My favorite time of day for a cocktail was always morning. I took my inspiration from the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in India, who lived to be 91 or something, who commenced each morning with a healthy glass of single malt. Or Hemingway, who famously lied that he finished drinking every day by 3 pm or so as not to impair the following day's work.

Rational Recovery may be a good book for the guy. It's a tough book: it's a "suck it up and take care of your family and stop embarrassing yourself by drinking" kind of book, wrapped in CBT and some entertaining anti-AA opinion-making. The basic message is: "Here's how and why to stop drinking. If you can't stop drinking, it's your own fault." As aspect of the book is that it is merciless about all this woe is me, I'm in mourning because I'm losing my friend the bottle, "it just happened to me" crap. In this way, the book may be the bad cop to your guy. I agree with Barry, also, that alcoholism didn't just "happen" to him any more than obesity happens to someone who overconsumes junk food. Sure, at some point he lost managerial authority, but so what? That was the time to quit. Now it will be harder.

He's very fortunate to have you, but he needs to own his own cessation.

This is such a tough call. We've all learned that we shouldn't "enable" anybody, whatever that means to the individual, but we should IMO be on the drinker's side.

It's sort of like the comparison to obesity. Alice gains weight and wants to lose it; yay for her. Bob can probably help her more by being supportive than by being judgmental. Even if he walks in on her eating cookies in a closet, does it help anything to berate her or insult her or humiliate her? It's far more supportive to tell her that she doesn't need to do that in the closet. Being supportive and accepting can help with that inner burden of shame and pain.

Bob can't bring the hammer down, not really. Only Alice can bring her own hammer down. If Bob tries to act as a surrogate hammer, it's likely to damage the marriage. Bob can threaten to leave, but he should only do that if he'd truly rather be divorced than be married to a fat woman. The world may call him on it.

As to whether or not addiction happened to us or we did it to ourselves . . . yeah, we kinda did it to ourselves. There's evidence for genetic predisposition, but not for predestination. Even so, I can't judge my teenaged self too harshly. She had no idea how it would end up. She had no idea about a lot of things.

Maybe someday brain chemistry will be understood well enough that addiction can be prevented before it develops, or even cured (truly cured, not just cured in the TSM sense). That would be nifty. We don't live in such a time, though.

Yes, for her part, it's navigating between the Scylla of being punitive ("Why are you doing this to yourself?!") and the Charibdis of enabling by being hyper-supportive ("I'm so sorry this happened to you."). My guess is that, if she were to throw up her hands and do nothing at this point, he would soon be pounding down the drinks, not taking that stupid buzz-killing pill, and risking his (possible) one last chance at a lucrative career. If I were navigating, I would definitely steer towards the Scylla monster. Even though he has to "own" this to really succeed, she has to protect her own self-interests by making sure he doesn't blow this opportunity.

A woman can love another person whom she nonetheless leaves. Based on the story and descriptions, he needs to know there are going to be new costs if he continues to self-destruct. This message may be conveyed without criticism or shaming. Really, it's just a practical matter.

If the family welfare were at stake owing to a gambling problem, as a practical matter the gambling would have to stop, or the gambling would have to be firewalled via legal and financial separation. I don't see the difference between that scenario and the present one (as described) in which the family cannot survive (practically or emotionally) the husband's self-destructive drinking.

These matters can be overthought, imo. Communicating the effective guard bands on acceptable behavior are usually quite easy for us. Doing so here would seem to be required. The first step is to reject a victimization hypothesis. It doesn't matter if he's a victim or not; there's no family if he doesn't change. So he has to change. Period full stop.

Thoughtful replies and again, very much appreciated.

One thing is certain. Regardless of the 'process' by which one becomes addicted to a
substance, there are few choices with which to end the cycle. Yes, owning and taking
command over it...is, in the end, the way. If medication helps that, enter Nal, great. If
reading hard hitting messages/books help..great. If support (or lack thereof) help, good
as well. If changing ones body chemistry and nutritional balance help, super. Imo, it may require all of the above. For now. But in the end, only he can *reach* for those things and determine which are or
are not helpful. I completely get that.

While it was I who found and suggested the TSM,
it was he who ordered the medicine and has to follow it or not follow it. I don't intend
on forcing it upon him, but if he continues to desire it, I will help in any way I can.

That said, there really is no "hammer" for me to bring down as it regards his drinking. Its
true... I did make the decision to stay married to this lovely man if the honesty and
safety were in place. Not if he kept his job. If he loses his job, he doesn't lose
me as a result, no. I didn't marry him for his job or his money. I can choose to live in a van down by the river with this guy (I won't), or choose to make my own money in sufficient quantities, etc.

That is a hammer many have & use, one which I totally
understand. I am not going to make idle threats that I have no intention of keeping. I
won't lie to him about it..and so its true that he lacks that particular impetus that others may
have. Losing his wife because he is addicted won't be his "rock bottom". Simultaneously,
it doesn't mean I endorse or condone his continuing to drink himself to harm. It only
means, for me, that I accept him in sickness and in health. This is an unhealthy state
of being..and thus, in that way, a sickness of sorts. A disease? I have no true idea and I note that the world at large can't agree on that front. But its
certainly an unhealthy state of mind and body, whatever the cause. Keeping in mind that
this has all just started since last autumn, this compulsive style drinking, secretive
drinking, driving, mornings, the whole 9 yards.

so... His repercussions come from other sources if he can't become restored or healed. He
will suffer losing much. But he would not grow old and alone, no. The thing is...the
behaviors I so despise came with the addiction. They weren't present in our marriage prior to that. Therefore, if he can't become healed, he may lose me by extension in any case, because unhealed he may continue
the despised behaviors. I feel as though I'm not articulating this well and rambling
some, but this is my stream of consciousness on the matter.

