About alcohol traditions
My mother is the daughter of an alcoholic, her father died at the age of 40 from a heart attack. All I know about my grandfather is that he drank and raised aquarium fish. Mom never told me anything - neither about her childhood, nor about her first husband. I think she has a lot of unspoken pain in her soul. I don’t ask: in our family it’s not customary to climb into each other’s souls. We suffer in silence, like partisans, with an expression of love, by the way, about the same story.
I have never seen my mother drunk, which I cannot say about my father. Mom drank like everyone else - on holidays. Grandmothers also drank, preferring strong drinks. I remember these family holidays: kind, cheerful adults, gifts, delicious food, good mood and bottles. Of course, no one could have imagined that I would grow up and become an alcoholic. I saw that all adults drink, and I knew that when I grow up, I will too, because drinking on a holiday is as natural as eating a goose or a cake.
Early, at the age of six, I tried beer (my parents let me take a sip), and at the age of thirteen or fourteen at the festive table they already poured me a little champagne. In high school, I learned what vodka is.
I almost don’t remember my wedding: when my parents left, I started drinking vodka with friends - and that’s it, then failure
My boyfriend introduced me to vodka - we started dating in the 10th grade. I didn't really like him, but everyone thought he was cool. A couple of months later, we were already drinking a bottle of vodka together every day. After school, they bought a bottle, drank it from a guy at home and had sex. Then I went to my house and sat down to do my homework. My parents never suspected me of anything. I quickly developed a tolerance for alcohol - it was bad only the first couple of times. This is a wake-up call: if you feel normal after a lot of alcohol, then your body has adjusted.
How an alcoholic talks
After school, I entered the Faculty of Journalism. In the second year, she got married and transferred to a correspondence course: she was too lazy to go to college. She got married just to get away from her parents. No, I remember being deeply in love, but I also remember my own thoughts before the wedding. I smoke in the yard and think: maybe, well, why am I doing this? But there is nowhere to go - the banquet is appointed. Okay, I think I’ll go, and if anything, I’ll get a divorce! I almost don’t remember that wedding: when my parents left, I started drinking vodka with friends - and that’s it, then a failure. Memory lapses, by the way, are also a bad bell.
The future husband at that time lived in the editorial office of the newspaper in which he worked. My parents rented an apartment for us and we started living together.
I have always considered myself ugly and unworthy of love and respect. Perhaps for this reason, all my men were either drinkers or drug addicts, or both. Once my husband brought heroin, and we got hooked. Gradually sold everything that could be sold. There was often no food at home, but there was almost always heroin, cheap vodka or port.
One day my mother and I went to buy clothes for me. July, heat, I'm in a T-shirt. Mom noticed injection marks on her arm and asks: “Are you injecting?” “Mosquitoes bit me,” I answer. And mom believes.
Typical alcoholic logic: he never takes responsibility for what happens to him
I remember in detail one day from that period. We were visited by a couple of my classmates. At the height of the booze, we go to a cafe, where we run out of money, and a classmate leaves a gold ring as a pledge. We go outside to catch a taxi. A police car pulls up in front of us. We are drunk, my husband has an open bottle of champagne in his hands. They want to take the guys to the department, and I, being so brave, declare that I have acquaintances in the traffic police. I go around the car to write down the number, winter, slippery - I fall, look at my leg and understand that it is somehow strangely twisted. In a second - hellish pain. The cops immediately turned around and left, and I ended up in the hospital. For nine months with two broken legs.
One fracture was difficult. I had two operations, they put the Ilizarov apparatus. At the same time, I continued to drink, even while lying in the hospital - my husband brought port wine. Somehow she got drunk, being in a cast, fell and pierced her lower lip with a tooth. But in my head there was no causal relationship between what happened to me and alcohol. I thought that it happened by chance, that I was just unlucky, because anyone can fall, and indeed, “the cops are to blame for everything.” The typical logic of an alcoholic is that he never takes responsibility for what happens to him.
About memory lapses
My first husband and I divorced a couple of years after we got married. I fell in love with his friend. Then another and another...
When I was twenty-two, my father's friend invited me to write scripts for a youth series. It was in all respects a pleasant job: I wrote at most a week a month, and the rest of the time I walked and drank. In the same year, my grandmother died, leaving me her apartment, in which I made a real hangout.
