the highest caliber, can never have absolutely predictable outcomes. It's just not worth the risk.



Hope this helps,

Peter