I lost a friend because i said i didn't want him to call me drunk anymore

[bettyellen]

really close friend, for 20+ years, was sober for a few years. before that, we went through a period where he almost killed himself w/ booze and every drug out there.
i kept my mouth shut because his mom was sick, an asshole had broken his heart, then his mom died. that went on for three years, and he had no other close friends... fucked up his business, lost everything.
well he fell off the wagon bigtime, started calling at 2 am weekeights, blaming me for his drinking becasue i was talking about a party, calling me names, etc.
i had just broke up with a guy when i had figured out how much he was secretly drinking and finally connected that to al his woes.... i guess i was a little over the drinking thing because of him, too. my buddy actually laughed when i told him about some painful shit i went through w/ drinker man. what can i say, they were both good at heart, but full of good intentions and a long list of things they meant to do, but somehow couldn't. They were ultimatelt both lying to me. and both trying to manipulate me, to make me feel sorry for them. i got sick of feeling disappointed, you start losing respect.
my friend said now after 20 years he finally knows who i am. and a whole bunch of other nasy stuff. he has a temper when he drinks, he throws stuff and slurs and talks fucking nonsense. i don't like him drunk. he dumped me for a few years when he had been doing lots of coke, and again when he was hyper-sober, because i drink. so, i feel it's fair. yuk. i miss him. but not if i'm going to walk on eggshells and be phony about my feelings. i was smart enough to tell him it wasn't him i hated, it was the behaviour. that was rough.

[alittlelark]

1. Sounds like a freeper-type

sorry, too sad.

[bettyellen]

13. not really , pretty liberal guy, but selfish.

[alittlelark]

17. Liberal but selfish = the worst of the worst

cut the line/cut the bait/ lost cause/ sicko greedy pr*ck.

[bettyellen]

25. only chld syndrome... i come from a big family and it is never ever all

about me. i'm going to piss off somebody w/ the only child thing- but it can be a thing, if your parents are too good to you. if anyone is, his dad is paying the rent, and he's over 40. how does anybody feel okay with that? well, i guess, he doesn't feel okay.

[alittlelark]

30. He should not feel OK. Unless his parents are disabled or sick.....

[bettyellen]

31. well his dad is old and sick, but my mom is too...

[alittlelark]

34. Do they NEED him, and is he HELPING them

or is he a parasite?

[bettyellen]

39. you have him pegged. i have to say, his dad needed to go to a

specialist in NYC, so he came up to stay overnight and it seemed to be a bigger tramua to him than his dad's cancer scare. he didn't go with his dad to the doc, never told me the results were okay... it was pretty flakey and weird, i thought.

[bettyellen]

48. i had to come back and read this again to confirm that you hit it on the

head, and slefish greedy prickishness was just the last straw. i needed to be reminded. i was feeling weak.

[Bluebear]

2. "he finally knows who i am"

The drunk will always put this on you. I grew up with two of them. You take care of yourself, I understand fully what you are going through. And if he keeps calling you while drunk, you have every right to tell him not to call you AT ALL anymore. hugs.

[bettyellen]

4. omigosh, he always used to close w/ hugs, too. but tks i need one!

[Bluebear]

10. My hugs aren't 100 proof :)

You take care of YOURSELF! :)

[bettyellen]

32. your hugs were very nice, thank you

[bettyellen]

16. oh it took a while, but i shut that down. tks for the hug! i needed that.

[NC_Nurse]

3. My advice, FWIW...

go to Al-Anon. It's very helpful, esp. if you keep picking drunks for friends/SO's.

[bettyellen]

11. al anon helped me a while ago. usually i can tell, but this last

guy was super sneaky and seemed completey sober all the time. and it was long distance thing, so it wasn't until we had some normal time, and not a fun weekend visit , that i realized he had to drink.

[Hello_Kitty]

12. I went to al-anon for several years, didn't work for me.

I'm not saying it won't work for you but you have to realize going in that it is a religion-based program, despite its protestations that it isn't. If you are comfortable with spirituality and religion (I'm not but others are) and the idea of submitting to a higher power, fine. In my case, 'submitting' was my problem in the first place.

[bettyellen]

20. yeah, i can't go for the submitting thing either..

i think in a way, it's replacing a jones you have with another one.... weird me out. yeah, i got in, learned a few things, and got out. i have gotten better about spotting alcoholics, but this last one was very sneaky. hiding bottles. and he seemed completely sober all the time. i was shocked once i added it up, i immediately had to get the fuck out of there. yikes. the level of deception was massive.

