Normally I'd put this in the Wednesday wellness thread but I'm in a bit of a crisis here so I figured I'd crowdsource some wisdom from the Motte. My wife is bipolar and also a bit of an alcoholic. For most of the ten years we've been together, her drinking has been in the gray zone of "probably drinks a little more than she should." When she drinks past a certain point, she tends to get real mean. Anyway, over the past several weeks it seems like both her mood and her drinking have gotten worse. On Sunday evening she had a full-on drunken meltdown, screaming at me, expressing suicidal ideation, etc. She slept all day monday, then woke me up at 3AM Tuesday morning, drunk again, and again expressing what seemed to me like suicidal ideation. I had to go to work so after she finally went to sleep around 830 AM, I wrote her a long note confronting the issue. I get home and she basically refuses to talk to me. I should mention that most of the conversations are happening over text because we have a small child and also an in-home nurse who helps with childcare. I text that if she doesn't want to talk about it, I'm going to get a hotel once we get our child down so I can clear my head. Anyway, I've finished putting the child down for the night, I come out, and her care is gone. Nurse doesn't know where she went and it doesn't look like she's getting my texts. What do I do? Call the cops? Seek a psychiatric hold? I don't really know, it feels like the situation is escalating way faster than I can deal with it and my attempts to address the problem are only making things worse.
EDIT: I got a hold of her on the phone and she was sober, rational, and promised not to do anything "irreversible" (my word). She said she'd be back in time for me to go to work. I agree that long-term changes will need to be made - its what I've been pushing for - and I think its more likely that she'll accept that if I give her a modicum of space to process than having it forced on her, however tempting that possibility. I don't have any texts to show the cops (she didn't really respond to any of my texts so it would only show a one-sided conversation) and I suspect my City PD will other priorities than trying to track down her car over a quite wide possible search area. So I am going to take a calculated risk and take her at her word. Thank you to everyone who responded. I will try to follow up in a day or two here for everyone who took the time to help.
Edit: (several days late) She spent the night in a hotel and came back in the morning. We talked about how we've fallen into some bad patterns and how to start changing those patterns. Cautiously optimistic moving forwards. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to respond.
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I’m busy at work but will briefly add my two cents: COPS. Call the cops and give them everything you have; even if she’s mad at you afterwards who gives a fuck, this is such a case where it’s better to act first and apologise later. Also possibly check if she has said anything about where she’s going to friends and family, fact-find as much as possible.
Will also second the psychiatric hold, because this clearly is out of hand and isn’t a situation you can or should be expected to handle alone. It’s a very onerous thing to deal with, and it’s not just her sanity on the line, both you and your kid’s are too by virtue of being around this. There needs to be future action taken to keep her away from drinking if you don’t want more dysfunction, things cannot just return to baseline after this. Some long term changes have to be made and you need to get that done, even if you need to force that change.
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