I hope you're still checking in for messages on this question. I think there are many ways in which you can help him, some of them directly, some of them indirectly. I do think, as has already been pointed out, that the most important first step is for you to understand the psyche and nature of the addiction. If you've never suffered through an addiction, it can be extraordinarily daunting to try and help someone live through breaking one.

For someone with an addiction, you spend your life planning around it. I exaggerate some for the sake of my point, but I'm sure others on this board will be sitting there nodding their head in agreement when I say...you wake up thinking about alcohol, you go to work thinking about alcohol, you have lunch thinking about alcohol, you think about alcohol as you mentally take inventory of your liquor cabinet on your drive home to make sure you've got enough for the evening, the first thing you do when you get home is pour yourself a drink, then another, then another waiting for 'magic click' to happen; you decline social invitations because you'd rather drink alone, and when you do go out, you have a few extra drinks beforehand so you can look like a normal drinker; you bury your liquor bottles in the recycling so you don't let the recycling people know how much you drink; you chew gum so people don't know how much you drink; you promise yourself every morning you're not going to drink as much, and then break that promise; on and on and on the list goes. We plan our lives around drinking. That's how important and how much our lives revolve around alcohol.

I'm not sure if it was on this board or in another conversation about something else, but someone likened alcoholism to being a little bit like a daily 'Sophie's Choice.' And, it is. For as agonizing as making that choice is, we make it every day, and every day hate ourselves for it.

And just know that nobody is beating themselves up more for their addiction than your husband is. None of us ever planned to become addicted, and all of us would give anything to be able to roll back time and take it all away.

If you can truly understand and sympathize with what that must feel like, then your compassion in helping him trying to deal with quitting will automatically be there.

This is a very personal and very private disease made even more so by the stigma put upon it by our society. So the fact that he wishes to try on his own is not unusual. As well, many people (like myself and others on this board) are not well suited to 12-step or in-patient kinds of programs. And until MWO, there frankly haven't really been many other options. I believe very strongly in this therapy. It attacks the root causes of the disease and provides a broad balance of support tools to help you overcome it.

Quitting drinking is fraught with both physical and emotional changes. It's a little like being sick, only on steroids. First, you have to deal with the physical withdrawal from alcohol, the symptoms of which can range from mild to severe. Thankfully that runs its course relatively quickly. But with that comes irritability, crabbiness and general anxiety. As any of our spouses or significant others can tell you, we are not the most fun people to be around during this period. I think what is most important is to treat your husband in the manner in which you know he most likes to be treated when he's feeling sick and anxious. Me, I'm a horrible sick person. I'm the kind that just wants to be left alone...don't coddle me...don't try to make me feel better...just leave me to my own devises. Everyone is different. I guess all I am trying to say, is don't make him feel like a patient unless he wants to feel like a patient. For me, the single biggest way my husband helped me was to stop drinking in the house, and just let everything feel as normal as apple pie. We didn't ignore it, we just didn't focus on it. I was already focused on it, and that was enough.

I hope this helped some. Best of luck to you and your husband, and please let us know how it's going.

***
HadEnough