[mike_c]

23. I'm utterly atheist but still find an awful lot of wisdom...

...in Alanon. I think it depends to some degree on the particular meetings you attend-- some are more religious than others. I've also learned that some very good people have very strong faith in their "higher power." I doesn't make me uncomfortable any longer, at least not in the context of Alanon meetings. I even join in the Serenity Prayer now-- not because I believe in god, but because there is a certain wisdom in knowing the difference in knowing the things you can change and the things you can't, and it doesn't hurt to remind myself of that.

[bettyellen]

35. yeah, learning to pick your battles is tough, i know always want to make

things better for everybody. and i've learned not to try so often. my family had a lot of tragedy when i was young, my severely depressed mom leaned on me as if i knew what to do, i was the baby. so i am really pretty forgiving, i've seen alot in my time. my brother are both alcoholics, every therapist i ever met has said shit girl, how did you survive that w/out being a big druggie/ alcholoic. my only answer to that is was that since i saw so much over the top out of control shit when i was a kid, i vowed never to go there. i went through some wild times, but i was always the one who did 1/2 tab of acid, not two. i never have a drink two days in a row. i have meant to get drunk after the election, but i haven't has a good opportunity yet, i drank too much the year my father died, and i will never do that again.

[LosinIt]

5. get ye to Al-Anon, my friend

it isn't for everybody, but you might understand the alcoholic's talent for manipulation

[bettyellen]

44. i have gotten a good grip on it, really. and my friend gave me that last

time when he put me throught this. and yeah , he wasn't the first one.
but this is the first addict i dated in ten years, he was so freaking sneaky about it. he put enormous energy into hiding it, i had no clue until i knocked over his suitcase and heard the clinks. he seemed sober all the time. he never went overboard the whole time i knew him, but he was the most manipulative man i've ever met. that was rough, he was a really good guy underneath, would have tried to do anything for me, and it was hard getting away. he pulled out the stops trying to keep me. ironically my friend who was, at that point still on the wagon, advised me to cut him off completely. and i did.

[Maddy McCall]

6. I had to do the same thing a year ago Halloween.

Obnoxious, dangerously self-sabotaging drunk. We had been friends for twenty years.

I walked away...my life is so much less hectic.

[bettyellen]

14. yeah, i'm looking for less hectic these days, thanks

[clover]

7. you didn't lose a friend: you followed your higher self and he

lost an enabler. you did the right thing for you and for him. if and when he recovers, you'll hear from him when he thanks you for speaking the truth. please trust me on this: i spent ten years drunk but stopped drinking when enough of my pals let me know the truth of my behavior, and those are the people who are my friends again, now that i'm sober--and after i thanked them for their help and asked for their forgiveness.
you did the right thing, even if you doubt it today.

[bettyellen]

15. wow. thank you. you made me feel so much better about it.

i feel really guilty that i didn't have the balls to describe what he put me through the first time.... until now. i was feeling like i was going to bust if i had to pretend everything was cool this time. i set him up with a great apartment deal, i know the landlord, and then he told me he wanted to delay paying rent to pay the cable bill instead. he couldn't get that he was starting to fuck up. over 40 and his dad is paying the rent. i just could never.

[clover]

24. you feel better simply b/c i reaffirmed what you already knew

so when you doubt the wisdom of your action today, accept that it's normal to have fleeting regret and anxiety, but those feelings can't change the truth and the morality of your act. you did nothing to harm him. you helped him. but his life is in his own hands now, as it should be for any man his age (or even much younger).

[bettyellen]

37. i did it 6 weeks ago, but tonight i saw him doing something sad and it hit

me bad, i saw him pouring coins into the machine that turns it into dollars. it really made the damn break. i haven't told alot of people about it, have been really vauge except to one friend who i know will be cool w/ him avout it. i know i'm enabling him to have dignity, but this is a small town, and it's my turf. he's surrounded by my friends, so he really fucked up w/ that one. and he's a lonely guy.

[bettyellen]

45. wow thanks. i have to keep remembering that. in his hands.

[NightTrain]

8. Friends like that you don't need.

I grew up in a family full of alcoholics, which included my late father. Haven't been in touch with any of 'em since my dad's funeral almost seven years ago. And I don't miss a damn one of 'em, either. Far as I'm concerned, it's good riddance to white trash!

[bettyellen]

42. yeah, a lot of my family was pretty hopeless, literally and i have had

to pull away. the dynamic is too weird.you are not a good girl if you don't put up with a world of shit... ugh. my brothers both drink a lot. i could never dump them because we went through a great deal together as kids and kind of raised each other and they are all the family i have left really. my moms been pretty sick and i need them around, too.

[miss_kitty]

9. It's the old 'black line fever'

people gettin' drunk, making calls. People know not to mess with me when they are drunk like that. I just don't tolerate 'drunk' real well very often. Mean drunks can fuck off. I have abso-fucking-lutely no room for a mean drunk. Life's too too short.