In a relatively sober state, fear and anxiety are the main feelings of those years. It's scary when you don't remember what happened to you yesterday. Just once - and consciousness wakes up. You can find your body anywhere - in a friend's apartment, in a hotel room, on bare ground outside the city, or on a park bench. At the same time, you have only a vague idea of how you got here, and you have no idea at all what you have done and what the consequences will be. You're just scared and dark. Why is it dark? Is it still morning or is it already evening? What day is today? Have your parents seen you? You start checking the phone, but there is no phone - apparently, you lost it again. Trying to put the puzzle together. Does not work.
About trying to stop drinking
I took it with hostility when someone hinted at me about my problems with alcohol. At the same time, I considered myself so terrible that when they laughed on the street, I looked around, sure that they were laughing at me, and if they said a compliment, I snapped - they probably scoff or want to borrow money.
There was a time when I thought about committing suicide, but after making a couple of demonstrative attempts, I realized that I didn’t have enough gunpowder for a real suicide. I considered the world a disgusting place, and myself the most unfortunate person on earth, it is not clear why I ended up here. Alcohol helped me survive, with it I at least occasionally felt some semblance of peace and joy, but it also brought more and more problems. All this resembled a foundation pit, into which stones flew at great speed. It must have overflowed at some point.
The last straw was the story of the stolen money. Summer 2005, I'm working on a reality show. There is a lot of work, the launch is coming soon, we plow for twelve hours a day without days off. And here's luck - for once we were released early, at 20.00. My girlfriend and I grab cognac and fly to relieve tension in the long-suffering grandmother's apartment. After (I don't remember) a friend put me in a taxi and told me my parents' address. I had something about $1,200 with me - the money was not mine, “workers”, it was the taxi driver who stole it from me. And, judging by the state of my clothes, he just threw me out of the car. Thank you for not raping or killing.
I remember how, having once again distinguished myself, I told my mother: maybe I should code? She replied: “What are you thinking? You just need to pull yourself together. You're not an alcoholic!" Mom didn't want to face reality simply because she didn't know what to do with it.
Out of desperation, I still went to encode. I wanted to take a break from the troubles that kept falling on me every now and then. I wasn't going to stop drinking forever, but rather I was taking a sober vacation.
I didn't get sober, I just didn't drink alcohol.
In honor of the encoding, my parents gave me a trip to St. Petersburg. The three of us went and stayed with my relatives. Parents with them, of course, drank - how could it be without it on vacation. I couldn't bear to see them drunk. I somehow could not stand it and said in a rage: “Well, why can’t you not drink at all?” Petersburg saved me. I ran away in its rain, got lost among the canals, and then I definitely decided that I would return here to live.
I lasted a year and a half on encoding (it was standard hypnosis encoding), and my affairs seemed to go smoothly: I met my future husband, there were much fewer problems at work, I began to look decent and earn money, stopped losing phones and money, I got my license, my parents bought me a car. But almost every day I drank non-alcoholic beer, and my husband drank alcoholic beer with me. I didn't get sober, I just didn't drink alcohol.
Non-alcoholic beer is a ticking time bomb. Someday it will be replaced by alcohol, and then the dynamite will work. One evening, when my zero was out of stock, I decided to try the regular one. It was scary (in case of admission, the encoder promised a stroke and a heart attack), but I'm brave.
Encoding is a good thing on one condition: if you put yourself on pause, start changing your life, actively develop towards sobriety, solve the problems that led you to alcoholism. It is important to move in the other direction.
Having decoded, I, as they say, reached for alcohol. It was a huge - even by my standards - binge. Alcohol returned to my life, as if it never left it. Six months later, I found out I was pregnant.
About Pain Peak
I didn’t think about the child (to be honest, I’m still not sure that motherhood is mine), but my mother constantly said: “I was born when your grandmother was 27, I also at 27, it’s time for you to give birth to a girl” .
I thought that perhaps my mother was right: I am married, and besides, all people give birth. At the same time, I did not ask myself: “Why do you need a child? Do you want to look after him, be responsible for him? Then I did not ask myself questions, I did not know how to talk to myself, to hear myself.
I searched the Internet for stories of women who also drank and gave birth to healthy children.
When I found out about the pregnancy, I was not at all happy, but I promised myself that I would stop drinking and smoking. Gradually. I managed to slow down by giving up my favorite strong drinks, but I couldn’t stop drinking completely. Every day I promised myself that I would quit tomorrow, and I searched the Internet for stories of women who also drank and gave birth to healthy children.
At the seventh month of pregnancy, a placental abruption occurred, I had an emergency caesarean, the child died, and I went into a binge, devoured by guilt for drinking and refusing to lie down for preservation. Blaming yourself was commonplace. He did it, he confessed - and you can live on without changing anything.
