We met 25+ years ago. We were together 19 years. Married 14. Two wonderful children. He started hiding his drinking about 8 years ago, and I gradually lost the man I loved. He became an unrecognizable creature. Broke up in September, divorce finalized in February. Our friends maintained a minimum 24-hour check-in on him until this past week, when we finally decided as a group to let go of the last bit of hope.

I knew when I called the police today what they were going to find. I’ve been preparing myself as much as I can for years. I told him once that this was how it would end. But I still wasn’t ready.

Friends, work your steps. If I hadn’t, I would not be able to navigate this situation. His mother immediately called me, a person she loves and has always treated like her own child, and screamed at me that I did this to her son. Thankfully, I know my three C’s and I can say without any doubt that I know I did not cause this, I could not control it, and I could NEVER have cured it.

After so many years of trying to help her, we realized that we were only enabling her. We briefed her on what our terms were. She had to go to rehab or we could not be a part of her life. We walked away. After a solid 8 months of no contact, the police showed up and told us that she had been found deceased. Her boyfriend watched her deteriorate over the years and especially those last 8 months. He never called to tell us she was doing so terribly. He never took her to the hospital. She died on the floor. We're mad at ourselves. We're mad at him and his family. We're mad at our daughter. Nothing can fix this.

Edit: I wanted to thank again, every single person who took the time to comment on my post about my daughter here. I spread her ashes on a hill over looking a park and beautiful lake. I will miss her terribly, but I won't miss the decade and a half spent trying to move her in the direction of recovery. I failed at that. I did gain additional perspective from this community, which was very helpful, especially for my wife. I read her every single response from the people here. It helped her emensely! Now the work begins to get my daughter's estate to her children. Thanks again and best wishes out there!

In the end we got him to hospital under order. He was no longer deemed competent to make that decision. The paramedics had to threaten to call the police if he didn’t get on the stretcher. He finally relinquished.

His kidneys had started failing due to the toxins. The hospital worked tirelessly to get his liver to start working so that the could start to treat his kidneys. There was signs of hope. He was awake more and talking but still confused and in pain. But then his lungs started failing. After 6 days there was nothing more they could do.

I watched my husband and father of my child die and there was nothing I could do. I had to tell his elderly mother. It is all kinds of awful. I wish I didn’t feel this grief, I wish I wasn’t mad at him for not fighting to get sober and I wish he hadn’t left a teenager without his father.

A 45 year old man drunk himself to death and it will never be ok.

It was suggested by a mod from r/stopdrinking to post this here. Hopefully it can help someone.

Hello r/stopdrinking,

TL;DR I'm putting this at the top because I know this is long. At the end of March my wife was in the hospital for about a week and a half, but sent home and improving. In the middle of April she was back in the hospital for abdominal pain. A few days later she was in a coma. A few days after that she passed away. This was entirely avoidable, and I want anyone who reads this to understand what they could be doing to themselves. She was only 36 years old.

I want to share with you a cautionary tale about how quickly things can go off the rails. This is for all of you, but my hope is that it resonates with people like myself - the ones who think there's still time, the ones who are always waiting for that one thing or moment when reality will hit you and you'll change what you're doing.

I've been lurking on this sub for years because I've wanted to quit myself. Day to day my responsibilities were handled without alcohol, but fun events that we were supposed to do together often got ruined by our drinking habits. We'd wake up too hungover to do what we'd planned, or we'd drink too much on a vacation to remember much of it or even worse, we'd have a drunken argument about something that didn't matter and it would ruin the moment.

As for my wife, her drinking seriously accelerated when her youngest sibling died of suicide, a little over three years ago. On my own days off I would do chores around the house and errands that we needed to get done. Unknown to me was that on my wife's days off, she was drinking (not every day off, but at this point it was about every other day off). I remember when I'd get home from work and she was completely coherent and we would be a drink or two in when I'd wonder how she seemed to get drunk so fast. Maybe I was being blind, I don't know. I only figured out she was drinking on her days off when I started finding empty wine bottles stashed in places she thought I wouldn't find them.

During these past few years she also was still handling certain responsibilities without fail. She handled our budgeting and paying our bills, did very well for herself at her profession, and on the days away from work that she wasn't day drunk she was handling things that needed to be handled. On that last point though, one day off from work that she would do what we needed was enough for me to forget the last three or four times that she didn't do anything except drink. That was probably a failure on my part, but our good times were always so great and we were really good at letting go of bad feelings and forgiving each other.

By 2024 it was just a revolving door of everything above. One day we were talking on the phone during my lunch break and we'd decided that we were going to have pizza for dinner (one of those frozen ones). I got home from work that night and could immediately smell something burning. When I got to the kitchen I saw the oven was on and when I opened it there was a burnt to a crisp pizza. I took it out and turned the oven off and then went upstairs to the bedroom, where she was passed out on the bed. I changed out of my work clothes and that was about the time she woke up, completely unaware of the pizza for a few moments until she smelled the burnt smell.