[mike_c]

19. "drinking and dialing...."

We used to have $300/month long distance bills.

[bettyellen]

28. yeah, alot of people dumped him over the calls.

[mike_c]

18. I'm in the midst of an acromonious divorce...

...because my wife is a lifelong alcoholic and I finally could not take it any longer. Ironically, she's in rehab now but there's nothing to be salvaged from the relationship. I would never have believed how damaging alcohol can be if I hadn't lived though it. She is not sane any longer-- it's terrible.

If you haven't gone to Alanon, I strongly recommend that you do. Others on DU gave me that advice several months ago, and Alanon is helping me put my life back together, a little bit at a time.

[bettyellen]

22. i am so sorry, that's awful. i'm hanging in there. it's just that i just

saw him at our local supermarket throwing handfulls of change to be turned into dollars and it hit me how fast he has hit the skids, from 0 to drunk all day in a week. i couldn't believe it if i hadn't seen it.
i had to run out of there before i humiliated him. it's just to hard, living in pretend everything is okay world. he acknowledged he had hurt people a lot when he was drunk before and made a choice to do it again. i don't get it.

[mike_c]

29. it is terrible to watch lives being destroyed by alcohol....

It's an insidious and baffling disease. My wife will never be the same, and likely neither will I. But we're both getting some help now, and we're both working our separate recovery programs, and we each have at least a chance of learning not to repeat the same behaviors over again. That's the key, IMO.

[bettyellen]

41. yeah, i used to have no spine, 10 years ago,, i would have let this go on.

but i've learned to have some limits. it is baffling, it's unfair chemistry, it's just different for some people. both of my brothers are alcoholics, but they manage okay. i could never push them out of my life, but they are on the fringes of it. i try not to worry about it, becasue i feel sucked in and pulled down by it. but yeah, lot of enablers in my family. ethan fromme (the book) clued me into ait a bit more than al anon did. i just got it after reading that. i could nver be a codependant after that.

[bettyellen]

46. you really helped me so much and i'm sorry if i didnt say it before

what you wrote really touched me and but i hope things go well l for you. like everything for good or bad, it'll pass and you'll have the most hopeful springtime in a long while. good for you.

[truthpusher]

21. You may have helped him quite driking...

...as a recovering alcoholic (almost 9 years of sobriety) I commend you for having the testicular fortitude to tell your friend what you did. I must have lost dozens of friends because of my drinking. You know who I talk to now after ll these years? The ones who told me to stop calling them, because they helped me see what I was loosing because of my drinking.

[mike_c]

26. good on 'ya, truthpusher....

Dealing with my wife's alcoholism and my generally wrong headed attempts to live with it has shown me how deep and broad the recovery community is. Congratulations on 9 years.

[bettyellen]

27. wow, thank you. i could never do that slink away and stop returning

calls thing. to me that is the most fucked up thing a friend can do, and i felt like it was one or the other, so....
thank you for the support, it helps to hear from somebody who's been on the other side of this. i hope he can forgive me someday. i left the door open, but sobriety was my stipulation.

[truthpusher]

49. sounds corny but the harder it is, usually the more impact it has...

...just by your reaction, I could tell that you had an impact.

[bettyellen]

50. i wasn't feeling that tonight. he looked so lost so i felt like it was

waste, like i hurt him for no good end. but i have a better perspective now. i was lacking that. i got a lot of help with that here.

[MacCovern]

33. Yes, bettyellen did right by not being an enabler

It's tough to cut off a friend, even if it's only temporary,
but sometimes there is no other way.

Some good may come from this.

[bettyellen]

38. thank you, i hope so.

[jukes]

36. very tough call

confrontation is very scary.

call someone, if you can. alone is too hard just now.

i'll ck my PM in five, in case you need me.

jukes is here...

[bettyellen]

40. you are so sweet, i don't know how to pm or if i have it on my

mac, i am not sure how these things work. i actually did the confrontation six weeks ago, i really only told one friend about it, because i don't want him stigmatized. it's a tiny town, and everybody he knows is my friend. and then the following week i had to put my cat, little girl asleep, i had her 17 years and was shocked to realize i loved and missed her more than some of my family.
but tonight i saw him and it was bad. thank god he didn't see me.

[jukes]

43. PM is the yellow icon

w/ wavey lines near my nick.

ck your PM by clicking the "inbox" @ the top of a forum near your nick; i PMd you, so just click "reply in the PM.

[jukes]

47. check PM

again. goodnight & goodluck!