At that time, I already had a very severe hangover, I was seriously afraid of delirium tremens. Now it is already difficult to describe this state… You cannot do anything. The head is cracking. Grabs the heart. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold, you can't lie still, your body is twitching, you're not able to eat and drink, you throw yourself on vitamins - nothing helps. You can’t fall asleep without light and TV, and even with them it doesn’t work very well - sleep is intermittent and sticky. And a huge anxiety, one that is bigger than you: something is about to happen.
I remember sitting in a car with a friend, and I said: my husband forbids me to drink, I probably have to quit, otherwise he will leave. Girlfriend nods sympathetically - hard, they say, you understand. It was August 2008: my first attempt to tie myself.
About living with sobriety
Alcohol is a very hard form of recreation. Now I'm amazed at how my body could handle it all. I was treated, tried to quit and broke down again, almost lost faith in myself.
I finally stopped drinking on March 22, 2010. Not that I decided that it was on the 22nd, on the bright day of the vernal equinox, that I stopped drinking, cheers. It was just one of the many attempts that led to the fact that for almost seven years I did not drink. Not a drop. My husband does not drink, my parents do not drink - without this support, I think nothing would have happened.
At first, I thought something like this: when he saw that I had stopped drinking, God would come down to me on the ground and say: “Yulyasha, what a clever girl you are, well, finally waited, now everything will be fine! I will reward you now as it should be - you will be the happiest with me.
To my surprise, it wasn't like that. Gifts did not fall from the sky. I was sober - and that's it. Here it is, my whole life - the light is like in an operating room, you can't hide. For the most part, I felt lonely and terribly unhappy. But against the background of this global misfortune, for the first time I tried to do other things, for example, to talk about my feelings or to train willpower. This is the most important thing - if you can’t go the other way, you should at least lie down in that direction, make at least some body movement.
The first year of sobriety is hard. You are so ashamed of your past that you want one thing: to dissolve, to go underground. I took my husband's last name, changed my phone number and email address, retired from social networks and distanced myself from friends as much as possible. All I had was me, who drank away fourteen years of my life. who didn't know herself. For the first time I was alone with myself, I learned to talk to myself. It was unusual - to live completely without anesthesia, to be inseparably present in your life, without hiding or running away. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life.
A couple of years before I stopped drinking completely, I became a vegetarian. I think the recovery process started exactly when I first thought about what (or rather, who) I eat, about the fact that in the world, besides me, there are other creatures who live and suffer, that someone else could be worse than me. Asceticism appeared in my life, which developed me and made me stronger.
Sometimes I remember myself and I don't believe that it was me and not the character from the movie "Trainspotting". Thank God, I was able to forgive myself and finally begin to treat myself well - with love and care. It was not easy and took a lot of time, but I managed (with the help of a psychotherapist). The next step is to develop, albeit slowly and slowly, but go forward every day.
In the summer of 2010, my husband and I quit smoking. I started meditating. Every free minute I read affirmations and convinced myself that I could handle everything.
Three years ago I started. At first, it was something like a diary for me, a platform for reflection: I wrote because I felt an inner need. At first, no one read the blog, but, one way or another, it was a statement about myself - I am, yes, I drank, but I was able to quit, I live.
Beautiful wealthy women come to me, they have husbands and children, and everything seems to be fine. Only every day they secretly drink a bottle of red wine
Then I realized that sitting and reflecting is the same as doing nothing. Because there are thousands like me. They are just as helpless, they do not understand how to stop the war within themselves. Therefore, now I am consulting for people with similar problems. Everyone has different degrees of addiction: beautiful wealthy women come to me, they have husbands and children, and everything seems to be fine. Only every day they secretly drink a bottle of red wine. It is not customary to talk about this, but almost every second person in our country drinks with one frequency or another. That is, drink regularly. And few people admit it to themselves.
I did not want to be ashamed of myself and my past - it bothered me, I felt not free. So I plucked up the courage to talk about alcohol addiction so that alcoholism would no longer be treated as something shameful or top-secret.
I'm being honest: I'm not a psychologist or a narcologist. I am a former alcoholic. And I, unfortunately or fortunately, know too much about how to stop drinking and how not to do it. I try to help those who have realized for themselves that they want to live soberly and are ready to do something for this. In this case, the more information, the better. Therefore, I am here and share my experience - how I drank and how I live now.
We thank the photographer Ivan Troyanovsky, the stylist and the Ukrop cafe for their help in shooting.