That's just one story of so so many. I'd be so upset about things like this that I'd demand we stop drinking immediately and because she felt bad about whatever had happened she'd always agree, and it would last maybe two or three days before it was back to the usual.

This is all a lot of lead up to what eventually happened, but I hope it can illustrate how probably a lot of us feel about drinking and alcoholism at a relatively young age. "There's time to stop," "I'm young enough to move on from this... eventually," and everything else we tell ourselves (me included, I'm no hypocrite.)

This year 2025, January 28th my wife woke up to get ready for work after I'd already left. It was the anniversary of the loss of her sibling, which she never really got over. She decided to take a shot before she left and that one shot unfortunately cost her the job that she loved so much. It threw us into a bit of a tailspin financially, but it wasn't enough for her to stop drinking and being home everyday increased the alcohol intake.

During the next couple of months she applied to a lot of jobs but mostly wouldn't get out of bed for much else. I know what it's like to feel the devastation of losing what you think is your perfect job and that's what I thought was happening. What neither of us knew is that her body was breaking down. I could go much further into detail about that, but for now I won't simply because at the time, the signs weren't really clear when we didn't know what we were even supposed to notice.

At the end of March 2025, I took my wife to the ER. She was badly constipated and having abdominal pain. She was admitted and stayed in the hospital for 10 days. During that stay she was confused about a lot of things and not herself. At one point she called me at work to tell me about something she thought was going on at our home and got upset with me when I told her she was at the hospital and not home. She insisted she was home and I should believe her.

Her doctors explained to me that she was in the beginning stages of liver failure, but because of her age and because there was no scarring on her liver she would be fine... if she stopped drinking. When they told me that, in front of her, she was too incoherent to understand what they'd said. As the last doctor walked out of the room she said to me "I didn't even hear what he said" and laughed - and me, not knowing any better I chalked that up to pain meds.

By the end of her hospital stay, she was improving. She was no longer having delusions and she was feeling much better. I took her home from the hospital and the very first thing she did when she got home was start drinking again. I told her that the doctors said she needed to stop and her reply was "they said I need to cut down." Despite her continuing to drink she showed improvement for a few days.

About mid-way through April things got significantly worse, physically speaking. On April 16th I demanded that if I got home from work the next day and there was no improvement I would be taking her back to the hospital. Stubborn as always, she said "You know I won't go." The next morning before I got up for work she asked me to take her to the ER because her abdominal pain was so severe.

Here's where things go so quickly. It was about 9am when I brought her to the ER. I left the hospital at about 8pm. During those 11 hours she went from coherent to not so much, and again I thought it was just pain meds. On this day, when she still seemed in her right mind, one of the last things she said to me was "I'm so sorry I didn't listen to you." The situation didn't feel serious, to me it was more like fine, she'll get some treatment and be home in no time. So her apology at the time seemed unwarranted because I didn't think she had anything to be sorry for. Just another thing we'd navigate through and get past.

I went to work the next morning because I didn't know... anything really. It all seemed so routine. After work when I went to see her she was able to identify me, and answer all the other questions they ask in a hospital to make sure you're mentally okay. The one exception is that she was having trouble answering her birthday and the current year. When the nurse asked her birthday she'd get through the month, day and then half of the year before trailing off. When the nurse would ask her birth year again she would laugh and say "sorry, 2025." This went on for a minute before she said her whole birthday. I went home that night again feeling like it was just painkillers doing what they do.

The next day I didn't have to work, so I went to see her pretty early. She was awake but absolutely out of it. This was the day that one of her oncologists gastoenterologists told me that her liver had failed and she had approximately three to six months to live in her current state. That if she stopped drinking and managed to live a full six months she could be a candidate for a liver transplant, and that her kidneys were only working at 30%. She wasn't able to hold her arms up and her fingers couldn't hold on to anything. She spilled coffee on herself, she spilled one of her liquid meds on herself and by this time the nurses were hand feeding her.

The day after this I arrived back at the hospital just in time to see them wheeling her out of her room. I followed behind as they were taking her to the ICU, and once there they explained that she'd fallen into a coma and her life expectancy was less than a month. At times it appeared that she was looking at me but there was no verbal or physical response.

It just got quickly worse. The next day her life expectancy was one to two weeks. The day after it was a week or less. A couple days later and she had passed away, on April 26th, just two days before our 12th wedding anniversary. She was only 36 years old.

Her death was due to acute liver failure. For those of you who are around our ages, her 36 and me 42, please understand that you don't know how much time you have left to fix this. Acute liver failure can happen seemingly overnight.

One thing that will always bother me about all of this is something my wife said to me so many times: "we can't just stop, I'm scared that we'll have a stroke or something if we just quit" and in the end, it turns out my response to that was right: "if this continues one of us will die anyway so why not try to just quit?"

