Thanks for all your posts everyone and helping me to not feel so alone. When I posted it part of me was a bit scared that people would say, of course it’s an illness not a choice! So it really helps to know other people struggle with this as well and have different views.
We’re having such a tough time at the moment and it’s a perfect example of not knowing what to think, how to view this or do for the best. He hasn’t engaged at all yet with any support services, and I am practically begging him to get help. He is very depressed and just fixates on how crap life is and how nobody cares so what’s the point of getting help. This is where I struggle – is it purely that he’s unwell which is stopping him seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, or are these just excuses not to engage or get help?
I am trying so hard to understand but then I struggle to understand it because to me, help is literally a phone call away. I know our local alcohol service is extremely supportive and can assess quickly to get people the right help. He just won’t entertain it at all.
Because of Covid, he’s lost his job and can’t find another at the moment and I know he is desperately trying to. Money is very soon going to become a problem. Yet he still goes out for a walk and comes back 4 hours later having been drinking. So is he actually choosing to spend what little money we have left on a few cans, even knowing the position we’re in? Another dilemma for me to try and navigate in terms of him making choices.
I can see that he is going through a truly awful time, he’s scared, he’s depressed, he’s got no hope or confidence, he’s drinking for whatever his reasons are. And I’m here just trying my best to understand, be supportive, be sympathetic, but then sometimes it feels like he doesn’t want support or solutions, it sometimes feels like he wants to stay hopeless. He reacts by either completely ignoring me, or getting defensive and frustrated at me as if I’m just nagging him.
I just don’t know what else I can do, to understand but also what action I can or should take. I could leave him, go off and live my life and let him go and do whatever he wants to do with his, but he is at his lowest point and honestly, I am scared of what he could do if I left, because I do care about him. Yet, if he won’t get any help, how much longer am I able to live my life like this? Not knowing if he’s had a drink today, being on edge waiting to see if he has or not, walking on egg shells not wanting to be nagging, fighting the urge to just scream at him to please just do something and get some help, in this constant ‘illness or choice’ dilemma and not even knowing myself how to feel about it or how to respond. I don’t want to live like this and I don’t want him to. I feel pretty stuck right now.