That's quite sensitive, Quilt...so, without giving you a complete autobiography, I will clue you in on my relationship with the woman I consider to be my real wife.
We fell in love before I even knew what alcoholism was. I thought we were just having fun. Her problems began in earnest a few years after we met...DUI's, wrecked cars, drunk in public, fired from work, rehabs, ect. I've moved in and moved out probably more than twenty times. I had been away for about ten years, and then last year I tried it again, thinking she was sincere about quitting. After all, I had given up the weed. It lasted three months before it blew up into something intolerable.
I've told this story many times. This is just the lastest episode, and it demonstrates where she is with her "disease". While she was sober, we had a tense but peaceful relationship. She had a binge in early November, which I will describe as such: On the couch with the curtains drawn, half-full cans of Budwieser stacked up on the coffee table, constant source of ignition in the form of a lit cigarette in her hand, and awful reruns of
Law and Order or
Criminal Minds on the TV. This lasted ten days.
I eventually broke down and bought some pot, which she smoked up in about two days, and went into a good sleep. I don't know if pot stopped her bender, but I do think it can help. Anyway, I was able to keep her from going to the 7-11 for more beer, and after a couple more days of puking and convulsing and shitting herself, she got sober for about another month.
It was tense, because I was looking for work. She comes from a good family and has plenty of money, but she's not very generous. I suffered that month with a bad tooth she constantly made fun of, instead of assisting me in having it removed.
Her niece was getting married the week before Christmas, and she traveled to another state for the ceremony. At the reception, they had a keg of beer, and she just had to have one. This actually made some of her family members cry real tears. Anyway, I spoke with her over the phone, and I knew that I was in for it when she got back...and I was right. Upon her return, she immediately jumped my shit for nothing, so I packed my car up and got the fuck out of there again. She wanted me to stay really, but she didn't want me to get in the way of her drinking.
So, I came on back here to my alcoholic sister, who manages to make it to work everyday and only gets out of control nights and weekends. Meanwhile, my drunken ex was calling me every other day with her drunken ex talk. She's spending well over five hundred a month on booze and cigarettes, but she couldn't spare a hundred to help me get my tooth pulled...to help the man she "loves" to end some suffering. ( I wound up spending my escape money to have it pulled, later borrowing some to get back home with. She complained that I ate too much after my tooth was pulled. Why? Because she's an asshole drunk!)
Regardless. She kept calling me for weeks...until sometime after Valentine's Day. That's when I knew she had dried out a little, because she quit calling. But think of it, Christmas to Valentine's Day, drunk on the couch. She's got it under control, because it's beer and not vodka.
A couple of weeks later, she calls again, and she's drunk again. Well, I've had it, and I've had it many times before. I told her she was a sociopath, and explained to her what that was. She agreed, hung up, and I haven't heard from her since. I hope she's sobered up, and I suspect she has, for now.
But, you ask...how bad can it be if I just leave? She manages fine without me, but someone, usually her sister and sometimes her daughter, must check on her every day she drinks, to make sure she hasn't spontaneously combusted or choked on her own puke. How bad could it be? Well, without her money she would be on the street whoring or rummaging. It's as simple as that. Many homeless people are drunkards that people have given up on...and I'm sorry, but at one time I was very much in love with this woman, and I still love her, even though through the years she has treated me like crap. I wouldn't want to see her pushing a shopping cart full of the odds and ends of her life down a broken sidewalk...but that could very well be how she ends up.
...and the beer barons? Heros.
Right now, at this very moment, my sister is fetching another vodka drink. The clink of the ice gives me flinches. Very soon now she will be out in the back yard yelling at her husband again, like she does every time he visits. He's drunker than she is, they're both near Sixty, and they act like stupid children. She was fine just a couple of hours ago. Now she's shit.
Of course, I'd be shit right now if it wasn't for her, so I have to treat her like Elvis Presley, and let her do what she wants, and keep my mouth shut about it. The one time I did say something, because she was phony-drunk crying over some biscuts and gravy, she let me have it with both barrels. Well, I'm having some hard times, but I don't see myself as a loser, I only see drunk-asses trying to make themselves look better by pointing out the flaws and circumstances of others.
It is rather cathartic to write these things out, but I doubt that anyone has any advice that I haven't already heard. We have to live with these things...even if booze wasn't legal they would still find some, even if they had to make their own. But the bottom line is pretty simple...I don't have to take any shit from them, I only do because I know they are poisoned and can't help themselves. I mean, they can once they are sober, but while they are drunk there's no stopping their obnoxious misbehavior. Bitching is about all you can do, and all that does usually is escalate into a horrible argument.
But, I'm telling ya, in the interest of fairness, if we are going to let people be drunkards, we should also let them be potheads, tweakers, and junkies. There really isn't that much difference when it comes to addiction...it's all bad...but some are worse than others, and some are more of a danger to society at large than others. It's time we came to our senses on this issue, and stopped spending billions on a useless "war".
Prohibition does not work.
http://blog.norml.org/2010/05/13/associ ... its-goals/
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