It would be hard for me to get in depth here about my reasoning on why I see this as a
medical issue, at least in his case, without going on a long detailed rant. It sounds
abstract to most of you, I'd guess, to just say "I believe that many of the bacteria we host are a big part of this".
But there it is, I said it. I for one will not be surprised when someday, perhaps before but likely after our
time on Earth... science learns just how much so. We are, after all, 90% bacterial cells
and only 10% human cells, by count. The gut-brain connection is only a barely touched
upon area of medical science but its making great strides.

I've been down the rabbit hole of information on this topic over the past 13 months. I've followed The Human Microbiome due my husbands case,and the american gut project, as he was for a time very ill in that area. This compulsive, secretive, damaging drinking came on the heels of that. Unless one is interested in hearing more, I'll just leave it at that.

I know that binge drinking and regular over indulgence drinking is popular at colleges, particularly big universities. Most of the young adults leave undergrad and move onto life itself by way of jobs or grad school...but the large majority of them do see a natural progression into more normalized (social) drinking. This, after having spent weekend after weekend drinking heavily, sometimes daytime or even morning drinking on game days (pre-gaming), on St Pattys day and the like. Yet a subset of those young adults will leave college with a monkey on their back. They didn't necessarily drink any more or any less than their classmates. What is the distinction? We don't know. They aren't morally corrupt. They aren't spiritually lacking. They aren't structurally brain damaged/diseased. Yet...there they are. It's not enough, imo, to 'simply' say "Oh, Grow Up!". Yes, tough love has its place. Absolutely it does. But there surely is much more to it than that, more than meets the eye. If the definition of "growing up" to grow out of an addiction... were all there was to it...the phrase "white knuckling" in its literal sense would have no meaning. At least for me.

Of note on the progress of my spouse: Fri, Sat, Sun...all saw a return to taking Nal an hour before, in the evening, and a return to only being able to drink a small amount of alcohol at a slow or 'normal' pace. (2, 2 and 1 beer, respectively) There has been no intoxication or drunkeness outside of one day over the past week, which was the one morning that drinking began without Nal.

I continue to remain hopeful..and fearful. It's (TSM) already made a positive impact though and for that I am grateful. I will honor whatever successes there are, as they come and continue to cautiously hope for a continuance. His plan is to start this week staggering the Nal/drinking days and adding in abstinence days.

When we talk about obesity, there can be distinction there as to the process by which the person became obese as well. Was overeating a result of compulsive cravings that were not previously a problem? For some people, yes.

We, as a society, seem to have no problem recognizing that a person who has a sudden or even developed onset of repulsion to food/eating (ie; anorexia)...has an illness of sorts. One of body and mind. In fact, we go to great lengths to get medical attention and psychiatric attention for our loved ones who develop food/eating related illness such as anorexia and/or bulimia. The ones where people lose weight or get too thin. Yet, we seem to have (general we) a far greater problem acknowledging that the reverse can be true for some people. We treat one as an illness or unhealthy state of being... and the other as a character failing.

I find it quite interesting myself.

I'm interested.

Ok. I'm not sure where to start, its an exhaustive rabbit hole, this. However, I will direct you to an article thats a few years old as a starting place. Although the article has a focus on antibiotics (an important piece of the puzzle to be sure)....its the peripheral, informative nature of the material in a broad sense that I find valuable to get a starting point going.

A quote:
"In the past decade, however, aided by the rapidly escalating power of computer processing and by the same revolution in DNA-sequencing technology that made it possible to map our genome, another truth has emerged: while our health is certainly influenced by genes, it may be affected even more powerfully by bacteria. "

Another quote...of special interest:
"The passengers in our microbiome contain at least four million genes, and they work constantly on our behalf: they manufacture vitamins and patrol our guts to prevent infections; they help to form and bolster our immune systems, and digest food. Recent research suggests that bacteria may even alter our brain chemistry, thus affecting our moods and behavior."

Note special attention for example to the parts on obesity, as we were talking about that. I think we all know person(s) who can "eat like a horse", or eat the same as us...and yet not gain a pound. Not because they run marathons daily to burn it off. What is Metabolism, after all? I suggest its an individuals microbiome at play with other factors.

Many are aware that there (may be) a genetic component to addiction/alcoholism. What many are not aware of is that it may be that the genetics ..the species... and interaction of our individual microbiomes that are wholly or in part also a component. I'll post more on this topic later.
<if linking is not allowed here, I apologize in advance and please remove or advise>

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... ntPage=all

Thanks, but I was really hoping for something a little meatier. "All animals have biomes." Gee, really?

I get that you don't want to do my homework for me. I'll toss it onto the huge pile of stuff to research when I have time to breathe.

Well in all fairness, as I said..it was a starting point. I have little to no idea what you or any reader here (known or lurking) already know. I can say firsthand that many of the people in my personal life, as I've found over the past year, indeed did not know much about the role(s) of individual microbiomes, be they in people or animals.

Why I found that to be a good starting point? While it may point out the obvious as you indicate (to those already in the know)..it also contains other information/references that may not have been previously considered or individually researched. I have no way of knowing, for example, that you personally already knew that Streptococcus mutans, has been recognized as the principal cause of tooth decay. It seemed to be new news to those who study such things. Its not the sort of thing that is on the avg persons radar, is it?

If all you took from that starting point was your above quote...I am sorry it wasn't more helpful to you personally. I am only capable of providing, piece mail style, what is within my own procedural style of informing. I'm hardly an expert in any field of the sort. No question it will be lacking for some (you? lol) and for others perhaps more helpful.

Gut-Brain*

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/09/gut-feeling.aspx