AITAH for wanting to give up on my husband who had become an alcoholic.

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1. I am an alcoholic husband, and no. You are not an asshole for wanting to give up on him if he is still drinking and not at a place where he wants to be sober or better for himself or you or his family.

   This disease, affliction, lack of control, or poor wiring absolutely sucks. No matter what you believe makes people an alcoholic, I can tell you whatever it is is absolutely brutal and the people that end up suffering the most are the people closest to the alcoholic and not the alcoholic themselves especially while they are active in the disease and drinking.

   If he is still drinking he is not going to understand he has a problem right now. He is going to blame everything and everyone around him for the consequences of his drinking and not the drinking itself. The alcohol is going to be doing his thinking for him, telling him “you’re not a drunk, who cares if you have a few drinks to loosen up.” “This person just doesn’t understand, they make x mistakes all the time. I don’t need to listen to them.”

   Alcoholism is brutal because to the outside world and people who don’t suffer from alcoholism it seems like the alcoholic just has a problem with self control and poor decision making. That they don’t care enough about their loved ones or themselves enough to quit and stop at a “normal” amount. On the outside looking in, it appears that the alcoholic is making a personal decision to choose drinking over their loved ones. In reality they aren’t making any decision for themselves at all. The alcohol has actually rewired their brain circuitry to prioritize alcohol and feeling drunk over just about anything else. Their may be some remnants of the person you knew in there and they may know deep down they are no longer in the driver’s seat, but alcohol is not going to let them take the wheel back. It really is like a worm or parasite has manifested inside your brain and you can’t just think it away on your own. It feeds off more alcohol and it is going to direct you to keep feeding it until you are dead or society steps in and forces you into treatment. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen until you hit a point where it has taken over everything and the consequences are very serious.

   So no, you are not an asshole for wanting to leave your husband who is no longer your husband. You are wanting to leave the parasite that has taken over his mind and that is completely understandable. You’re not able to talk to your husband right now. He’s in there somewhere and part of him can hear you but the alcohol is filtering what exactly he can hear or retain. If he is strong willed, he may be able to negotiate with the parasite to come up with an agreement that he will only feed it on weekends, or when no one is around, or only beer instead of the hard stuff. Unfortunately all those negotiations will be short lived, because feeding it only makes it stronger and he will once again be back in the passenger seat, letting alcohol control his mind and actions again.

   If he is telling you he wants to stop and he wants to quit, there is hope. He’s not lying to you even though it may seem that way. Those are glimpses of the real person trying to take control back. He may say he wants to quit and then he goes right back to drinking again a couple days later. Although it may seem like he just lied to your face, he didn’t. He just lost wrestling match with the parasite in his head and is no longer controlling his own actions. He needs help from people who know how to actually remove the control of alcohol and not listen to that parasite when it starts talking to him again.

   Unfortunately, if he is not saying he wants to quit or get sober there is very little you can do for him and leaving him might be your only option. You deserve a fulfilling life too, and are not responsible for fixing him. It is sad. Almost as if you have lost him to cancer or any other life threatening disease. Some people are able to fight cancer and recover. Just like cancer, some people are able to recover from alcoholism and return to their normal selves. Some people do not recover from cancer and it spreads and kills them. Just like cancer, some people are not able to recover alcoholism and it will eventually kill them. The good news is that alcoholism doesn’t kill you as fast as cancer in most cases so the window of opportunity to treat the disease is much larger. The bad news is that unlike cancer, the alcohol actively works on the brain to stop you from treating it. If he is in the throes of the disease and not asking for help or wanting to stop you may have lost him for good. This doesn’t make you an asshole in that scenario. You would be leaving the disease and not the person you knew. An alcoholic who doesn’t want to stop drinking is no longer themselves. Even though they are still physically here, the person you knew is gone and there is no benefit to staying with their living corpse.

   I will keep you and your husband in my thoughts and wish you all the best.