[peacefreak]

51. I'm sorry. I know how you feel.

I had to do that with a good friend of mine. She was/is a brilliant artist. During one of those many of those 2a.m. calls, she told me that she had driven over some one's lawn on the way to see her grandkids. That sent chills down my spine.
She came to see me shortly after & I confronted her. I said I couldn't continue our friendship because I couldn't continue watching her destroy herself or possibly injure those around her.
Awhile back I spoke to her son. After five years she is still angry with me. A part of me felt sanctimonious, but I also felt I would be condoning her behavior.
I miss her. She has one of the kindest hearts I've ever known. My solace is that if she still mad, she must know on some level I spoke the truth.

[bettyellen]

53. brilliant, self destructive.. we could be talking about the same person...

and you never want to believe that such kind hearted people could be driving drunk and hurting their loved ones and then playing it down like it's nothing. i know what you mean about the sanctimonious part, i am not always an angel myself. but he was just being really scary and starting to flame out over weird stuff. he seemed to be getting upset because of not meeting enough young cute guys (we are 5 minutes from NYC- and if he had a job, yeah, he could find a much younger boyfriend in a minute) . i dunno, even before the drinking started i saw there was a lot of self sabotage and really unrealistic expectations. but he had really seemed that he was getting his shit together, that he was on the brink... but there was some obsessive compulsive thing stopping him. he had been working on a show reel (motion graphics, like in ads and videos) and fixing it and fixing it and doing nothing else for i don't know, six or seven months and it's never good enough. he blew through all these deadlines and never sent it out to 1/2 dozen people who were interested in seeing it and helping him find work. the last time i saw him, he couldn't even get the computer to play the damned thing because he was hitting the wrong keystrokes. that was one week off the wagon.
he's not going to forgive me too easily, he might never. it's not who he is. i knew if i brought it up i was risking that. but i had given him a few years of patience before. i don't think that did either of us any good. so it's done. i wish him well, it's hard knowing he's three blocks away and in so much pain, but he has got to want to fix things. it's not enough that everybody else wants it for him. i felt really guilty last night because he looked so awful, i didn't want him to know i saw him like that. i know i shouldn't feel guilty, i was hoping it might help him someday.

[SarahB]

52. Get him out of your life.

In my opinion, people need to grow up and get the damn help they need. I have dealt with someone who ruined their life with booze for ten years before he met me, then think minor relapse blips aren't "a big deal". Yeah, he always stops and it's never "that bad", but it's about the emotional detachment. Any drunk that comes into my life again will have the door hit them in the a$$ before they know what hits them. I'm done with compassion. :7

[bettyellen]

54. compassion doesn't seem to work, but it's so hard to detach.

i have to remember the rough years, all the crap i put up with. when i saw him i did feel reallly sorry. but i get so pissed wondering how he could allow himself to go there again. he knew it was a sinkhole. he had no illusions about being able to handle it. he made his choice. i ha to make mine. it was good to hear from former drinkers, they've supported me very strongly and i feel much better about it. thank you.

[Mrs. Venation]

55. My Two Brothers Are Alcoholics

I know what you're going through. My youngest brother, Randy, is sober, thank goodness. My oldest brother, Woody, can't seem to stay sober for more than ten days or so.

I have nothing to do with Woody when he's drinking. He knows my boundaries, and I refuse to let him violate them, in spite of my mother's trying to force me to do that at times.

I am going to have to fight a battle with my family regarding Woody. He is disabled -- paralyzed on his right side -- but he is capable of taking care of himself. He's 51 years old, and my parents manage his money and pay his bills. Their reason is that it keeps him from being evicted for not paying his rent. An ulterior motive is that keeping his funds prevents him from buying half-gallons of vodka. When I was home last month my mother mentioned that Woody will need a guardian when she and dad have passed on. I said he can learn to take care of himself. She said he'll drink himself to death. I said if he does that, it's his decision, and I will not let anyone make me responsible for his sobriety. Bertha and I have dreams and plans, and they do not include being responsible for Woody.

The battle is not being waged at this time; I have to make another trip down home to do that. The hardest part will be to make Randy, Woody and my parents understand that I am not taking this position because I don't love Woody. To the contrary, I am taking this position precisely because I do love him. I believe he can be self-sufficient; I believe he can live a clean and sober life, but he has to want to do that for himself. It won't work if someone attempts to force sobriety on him.

Alcoholics are quite manipulative, bettyellen. They don't want to take responsibility for their own behavior and they can be quite good at making the people who love them enable their self-destruction. You can love your friend even if you don't like him. God knows there are plenty of times when I don't like Woody, but there is never a time when I don't love him.

Your only responsibility is to protect your own soul.

Here's a great big hug for you; we all need hugs from time-to-time.

:hug:

Mrs. Venation