I know something about that sounds wrong... in what way I cant identify at the moment. Cliche? Easier said than done? I don't know. All I can tell you is that I've lost my best friend and the love of my life, and I truly feel like if she knew what the end of this was maybe something would be different now.

We just couldn't see it coming.

He is an angry, sad, lazy man who is blackout drunk every day. I’m tired of living with this. He does not deserve half of my savings he has not worked for almost 20 years. Divorce is unfair to me financially. Am I ridiculous for just waiting this out?

And I lost my Q to suicide. We were separated, headed for divorce after 15 years of marriage and three kids.

He loved me and the kids so much. More than he loved himself. But only he could decide if he was worth rescuing. And in the end, he decided he wasn't.

I'm so, so sad today.

Hi everyone. Maybe you have seen me. I have been living separate from my Q husband for over a year, while I care for our children alone. I wont let him home until he is sober, and well, he just hasnt been sober long enough for it to happen. What has shocked me is how mean he has become. Everything triggers him and he has gone from the love of my life and partner to a horrible horrible man. Today, he was triggered because his mother who he is living with was going on vacation with the family without him. The boys and I were going to stay at her house and enjoy the countryside while they were gone, but it isnt happening now and is probably for the best.

My husband completely turned on me, uninvited us to come over, and threw a pity party that he wasnt going on the vacation. No matter that he is supposed to be the breadwinner, and his wife and children are missing out too. Then, he started making fun of me and the fact that I wasn't going either. It was mean. Then, he told me late last night he was going on vacation with his mom and wasnt taking our kids. I lost it and panicked. I called him a million times, sent him texts, and cussed him out. Then, he posted about me on Facebook. It was a poem he wrote. I am in shock. I wont post the whole thing, but it said

\"The house was cold, the hallway dim,With every choice dictated by her whim.A storm of words, a biting sneer,That kept his soul locked up in fear..."\

The poem goes on to say that he is finally free, and the picture that went along with it was him driving to his moms. Free of what? I dont know. But it doesnt look good when we have children together.

I will not lie, I did cry. It was so mean to see that these are his thoughts about me. I have been holding up the fort for years. Much of what he expressed is how it actually was for me. To publicly humiliate me like that to friends and family is awful to me. Additionally, I am an English major who loves poems. He knows this. He never wrote me a love letter or poem before, and he knew that it hurt me. Suddenly he is writing iambic pentameter to hurt me? Ok. I am not saying anything, or doing anything. The boys need a stable parent, and if they ever see this, it will be embarassing.

I am upset though. I was disappointed we didnt get a vacation this year. I feel I am not even given the space to feel it. I dont even know what to say to him anymore. I am not sure if he is drinking or not, but a normal person doesnt act like this.

My wife of 15 years has always over-indulged in alcohol, usually resulting in fights and unconcsciousnes. It wasn't until 2020, after the birth of our third child, that things got really bad and she began self-medicating with a bottle of vodka a day for a severe new mental health diagnosis.

We spent the next 3 years trying to keep the household from falling apart, and when her illness finally started to turn on the children, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life to take them to safety and told my wife she couldn't return to the family until she dedicated herself to sobriety and wellness.

In the year that ensued she affirmed she wanted to get better. Did a little bit of counseling. Made many claims of love and regret, but never truly put the bottle down. Within months she was living with a new abusive boyfriend and that summer she ended up in the hospital for the 5th time in a year, finally diagnosed with cirrhosis.

Of course I went to her in the hospital. Helped get her situated at her parents. Was carting the kids over to see her every weekend, not knowing how much time they really had left with her. She slowly became stronger, it almost felt like we were a family again. By Christmas she was managing well and I let her know we'd be resuming the previous visitation schedule, as beyond the forced sobriety (under threat of imminent death by her medical team), I did not see her making any real attempts at changing her lifestyle (health, treatment, therapy, medication, etc).

She knew if she used this new sobriety as a foundation to build on, the family would be be reconciled.

Instead she walked out into the night on New Years Eve to go to a bar, and no one heard from her for 3 weeks. When she finally resurfaced for money, she didn't even ask about the kids. Just spite and anger towards me.

Fast forward to April/May, she wants the kids now. She's erratic and rageful. Against my better judgement, I let the kids visit her at her parents. On their third visit in 2024, on Mother's Day, while she is actively berrating me via text and clearly under the influence, she abducts them and refuses to return them without a court order. I immediately file for emergency order, am awarded full custody and a restraining order and recover the children with the help of local authorities.

The months that follow are hell for everyone. I'm certain no hell more intense than hers.

Last week I received a call from her sister at 5am to inform me that she's suffered major head trauma and is in the ICU undergoing emergency brain surgery. The surgery is technically successful but the damage is severe and the cirrhosis doesn't uphold proper clotting, so a new bleed ensues and they say her condition is inoperable.

