Should I Drink With Her?

Part of the denial system for most alcoholics involves others drinking with them.

As a non-drinker, I have so many stories about heavy drinkers' maneuvers trying to get me to drink with them... like the boss who stood up in a public restaurant with our sales team, pointedhis finger over the top of my head, and announced loudly "this man is a wimp." Everybody who was a little drunk laughed hysterically.

But the following story illustrates how really important my drinking with her was to my now x-alcoholic wife. 

 "After about eight weeks in the program, working with my sponsor, I was wondering if my own drinking was offering a ready excuse for Deb. I discussed this with Scotty, and he said that this may be true. He remarked "...Why not just quit drinking with her and see if she responds?"

I really believed that she would not even notice. For example, I had started the process of stopping smoking earlier, and she didn't even seem to notice for weeks, so I really didn't know whether my drinking with her would be that important. So that weekend, while I did the yard work, I just left off the cold beer.

We had a fight that weekend, but I wasn't sure that the issue was whether or not I was drinking with her. We fought constantly anyway.

But to my amazement, when I started to leave early on Monday morning for a week of work in another city, I found a gift waiting for me on the kitchen counter. There, with a little note were six sparkling green bottles of Heineken beer, my favorite. The note said something like "a surprise for you!" There was even a little heart at the bottom!

I left the beer there, and when I returned the following Friday night I walked into a stinging hornet's nest. She had left the beer and the note there for five days, had looked at it every day, and had built up a rage that exploded in a well rehearsed verbal blast at me the moment I walked in the front door. We fought all weekend over whether or not I would drink with her. I guess my drinking with her was an issue after all.

Ken P.