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Wellness Wednesday for February 22, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I don’t like asking for random internet strangers for real life advice but I am going through a serious relationship problem and I really need some perspectives from people who don’t know me or my partner.

We are both mid-20s, together for quite a while, living together as well and starting out with decent careers as expats in . We are from very different cultural backgrounds (I am Turkish, she is Latina) but I always felt like we had good communication channels in English and I also speak her language. I am happy and she is too as far as I know. Actively having talks about future and children etc.

Now the issue. When we first met, there was a night out when we both got very drunk. My usual reaction to getting very drunk is to usually throw up, experience diarrhoea, be very uncomfortable for a while and swear I will never drink again. Never done something really embarrassing or regretful on alcohol. Turns out her reaction to getting very drunk is to basically have a full on personality change into a horrible bitch (her description), do very risky things, black out, pass out somewhere with no memory of anything that happened last night.

I was ready to never see this girl after that night but somehow I got convinced that she was genuinely regretful and this would never happen again. Meanwhile I know that her teenage years can basically be summed up as having constant mental problems and repeatedly doing things like this, fucking up her family relationships and academics until getting her shit together some years before we met.

Fast forward many years of never thinking about this stuff, last night on a small Friday evening drinks with her colleagues she has somehow done exactly the same thing and managed to drink herself to blackout drunk. I spent a horrible night thinking she might be dead or seriously injured or passed out in cold outside running around the city with some friends trying to figure out where she might be, and eventually the police found her on the sidewalk with plenty bruises and brought her home in an ambulance. Some of her things are missing and we will need to make sure she wasn’t assaulted or anything like that.

I am lost. We had a short talk in the morning where I made clear the relationship is over if she ever drinks alcohol again. Now she is sleeping and I cannot shake off this feeling that I am making a horrible mistake by not ending it here and now and I will come to regret this. On the other hand obviously I really don’t want to break up with the girl that I see as the love of my life when she is so vulnerable.

I can’t stop thinking that this bipolar—ish behaviour under influence and regular blackouts is indicative of a deeper mental problem that might come out in full force later in our life. Or that some parts of this stuff is hereditary and we will end up with horrible teenagers in 20 years constantly on the brink of drug addiction or whatever. I don’t know if these things make sense or if I am exaggerating.

My mind is in shambles and I don’t want to share this with friends or family because I don’t want her to be labelled as alcoholic or mental. I know in my Turkish friend and family circles this sort of behaviour would be seen entirely beyond the pale unacceptable. Maybe they have a point. I would appreciate any anecdote or perspective or even some medical research on the things I worry about.

There's a whole body of literature devoted to treating alcoholism (and also what people affected by / close to alcoholics should do). I am no expert here, but if you feel like classifying your partner as alcoholic, some of what comes to mind is setting boundaries that protect you (maybe this is what you mean by breaking up should this behavior recur again). To be fair, I sometimes worry that pathologizing alcohol use isn't productive.

Here's one of the top google hits I got, one suggestion that stands out to me that you should consider is:

Rather than obsessively monitoring your spouse’s drinking behavior, keeping constant tabs on their whereabouts, attempting to discard their alcohol, lecturing them, forbidding them from drinking, or pleading with them to stop drinking, you may choose to practice the art of actively releasing control over your spouse’s alcohol use. You did not cause their drinking, you cannot control it, and you cannot cure it.

This is only one approach that they mention and your mileage may vary, but maybe a dose of this in whatever intervention you pursue would be useful.

I think you (or a dispassionate observer in you and your partner's vicinity) should do some very careful analysis of the problem. Some people use therapists/counselors/religious entities/etc for this. People in relationships with alcoholics are often recommended therapy for themselves. What triggers/motivates the undesirable behavior? It may be a combination of factors (stress, relationship issues, friends who are alcoholics, dissatisfaction with life, unhappiness, just wanting to have fun and let loose, they feel like they aren't in control).

Have you considered setting up a way for your partner to get blackout drunk once in a while in a safe way? Like maybe they want to do this every 6 months or so.

Make sure you are safe, focus on your own needs first, support your partner as you can, including by separating if that is the appropriate intervention. This shit is hard, but you can do it. Good luck!

Edit: punctuation

Have you considered setting up a way for your partner to get blackout drunk once in a while in a safe way? Like maybe they want to do this every 6 months or so.

No and honestly I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. When I mean blackout drunk, I truly mean it. The whole night is totally blacked out in her mind and she is quite scared of this sensation. Plus we don’t know if this might have been an interaction with something wrong with her brain chemistry and best not trigger this.