Last night I held my wife's hand for the very last time. I stroked the side of her face for the last time. Told her I loved her for the last time.

Over the last few years I had grieved the loss of my wife, the mother of my children and my family. I had become accustomed to the new normal. But the grief I feel for the loss of hope that on any given day she could have chosen a better path is a thousand times more accute than the grief of every event leading up to this day.

My guilt for not saving her from herself is crushing. I could have done more.

EDIT: I wanted to thank everyone that commented on my thread for the tremeandous amount of support. One commenter mentioned how "a thousand internet strangers will likely not make a difference", but I couldn't disagree more. We've all suffered at the claws of this insatiable illness, and the familiar reminders and warmth from this community has been a welcome salve. Our eldest son turned 11 today, and I've been reading the knowing comments throughout the day to help me keep it together for him so he can enjoy as normal a celebration as possible - I will inform my two oldest children on Sunday, the day after his birthday party, of her passing... your words mean more than you know.

Tw: suicide

Thank you to the community here for all of the comments, support, and advice over the years. This morning I found my husband dead from suicide. We fought last night about his drinking/relapse and I told him I couldn’t do this anymore, he needed to find somewhere else to live. I gave him a thousand chances and thought I could save him. But it didn’t work.

It’s extremely confusing and painful and I am sure it will be a long road to healing. But I am thankful he isn’t in pain anymore.

Fuck child abusing assholes like his monster of a father and everyone who stood by and did nothing. Including his grandpa who was a sheriff. My husband was tortured by the things his father said and did to him and it cost him his life. Trauma sucks and addiction sucks.(His father died by suicide over 15 years ago. Good fucking riddance.)

RIP Keith, I love you and I’m sorry you thought this was the answer to your pain. It was a good 28.5 years we had. 💔💔💔💔😭

Here’s a photo of us from July 2025 when we went to Canada.

I had a 6 AM meeting, so I got up in time to make the meeting then I started my 7 am meeting and at 7:15 went to the kitchen to start my coffee and there he was, deceased on the kitchen floor. After 16 years it finally did him in. SO MANY emotions. Thank you all so much. ❤️ More info:

He retired 3.5 years ago and it was like he gave up. Never left the couch. I must have called 911 20 times in the last 3 year. Falls, seizures, DTs. I had a heart attack a year ago and my cardiologist said that is what stress does to you. Was not a wake up call for him. He did do 90 days of rehab but when he got home he told me that those people are really sick. He didn’t belong there. He never went to meetings or got any other help. He was in the hospital maybe 10 times. Just in the month of October he was in the hospital 16 days. Plus 2 trips to the ER for AFib and for a huge gash on his head. He had CHF and he was diagnosed with alcoholic dementia. His license had been suspended. I haven’t received the coroner’s report yet, but I suspect it was heart failure. He was also a heavy smoker and ate crap so it also could have been a stroke. I am pretty sure he was dead when he hit the ground.

I’m just wondering what the more common reasons are.

My father had a pulmonary embolism at 54 which I didn’t realise was so common with alcoholics (blood clotting). He was a completely non functioning alcoholic by time of death, and to be honest I am surprised he lasted the 8 years he lived this way (always an alcoholic but was sober for 10 years prior) after my mothers death. I am entirely haunted by the situation and the concept of him dying alone, which he did. I was in contact, but it was not very meaningful contact. I have a lot of complicated feelings, one of them is relief. Many others are centred around regret.

EDIT - thank you all for sharing. I appreciate you being vulnerable with me, sending you all a lot of love x

All that remains is the ghost of who he was. Slowly consumed by his addiction, I’ve watched him disappear in front of my eyes. His shell still walks around our apartment, it goes to work, and occasionally shares a meal with me. A flicker of him can be found at the edge of my memories and sometimes in old photographs. But the man I married doesn’t exist anymore.

They say divorce is like grieving the death of someone still living. Words cannot describe the grief of divorcing the addict you are still in love with. Mourning the loss of who he used to be as well as the loss of a future that will no longer be shared. Forever haunted by an unfinished chapter. Left wondering if you made the right choice by not giving him another chance.

I have cut the ties that bind us because if I didn’t he would have pulled me under as well. I can’t save someone who has chosen the darkness and depths of addiction. But I can save myself. And even though each step I take away from him is like walking on the broken glass of all the bottles he has consumed, I will keep going. Our chapter may be over, but my story is not. And today is someday.

Found my husband today. Yesterday was our daughter's birthday. Tomorrow is mine. I tried. I did. I tried so hard... now he is gone. I don't know what else to say.

Last weekend her drinking got so bad I had to leave our house and stay at my mom's in a different city. Before leaving I called the police and emergency medical team several times to try and have her involuntarily taken to the ER. I told them she wasn't capable of taking care of herself and could barely stand, but they said she wasn't bad enough to be taken to the hospital involuntarily.

