I spent 3 weeks abstaining from alcohol and treating my self-diagnosed, non-existent co-dependency problem. After going 3 weeks without a sip of alcohol, I decided I clearly did NOT have a drinking problem. I went a whole THREE weeks without drinking. And I did it all on my own. No rehab. No AA. It was all me. I also decided that Thomas was NOT going to continue to control my drinking. He wasn’t going to tell me what to do. HE was the real problem. We’d have to have a long conversation about all of this soon, but first, I needed – I mean wanted – a drink. And I did what I want, so there.
Thomas told me when this first happened that he wanted to see all of my receipts from then on to make sure I wasn’t buying any alcohol. He got rid of the majority of the alcohol in the house, and what he kept, he carefully made sure he knew exactly how much was left and exactly where he left it so that I couldn’t even move it. This made drinking tricky, but nothing an alcoholic couldn’t work around. I started with the bottle of vodka, which was the easiest source of alcohol. I had been drinking vodka (and even whiskey) and refilling the bottle with water for a long time, so this was easy. I just had to be sure to fill it back up exactly where it was before and leave the bottle exactly where I found it. But it didn’t take long before I reached the point where I couldn’t dilute it any more without him noticing. I had to leave at least some vodka in the bottle so that Thomas could smell and taste it. Plus, if you put too much water in, condensation starts to form on the top of the inside of the bottle. I knew all of this from experience.
So I needed to get more alcohol, but how? I was able to scrounge up coins around the house to buy a few airplane bottles at the liquor store. That didn’t last long though. What now? Sadly, I came up with the idea of searching for coins outside of the grocery store and in parking lots. This got me a lot of weird looks, and a few friendly people asking if I lost something. Nope, just trying to sneak a drink without my controlling husband finding out, I’d think to myself. Wow, this is what my life has come to. Really?
That didn’t last very long either. I somehow needed to buy alcohol without it showing up on a receipt. I got desperate and started risking it. Once I bought a small box of wine at the grocery store and told Thomas that I lost the receipt. The next day I “dropped” the receipt in the parking lot and it just happened to “fall in a puddle” so all of the ink washed off. I knew he probably wasn’t going to keep buying my excuses, so the next day, I decided I’d go over to my friend’s house. She’d give me something to drink.
At this point, my mind had convinced me that Thomas was completely wrong, and I had the right to drink whether he liked it or not. I didn’t care anymore. So I went to my friend’s house, and as I got there, I somehow accidentally texted Thomas “on the way.” I have no idea how this happened, and I also have no idea how he put two and two together, but the next thing I knew, Thomas was calling me, telling me he had a breathalyzer and if I blew anything over a 0.0, that was it. We would be done.
I was so mad at that point, I really didn’t care. I knew I couldn’t hide it, so I told him I had been drinking. He was…not so nice this time. We were supposed to leave that night to go meet my parents at the beach. I don’t think we spoke the entire car ride. Once we got there, I kept telling him how sorry I was and that I would never do it again. And this time, I really did mean it. I still thought it was his fault, but I didn’t want to get divorced. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s like my brain tricked me or something,” I told him. We spent the next two days barely talking. I had to tell my parents what was going on. I was so ashamed. Of course, I tried to blame it all on him. And I downplayed how much I had been drinking…a LOT. We all sat down – my parents, Thomas, and I – and talked about what was going on. I again told them I wasn’t going to drink ever again. And then we left and headed home.
I honestly wish I knew what was going through my head, because I really did want to stop drinking. I knew Thomas wasn’t going to give me another chance if I drank again. And I really didn’t want to get divorced. So when I ended up the next day at Target buying $100 of baby diapers to get a $35 gift card that Thomas wouldn’t know about, I truthfully don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t ever remember thinking “I shouldn’t drink.” It was more like, “I need to drink. How am I going to drink?” So I bought $100 of diapers, and Thomas didn’t know that I got a $35 gift card in return. What I didn’t know, was that Thomas had met with an attorney and hired a PI to follow me while I used that gift card to buy $5 bottles of wine.
To God Be ALL The Glory!
Love, Grace
