Breathalyzer

[Anonymous]

You should go to Al-anon and ask for their support and gain knowledge on how to deal with being the spouse of an alcoholic. He needs get into AA and find a sponsor. He should be accountable to his sponsor, not you. Depending on how serious his drinking was, he may need rehab if there’s a chance he will go into life-threatening withdrawal. Call your insurance. I am a recovering alcoholic and AA saved my life and has kept me sober. I don’t think it would have been healthy for my marriage if I made my husband an overseer to my sobriety.

[Anonymous]

I agree that this a job for a counselor or sponsor. Not monitoring doesn't mean you don't care about or aren't supportive of your husband. Maybe a couples counselor with an understanding of addiction could help you both with healthy boundaries in a few sessions. You could offer to set it up as a show of support for dh.

[Anonymous]

OP, your instincts are 100% correct. He has to be solely responsible for his sobriety, involving you means he can also blame you if things go awry.

Excellent advice to go to Al Anon and seek counsel from them. I would be weary of asking on a message board of people who may not understand addiction, which clearly several people in this thread do NOT. I do understand it, intimately.

Good luck dear.

[Anonymous]

I think he should be able to send you a text saying 0.0 without the expectation that you do anything if it it 0.5 ... I think a daily check in is fine.

[Anonymous]

Some of the home breathalyzers seem pretty accurate according to online reviews. If you can afford it and he wants it, tell him you have no objection to him getting it. If he wants to report his successes, fine too. But as PP’s have observed, it would be a very bad idea for you to start feeling like you’re responsible for his sobriety. Many people seem to find Al Anon helpful as the spouse of an alcoholic, but it seems also to depend on the meetings they find.

As for your husband, your story calls to mind the question: Three frogs were on a log. One decided to jump off. How many frogs stayed on the log? Answer: all of them, because thinking about taking action is not the same as actually taking action.

“Quitting for a year” is a laudable goal, and some people manage it, even on their own. More people find one or another group helpful. There is nothing like the company of people on the same journey. AA is readily available, accessible on Zoom, and free unless the person decides to donate a dollar or two. Other approaches seem perhaps harder to find, but the point is to do something instead of just making promises to self and others that the person really isn’t capable of carrying out.

Good luck to you both. People don’t have to stay stuck and have their lives ruined by alcohol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He wants your help. You should help him.

It's a good motivator to aim for 0.0 every day and have someone you're trying to prove you can do it to.

I started exercising a few months ago. I proudly report my progress each day like how many minutes I did on the bike, etc to DW. She's supportive, and it motivates me to show her and myself that I'm trying to improve my health.

Not the same thing at all.

[Anonymous]

One day at a time for him. Al-anon for you.

[Anonymous]

Stbx spouse of an alcoholic here, with more experience on this than I would wish on my worst enemy. I think if YOU wanted the breathalyzers, it would be fine to receive them (I wanted them to know my kids were safe) but I agree that if you dont want to be the police for him, a sponsor is a better option. Their job is to help him stay sober and a good one wont take a squabble about a missed test personally. and i think you are also right about the missed tests being a nightmare. One time stbxDH was in CA for a conference and didnt send one at the expected time in the morning, and I was totally panicked and absolutely positive he was passed out cold in his hotel room. I spent all morning trying to track down someone who could go knock, or the hotel to ring me to his room, when he finally woke up and sent me one. it was awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He wants your help. You should help him.

It's a good motivator to aim for 0.0 every day and have someone you're trying to prove you can do it to.

I started exercising a few months ago. I proudly report my progress each day like how many minutes I did on the bike, etc to DW. She's supportive, and it motivates me to show her and myself that I'm trying to improve my health.

So what happens when you miss a day? Does she confront you? Do you fudge the numbers? Are you telling her the number or is the bike logging it so she can see it? If you’re supposed to do 20 minutes and you get a call at 18, and forget to go back and add the last two minutes, do you get credit for mostly doing what you promised or should your wife stand beside you next time to make sure you finish? If you skip a whole week will she check you into a disordered eating treatment facility or trust that you’ll do better even though you already promised that? If she fails to make you take care of yourself, are you going to lash out at her when you don’t lose weight? If you do the work and forget to report it, and she points that out, are you going to resent her nagging? What if she wants to have a donut or sleep in instead of going for a sunrise hike with you? Are you going to feel unsupported? How extensive is your history of denial of your weight/health issues, how much do they interfere with your daily life, and how often have you lied about your eating and exercise habits to your wife in the past? Is your wife a registered dietitian, personal trainer, or medical professional who helps people lose weight/exercise? Is she helping you come up with a plan or are you creating your own routine and following it? Did your doctor say it’s imperative that you start exercising because you were too sedentary and your health was affected or were you reasonably healthy and felt like you could do better? Do you really not get that alcohol addiction is different from exercising and that people often need professional help, not just turning their wife into their mommy, to achieve and maintain sobriety?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH admitted he has a problem with alcohol and he’s working on it. He’s seeing a counselor, is thinking about going to group meetings. Still drinking some - nothing like he was, but he has acknowledged that could happen any day. This has been since June. From my perspective he is making progress, but it is slow going. He has a lot of denial, but I think is become more willing to acknowledge the scope of the problem. I think this is pretty normal.

Today he says he’s going to try for a year of sobriety. But, he’s not sure he can do it, so he wants to get a home breathalyzer and use it daily and send (via app) or show me the results. I said no, I’m not in charge of his sobriety, at some point he’ll be mad at me or resent me for it, and there are a million ways that he can double down on lying or hiding the drinking even with the breathalyzer if that’s what he wants to do (example “I forgot” or “I took it I don’t know why it didn’t send it to you”). There are major trust issues in our marriage due to his drinking and I think this will exacerbate them. I don’t want to be his oversight/accountability for staying sober. I’m very uncomfortable.

He is furious with me. He says he’s asking for my help but I’m refusing to help him, which is mean and hurtful. He is offended/defensive that I think he will react negatively sometime in the future. He thinks this will help rebuild trust. I suggested this may be something to discuss with the counselor and he got angry saying this is his idea, not the counselors.

Does anyone have any experience with home breathalyzers? How did it work out? Is there a benefit to this that I’m not seeing?

I know my husband is hurting and I I know he is trying. I love him and I want to support him. This doesn’t seem like the best way to do that but I’m wondering what others experiences have been.

I agree with the PPs, this isn't your job. I would ask him about what he thinks is not totally working with the counselor. Treatment has evolved and the bolded makes me think he would be a decent candidate for programs like SMART mentioned before or therapists that deal with risk mitigation. He has been able to cut back significantly. If he can learn to drink normally, that could be ok. By all means, if he wants a year totally sober, sure, but a professional should be monitoring him in that journey. He will probably fail, but depending on the infraction that might be ok, but not in a way that aligns with an AA mentality. (ie, doesn't drink for 5 months and has 3 glasses of champagne on his Birthday or one beer on 4th of July). Whatever he decides is best for him though, someone else should be doing this. A daily breathalyzer is ridiculous.