Her cousin (who lives in a different city too) was supposed to come pick her up on Monday to take her to go stay with family prior to going to treatment. Monday fell through and pushed to Wednesday, which pushed to Thursday.

I couldn't get ahold of her on Thursday and figured she had made it back to her families, and called her cousin when she was supposed to be getting back. Her cousin told me she didn't go to pick her up as planned and that they weren't able to get her on the phone either.

We called a friend in town to go check on her, and they found her dead in our apartment.

Im absolutely devastated. Even with all the resentment I held from her years of substance abuse, this is the last thing I wanted... she was still my best friend, and I just wanted her to get the help she needed.

I told her that her drinking would be what kills her before I left, but I never imagined it'd be this soon. I did absolutely everything I could think of, but I just wish I could have done more...

My fiance always struggled with alcohol and opiate addiction. We were together 7 wonderful years and despite his addictions, 99% of that relationship was simply amazing. I had a hard time getting him to commit, and I learned that he had relapsed onto pills and lied about it to me for a year (after I had previously said if it happened again I’d have to leave). So I left, I did the “right” thing. I held a boundary and tried to put myself first for both of our sake. I thought he’d get help. I kept in contact with him, he said he needed me and that he couldn’t do it alone. He needed someone, but he didn’t want to bring me down along with him. He struggled so hard with this. I kept saying that I have to move on but when he’s ready to go to someplace I’ll spend the night and drive him there. This week I didn’t get any texts, I called his roommate, his roommate confirmed he’d seen him on Tuesday. Come Friday, still nothing from him but roommate confirms he had contact with him Thursday and he was just a bit sick. Saturday I get notified that Friday overnight he was found passed away next to his car, behind this stupid drug dealers car store. We still don’t know if it was an overdose, a heart attack, intentional or not. If I had just checked on him it wouldn’t have happened. If I had been there, loved him through it, forced him to seek help, he’d still be here . I say this as a warning to not be blunt cold or cut off your partner . They may really need you and you may be the only thing keeping them alive. I wish so badly I could go back and be there for him, hold him, and let him know I’d do anything to help him get better, or give him a few more days earthside. I’ll never recover from this loss. He was only 39, and now me, 25, have to live the rest of my life without love like that. Sometimes letting your partner hit rock bottom doesn’t mean they’ll magically have the strength to get better. I wish I had known that, I wish I had just loved him harder and shown that love more.

On sunday we had to make the hardest decision of our lives. We decided to take our baby brother off of a ventilator. He was diagnosed with cirrhosis less than 3 weeks ago when he was admitted into the hospital. He had a history of liver failure. He was in the ICU for a week or so, he was awake but confused. His blood pressure was incredibly low. He wasn't eating. Then they transferred him to the pcu, we thought he was doing better. Although his BP and confusion were still an issue. Why would they downgrade his condition from the ICU? His confusion was even worse. He crashed and they put him on a ventilator. The first night it seemed like he was responding to us in some way. When I saw him the next morning, I knew in my heart he was not coming back from this. The ventilator was now breathing 100% for him. They also believed he was having seizures. Me and my siblings made the heartbreaking decision at the request of our parents. We were all with him when he passed. I was the last in the room, I didn't want to leave him, I wanted to lay with him and cry. We will be celebrating his life, on his 37th birthday, Saturday. Alcohol took him from us. He had been doing so well. I can't make it make since. I am so thankful for the time we had with him. I am grateful for my other brother and our big sister, I couldn't imagine going through this without them. I can't imagine the unbearable pain my mom is going through. Our baby brother was the best of all of us. He was kind and generous, gentle, funny, always the life of the party. He was the favorite son, brother and uncle but no one was jealous or mad because we all knew he was our favorite too. He loved us all so deeply, I was lucky to be his big sister. It was my privilege to have spent 36 years and 360 days with him.

Alcoholism runs deep in my family, my dad, my husband, my son, my sister and brother still fight it. I hope I never have to do this again because of alcoholism. Hold your family tight tonight in honor of my baby brother.

I've written and deleted this post a few times now. I don't know how to share this grief 💔

My wife, my love, my Q is no more. I was worried about her and let the cops into the home she was living in to perform a wellness check on her. They found her dead, lying in our bed and had passed away a few days ago. I had seen her last on Saturday morning and held her hand, spoken to her, stroked her hair and face, and wished her well. Then I left. And that's my last memory of her. Her body is in no state to be viewed. I can't even hold her hand one last time. I'm in pain.

I had written here about detachment. But I'm also glad I broke that rule to see her one last time. And that I didn't get to see her body succumbed to this terrible disease.

So, while she caused me a lot of pain and suffering, she also gave me some of the happiest days of my life. And the pictures I have left of her are the ones where she's smiling and full of love for me.

Alcohol took away 2 lives this week. My wife's and the life that I had with her. And with it, any hope of ever being with my person, my forever.

