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About my Loss:: I lost my 42 year old husband this year from complications from chronic alcohol abuse. He had severe steatosis of the liver from alcohol, with less than 5% liver function\tissue left due to alcohol.
I don't want to post too many details because I do not want to make him look like a bad person. He was a person just like you and me but had a problem.
He was always a beer drinker, functional alcoholic (worked 40 hours a week, came home and did what he needed to do while drinking beer), took fairly good care of himself (he ate breakfast, lunch and most of the time dinner) so I am at a loss as to why this happened. The youngest of his two brothers, who drinks from the time he gets off work until he passes out and doesn't eat, and he drinks from the time he gets up on the weekends until he passes out than he wakes up to do it again. I don't understand why not him.
I understand that I enabled him as well; picking up his beer whenever he asked, without saying anything.
I don't understand how things got so bad in two years. He went off the deep end when he changed jobs in May of 2013, after being at his previous employer for 10 years.
Only when he was so drunk, did he talk about physical abuse that happened when he was a child. A family member wants to discount this accusation saying that he never seen any physical abuse and that alcoholics make lies up to make themselves feel better about what they are doing. I don't believe this at all. I heard the hurt and anger in my husband's voice. I guess it was too hurtful for him to face sober so he never wanted to talk to anyone about it. He buried it for many years. I believe this was the underlying cause of his problems with alcohol. Whatever triggered these memories had to do with the change in jobs or the people he worked with.
He tried to get help. He went through detox than Ambulatory Outpatient (what a joke) but relapsed. A week later, he voluntarily went to an inpatient rehabilitation facility. He went through detox than entered a 15-day program but with my approval he came home after a week. He did attend AA meetings.
I grieve every day for him although we were separated at the time of his death because he started drinking Vodka and lying to me. I could no longer have this behavior around our daughter who was 4 years old at the time so I asked him to move out and get himself together. There was nothing more that I could do unless he asked for help himself. I had to do things that I didn’t want to do but I had no other choice because my hands were tied.
So many things happened. I feel guilty for the things that I said to him; I reacted to what he said to me with anger and hatred, not really meaning any of it. I was angry at what he was doing to our family, and himself. I truly loved him. He leaves behind a 5 year old daughter and our 7 year old parrot.