Posted: Aug 25, 08 3:44am
At what point is a person considered an alcoholic? Is it right to give ultimatums such as make the choice marriage or alcohol? (I know what her choice would be already)
My wife of 21 years drinks a lot. Most of the activities she is interested in involve drinking. But worse yet, almost every evening (5 of 7 or so)ends in her drinking by herself and playing on line games. On the weekends it sometimes starts early afternoons. From my perspective, once she starts drinking she will continue to drink until she is either out of alcohol, drunk to the point she can't drink anymore or ready to go to bed. She doesn't get falling down drunk often, but she does on occasion. She does not drink before or during work, and typically not during the day on weekdays.
She is starting to make a lot of mistakes on her every day activities, including work. She made too many mistakes at her work to continue to be employed. She was not drinking at or before work. Now that she isn't working the drinking is more frequent.
On the evenings that she doesn't drink she is all but intolerable. To the point that I want to tell her to have a drink so we don't fight. She gets upset with me if I criticize people for drinking. The last incident being what to send to a family that had just unexpectedly lost a loved one. Specifically what drinks to send with the food we sent, I wanted to send pop and water, she thought we should send beer also. That turned into a fight and ended with me being an old prude and her a immature drunk, at least in the eyes of the other.
To offer some more insite into that incident I should add that the family is our neighbor. Over the 4th of July there was a small gathering of neighborhood people. Including the husband from next door and my wife. The evening ended with the drunken husband from next door punched in the face laid out on the floor. His spouse is unhappy whenever he drinks and the black eye he ended up with put his wife over the top. Thus my thought that beer was improper. That is just one incident of many.
So..... at what point is she truly an alcoholic? Are we there? Am I right in tagging her such? It has come to a point where it is going to cause the dissolution of our marriage. Can I convince her she needs help or is that totally on her? Am I wrong in walking away? Our kids are grown, but our daughter just started college. Our son, 20 years old, is struggling trying to find himself. So far he has found that the party life is more fun that school work. That has caused him to be suspended from college.
When to say when?