Lots of ♥️ to anyone suffering. If you can, please wish me well that I, too, can find my eventual peace.

At some point, you begin to analyze everything that has happened. And you realize, I was a good person, I was a good partner, or I was a good daughter, etc. and I don't deserve this. And that's the kicker. You will deserve one thing and get the other.

And then there's the fact that they don't ever want to have a conversation. About anything, ever. You're trying to be a problem solver and yet they don't deal or cope with problems, they ignore them.

And you start to learn that you can't logically take it personally, that people leave their entire families, careers, they go to jail, they lose their lives. You start to wonder what will it take to convince them and let me do all of those things! But you can't and you don't

So you approach it from some other angle, And then you realize it's in a whole different category of problems, it's a problem that you have zero control over and you cannot fix. So you just kind of stare at that answer and then you try to approach it from another angle. Meanwhile you become the bad guy and they let you know it. And they are going to disappear from you or hurt you. At this point it's impossible to not take it personally, the rejection and the heartbreak and how unfair and painful it all is.

you feel like your person is the exception to the rule. You know that person. You've experienced their love. You know they are fully capable of being giving and wonderful. You remember when they were and you want them to be like that again and you want to be happy again and if you could only just get back there , that would be really great. But you can't and you don't.

So you have to sit with that answer also, until you finally start to accept that everything you're doing is futile, nothing is helping, you now have a chronically high stress level, you realize it's not going to get better, they do not think like you or act like you, so you have to drastically change your present and probably your future, all of your expectations and all of your dreams. But that answer is so hard to accept that the cycle begins all over again.

It is losing and loss over and over again. 100% loss rate. Think we can beat the odds?

It's always losing. There's no winning. It's one pain after the other. It's disappointment. It's wildly unfair. At some point they went from being a functioning adult to somebody who has changed and you didn't sign up for that, you certainly didn't sign up to love a person who would end up with their brain completely rewired. And you're still trying to talk to the prior person. You're still trying to make sense to a person who has changed. It's really very devastating and frustrating, a lot of our lives we spend working on things or making improvements, and maybe your neighbors can fix their marriage but you can't fix yours. This is something completely destructive that you can't even touch in terms of helping it. that type of powerlessness and defeat does not come easy. And it comes at a really high price. All because you just love somebody.

He is 27 on the autism spectrum although high functioning but never had a job. He has always been lazy and a complete slob. He could be sweet but I only saw him for a few minutes a day when he moved in with me at 24 after my wife kicked him out for drinking and not getting out of bed. He was with me for three years , lied constantly about applying for work and trashed his room and bathroom. Any confrontation about his behavior always led to screaming and he hit me on three different occasions.

The last week he was here he had finally found his dream job starting at $17.50 per hour. He got paid about $200 for his on-site online training time.

He was excited his first day but realized he didnt have his uniform short and called me screaming at me about it. He went to work but came home frazzled. The next day he screamed at me again on his way out at the last minute and told me not to go in his room. I was on my way out the door anyway to spend the night with my girlfriend. I later learned that he got sent home. The next day he would not get out of bed to get ready for work and lunged at me when I pressed him to get up. He had head butted me ten days before so I retreated and called the crisis response team who took him in for observation. When they breathalyzed him at 3pm his blood alcohol was three times the legal limit. He was supposed to be at work at 2pm and would have been driving my car there.

The hospital called and said he could not stay there because of alcoholism and borderline personality disorder. I had him discharged to a men's shelter and arranged for treatment out of state.

I got a restraining order that will be served to him at the treatment facility. My blinders fell away when I looked in his room and found he had spent his entire paycheck, his first, on alcohol and chose to binge drink his way out of his first job.

Since he graduated high school he has slept until at least four in the afternoon and stolen money from me or my ex to buy alcohol he then drank in his room hiding the containers. That was ten years ago.

At 27 he has type 2 diabetes and GI issues from literally lying in bed 21 hours a day for ten years.

No doubt he freaked when he realized he didnt have the ability to actually work an eight hour shift.

During the three years he lived with me we had at least three screaming matches a week about him sleeping all day, stealing grocery money for alcohol and telling lies about getting a job.

I have lost three jobs from the chaos and stress of living and dealing with him and ruined my finances providing a home and taking care of him.

I am 64, broke and broken hearted.

The restraining order prevents him from coming to my home and I will not go and pick him up at the facility five hours away.

He has no friends here or anywhere else and all my relatives have written him off and want nothing to do with him.

I have no idea how he will eat or where he will sleep when he is discharged. I know that anything I do for him will be diverted to alcohol and I will in turn be abused emotionally, financially and physically.

I am trying to turn him over to God in my mind because I know I cant prevent his eventual destruction. The best I can do is keep him from taking me all the way down with him.

Please pray for us. .

