Alcoholism – Life Is More Than Just Being Functional
You really like to party with your friends, have night caps, and drink to relax after work. In fact, just about any time you’re not on the clock, you have a drink in your hand. Alcohol out in the work shed, alcohol on
top of the fridge, your stash of alcohol at your friend’s house – it’s all there for you. You don’t miss work much, you are married with kids, and you keep a roof over your head. You’re life looks like it’s holding together, but is it really OK?
Alcohol Stash Covers The Emptiness and Lack Of Intimacy in Life
You are basically functional this way, yes. Thank goodness your spouse does your bills because you can’t keep track of dates and details very well. You just go to work like you’re supposed to, but that’s about it. You function, but could you really call it a satsifying life? Are you being what you should be to your spouse? To your kids?
You are just a shell with little else meaningful going on inside. The emptiness and lack of purpose or intimacy are too painful to endure without something to take the edge off. So you take the edge off all the time. Your boss and coworkers are probably the ones who see you sober the most. You admit you have kind of a surface relationship with your kids and you go through the motions with your spouse.
Choosing Drinking Over Family Time – Long Term Consequences
If you think there should be more than just this, it might be time for you to start alcohol treatment. You don’t have to be falling apart left and right to have alcoholism. Your relationships are impaired because you
are rarely sober. You have a constant supply in multiple places and make sure it’s well stocked. You choose going to drink with friends over family time in most cases. Sure, you’re not doing anything illegal, but you are setting the stage for a big family fallout over time.
Alcohol treatment can help you understand the role alcohol has in your life. It can help you come out of the haze and see the effects of your alcoholism. You may have health problems emerging that you would have never connected to the alcoholism, which would be much harder to treat over time and with continued drinking. You might just save your marriage if you enter alcohol treatment early enough.
Here’s the other problem – your excuses and behaviors all have negative effects on your children. When they have a present-but-absent alcoholic parent, family dynamics shift in unhealthy ways. The alcoholism becomes the elephant in the living room. Kids want to just love their parents and be loved back, but being drunk a lot prevents this genuine process from going very far.
Alcohol Treatment Helps You Preserve Your Important Relationships
Do you really want to leave this legacy for your kids? Do you want to set the stage for divorce or at least a shallow painful marriage? Do you want to wake up and wonder what you really did for all those years? If not, it’s time to consider alcohol rehab right now. It’s not enough just to be functional. It’s a convenient excuse for a while, but it doesn’t give you much to live on in the future.
Tags: Alcohol Rehab, alcohol-treatment, Alcoholism - Life Is More Than Just Being Functional
