Doing it Dry: Getting Started

I recently quit drinking with my husband. He was drowning himself in alcohol, and I adopted an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” sort of attitude, thinking it was better than continuing to fight all the time. For the record, it wasn’t. It was worse. We fought just as much, or more. The quitting was surprisingly easy. I thought I would struggle with it, and I did have some fears like “How do I go to a (enter any social event here) sober?” or “How do I (enter any activity at home here) sober?”. Turns out, all those things were pretty easy. It was easy not to pour a drink, not to grab a beer. It was easy to chat with coworkers at a party, and fall asleep at night. The husband needed a little more help, and ended up going to a treatment facility that I truly believe saved his life, and our marriage. But even that was pretty easy. He gave them ten days, and they really did give him back his life. Give us back our life. It was just like their commercials. It was an on/off switch. An easy button. I was worried about it at first, spent a lot of time watching for signs that he was drinking, or was about to drink. And he spent a lot of time, watching me, watching him. I would kiss him hello, and he would ask if I was checking if he had alcohol on his breath… and I would respond, “Can’t I just kiss my husband?” while mentally being relieved that I could not, in fact, smell alcohol on his breath. I would open the fridge, and he would say “don’t worry, there’s no beer in there” and I would just be going to grab some juice… or maybe doing a quick scan for beer. I overstepped a little, and he understepped, if there is such a thing (spellcheck assures me there isn’t). I wanted to get the last however many years off my chest, and he wanted to fast forward past all that. I wanted to talk all day about how hard things had been, about things that I was worried about, how much different and better life was now. I would tell him how thankful I was, and how cool it was to do this or that sober. He would ask if I had to bring it up all the time. It wasn’t always easy, it still isn’t, but we are learning together. I move a little slower, he opens up a bit more. We met in the middle, and moved forward from there. He goes to counseling, we go to meetings, he talks with his rehab friends, I’ve reached out to people instead of hiding… we’re figuring it out.