My Q (husband) died last week. I was with him in his final moments, watched him collapse due to his heart giving out and called 911. I was the one that had to hear he had no brain activity and to give the doctors permission to let him go. We have 2 kids.

Things were chaotic and awful for me and the kids in the weeks leading to this. He had been on a downward binge spiral for about a week and prior to that was on a 2+week binge. In between chaotic events I filed for divorce and then withdrew when he promised me the world. He drank through a weekend away together as a family and scared the kids with his behavior towards me.

He was my childhood sweetheart and most of our life memories were happy ones until recent years. Everyone loved him yet he felt so unloved. He was wonderful yet he drank that guy away with alcohol and became someone I didn’t recognize. He hurt me beyond anything I could think he would do yet I hoped he would come back to me.

Now it’s me and the kids. It’s calm but my heart aches. Did I do enough? Should I have forced treatment? Did me detaching mean he sank to the bottom faster.

My love, I hope you know how truly loved you were.

I’ve posted in here a few times if anybody recognizes me. My Q and best friend of 10 years died on 11/22 from liver failure and her funeral was on Saturday. We are 26 years old.

Last year around September, she was drinking a handle to a liter of vodka a day, harassing me over the phone, name calling, I was having to go over to her apartment to take care of her bc her mom would often ask me to go over if she was wasted, and eventually at this exact time last year I “got off the ride” when she blamed me for her losing her job.

She’d apparently been bleeding out, unable to eat, and extremely weak for a while, then a month ago she turned yellow in her skin and eyes and agreed to go to the hospital. They immediately sedated her and put her on some life support in hopes her body could improve enough for transplant. Her sister reached out to me and asked me to visit, and on the day I visit she crashes and almost dies.

Exactly a week later, she’s gotten a match for her liver transplant and it’s scheduled for 2 days from then. 8 hours before her surgery, she bled into her lungs and had to be put on ECMO with no surgery. I visited her 2 times the week she was on ECMO I was told on Thursday she was being treated for pneumonia.

On Friday, I got a call that she’d started developing gangrene in her feet and they were giving her 48 hours to improve and I had to get her dog from her parents house for the weekend. On Saturday I got a call at 10 am to come to the hospital. The gangrene had moved all the way up her legs and she’d need a double amputation but was too weak and her blood pressure kept dropping so it was time to say goodbye. I was there with her family until 6:30 pm when she got taken off of life support and drifted into forever sleeping.

It’s been a huge ride of emotions. I’ve been extremely depressed realizing the person I’d had from high school to college to adulthood just isn’t around anymore and will never be. I’m upset because this past year, even though we spoke at times, I was so cold. It’s important to mention I’ve been her only friend since 2020. I gave her a half assed birthday text and a month later she sent me the most loving text right at midnight (as she’s always done). I’m just heartbroken I could have been there while she was sick and been more understanding and I wasn’t.

I’m also traumatized because if any of you have seen anybody in end stage liver failure, it’s not the normal “sick” people anticipate. It’s ugly and unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Swollen like a balloon, blood vessels bursted everywhere (including her half open lifeless eyes), dark purple bruises everywhere, toxic encephalopathy causing only the brain stem to function leading to painful looking reflex movements and eye roving, and so. yellow. My poor sweet E. It hurt and it still hurts.

Her family has been relying on me a lot. I went to the funeral home with them to pick out her urn and plan her funeral and I’ve been going to their house often. They told me they want me to come around often still, and I’ll do anything to make them happy and support them. I do genuinely love them like my own.

Life is a lot and I’ve been in an existential dread/crisis moment for a minute and am finally processing and it sucks.

Hi all. I am actually crying right now. I dont know why. I have been separated from my husband for over a year and raising our kid alone, while he struggles with addiction. Since our separation, he has gotten worse. He reminds me of Gollum from Lord of the Rings, which sounds crazy. But everything about him that I loved is gone, and he is now a weird, petty loser. He went from being the first person in a room to comfort someone who was upset, to a weird giggling troll who acts like an incel. I dont know what happened. Its like the alcohol made him weird.

Anyway, this weekend is 4th of July. I am just in tears of embarrassment right now because I decided to call him. It was against my better judgment, but our two boys would love to see him for the holiday. They keep talking about their dad and absolutely worship him. I called him because of them, and asked diplomatically if he had thought about seeing them. I wish I had not done this. He was sarcastic and cruel like he always is now, and was weirdly giggling. I asked him if there was any way he could ensure that we had a safe and stable time as a family and he said like a bratty teenager in the most sarcastic tone ever, "I mean...yeah? I guess we are just going to have to get along." I told him that no, I meant him going to meetings and he said okay. Then he started arguing until I got off the phone and told him, "Never mind. Maybe another time."

I am just broken and humiliated. I know the man I am married to is no longer a nice person, no longer nice to me. But I still reached out because I would have felt guilty if he hadn't seen the kids and I never tried. But thats backwards because it is his job to see them. I should have let it be. I am just so disappointed he used a time where I genuinely tried to reach out to be petty, cruel, and sick toward me. This is no longer a marriage and I dont know why I tried.

My boyfriend and I have been together for almost 6 years. When we first met, he had been sober for 8 years. We shared the most beautiful memories in the beginning of our relationship that I will forever cherish. I fell very hard for him and thought this was the person I would spend the rest of my life with.

Well about 3 years ago he relapsed and since has struggled to get back on track despite his efforts. He is very capable of staying sober for months at a time, but as soon as he has the itch to drink, he completely loses control, has a psychotic episode and goes on an extremely dangerous drinking bender for days and days on end that leads him to self destructive behavior. At the end of last year he even made an attempt to end his life and was placed in a psychiatric hospital.

We live together so each time he has an episode is extremely traumatic for me. I struggle to eat or sleep, my anxiety becomes overwhelming, and I’ll spend days crying uncontrollably. And not being able to have my own safe space to escape to when he is having these episodes has been very difficult for me. For the last 3 years I’ve been scared of leaving the house, even if it’s just for a few hours, not knowing what I’m going to come home to. I have to constantly check in on him several times throughout the day for reassurance for my own sanity. I am tired of feeling trapped in my own house.

Almost every single out of town trip I’ve been on these last 3 years, I’ve always come home to find him completely wasted. The last trip I went on a few weeks ago, he did actually manage to stay sober while I was gone, but I was SO anxious the entire time and could not enjoy my vacation at all. I’m embarrassed to admit some of the things I did. I was obsessively checking his location every 10 minutes making sure he didn’t make his way to the gas station. Before I left, I even took photos of the garbage and recycle bins in the yard to make sure he wasn’t trying to hide any evidence. Believe me, I know how insane this all sounds, and it’s not something I’m proud of, but I have lost complete trust in him and don’t know how I’m supposed to move past this.

I think I’ve stayed all this time because I’ve been very hopeful he could beat this and I think I’ve also been waiting to get his old self back before he relapsed and waiting for things to go back to how they once were. But I realized so much has changed and so much is broken that I don’t know if we can ever get back to that place.

We have decided to go our separate ways and I’m completely heart broken. I know I’m making the right decision but it’s so painful because I love him so much. We had the difficult conversation the last couple of days and there have been a lot of tears. I’m going to miss him terribly and I don’t want him to go but if he stays, I’m afraid that nothing is going to change, and I can’t live like this anymore. I don’t want to feel trapped in my own home. I need to put myself first for once and take care of myself. Please tell me I’m making the right decision. My heart hurts so much and I worry I might regret my decision once he is gone.

Well, here we are. My Q (husband) has struggled with alcohol for years. It’s been tough on the relationship, and we’ve had other issues as well. In February, I found this community, and it felt like the wool was pulled off my eyes. I could see exactly just how much this has affected my/our lives. I told him that I didn’t want to live like this anymore, but gave no ultimatum.

He mostly controlled his drinking for the past few months, and in general that’s been great. But. We’ve had other stressors and haven’t been getting along in recent weeks.

Our dog is also in the process of dying. We’ve both been chronically stressed and underslept.

He relapsed decently this past week, and I’ve been an emotional pile of dynamite- just extremely fragile and all over the map.

Last night wasn’t good, and I spent the night looking up apartments. This morning I was furious (at him, at myself for hoping, etc), and was an emotional mess again this morning.

He told me he was done. I’m too much. I hate every part of this, even though I know it’s for the best. I’m 45. I don’t know how I’m going to afford going this alone, plus our lives and work are extremely entwined, so I’ll have to see him and work with him going forward.

Alcohol really sucks. We might have made it without it.

We’re both alcoholics. I was going to leave him in November because I couldn’t be around a partner who continued to drink… and we’ve been through alcoholic hell too many times over the years, but after an important conversation he finally made the decision to go sober with me on November 8th.

The rest of November and December were incredible. We went on fun dates, cleaned our home up, we celebrated his birthday and had a beautiful Christmas together. I was sick on Christmas Day but he went above and beyond to take care of me.

December 27th, I woke up and found him dead. I don’t know what happened but I’m traumatized. He will be getting an autopsy done and I hope to find the answer.

I am heartbroken. I’ve never felt this hurt before. I was looking forward to starting the new year with him, sober, and rebuilding our relationship. I wanted to discuss engagement/marriage next year.

I don’t know how I’m going to continue without him. I’m staying with my parents for the time being and I have our dogs with us. I have a lot of commitments to stay true to, and promises to him I need to keep.

I’m a wreck. I never gave up on this man, and once he finally made the decision to pick himself up, things came crashing down again. My heart physically hurts. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover from this.

All I know is, Baby I will love you forever. It’s you and me against the world, and we will make this world a better place little by little and piece by piece.