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My name is Victor, I have been living all my life in Pushkino, Moscow Region, now I am 54 years old. It all started when I was a little over 30: I left my job at school, because the salary was not enough for anything, but I had to support my family. I bought my own minibus, took up freight transportation. Sometimes I worked at a construction site. The work was hard but rewarding. Then it became possible to make flights to Europe and bring parts for foreign cars, and I opened my own shop in Pushkino. But he felt that his strength was less and less, although he was still young. I, like many men, sometimes drank a little more than normal to relax. It seemed to me that there was nothing wrong with that. Until I was informed that my father had died. I rarely visited him and the neighbors were the first to know about his death, although 8 days had already passed. As the examination showed, he died while drunk.
I was seriously scared, my wife said for a long time that you should not drink more than you should and decided to encode from alcohol out of harm's way. I went to the first clinic I came across, where, after a short conversation, I was given an implant for 3 years, they said that if I drink, it will be bad, I might even die. I didn’t drink even longer, probably about 10 years, not a drop. By that time, the son had grown up, relations with his wife were strained and periodically talked about a divorce. I began to drink sometimes, just to not be so sad. The business somehow worked, so there was money for good alcohol. Acquaintances began to appear, with whom he sometimes spent evenings over a bottle or two.
As my wife later said, during this period she bought and poured advertised anti-drunk drugs on me, but neither I nor she felt the effect of them and I didn’t stop drinking, on the contrary: I started using even more. My wife sometimes looked for me all over Pushkino, found me unconscious, dirty. The store had to be closed because I was unable to run it. When the wife's brother arrived from Moscow, he was shocked that she endures this in the house. I did not work, I sat at home all day long, drank, watched TV, and my wife worked, cleaned, cooked.
My wife explained to her brother that she did not want any of her friends or relatives to know that I was drinking. Then her brother put me and my wife in a car and took me to the First Step in Pushkino for anonymous treatment for alcoholism. I don't remember this, of course, just because I was drunk. Something cleared up, already in the office at the clinic, when I was on a drip. Headache, thirsty, nauseated. But you can endure. I won’t say that I was in the best condition, but I am still surprised at the tact and patience of the narcologist and the nurse.
I found out that I would stay in the clinic for treatment of alcohol addiction for about a month, then I would undergo a course of rehabilitation, psychocorrection. It was disgusting from myself, as if I was some kind of helpless and could not stop drinking on my own. Yes, in the process of treatment, I wanted to quit everything and run away many times, because working with a psychotherapist only seems like empty chatter, and when all your ins and outs are pulled out of you, when you realize how much you ruin the life of your loved ones, how you look from the outside, it becomes unbearable it’s hard, even though it’s not right for a man to complain about mental pain.
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Sad statistics say that once you try a drug, a person does not stop. The environment, drugs and doses change, suicide attempts and overdoses occur, treatment in hospitals and work with a psychologist, several normal years and again a breakdown.
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Chronic alcoholism is an incurable disease, but some manage to achieve a stable remission and stop drinking alcohol. Others gradually descend down the social ladder until they finally degrade. Most addicts make attempts to stop abusing alcohol, which are not always successful. For those who are accustomed to go on a long binge, the stories of alcoholics can give an impetus to stop drinking alcohol as soon as possible.
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“When I was kicked out of my next job with a bang, I realized that something had to be done. I am quite mature enough not to drink. I wanted to stop drinking: there was no doubt anymore, I admitted that I was an alcoholic.
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I was born in Minsk in a prosperous family. None of the relatives suffered from alcoholism, let alone drug addiction. For the first 4 years at school, he was the best student in the class. I remember well that I read more than 100 words per minute in the first grade! But my behavior has always been unimportant: I wanted to express myself, to assert my superiority.
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My childhood was almost no different from the childhood of my peers. The only difference that I would highlight is that since childhood I have seen the negative that drinking alcohol brings to a person's life. My father, and later my older brother, were alcoholics.
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I started using drugs at the age of 24 when I was in college. There were no prerequisites for this: I could boast of excellent friends, a good job. In my senior year, I had a friend who used heroin. At our first meeting, of course, she did not tell me about this, and I found out that she was a drug addict about two months later. A friend did not use it intravenously, but smoked. At that moment, too many things piled on my shoulders, and I was tired. I lived far away from relatives, supported myself financially, studied and worked. Plus, for some reason, I was tormented by a feeling of loneliness. And when a friend smoked heroin in front of me, I also wanted to try. She seemed to me so cheerful, calm, carefree, looking at her, I decided that the drug would help get rid of problems and feelings of isolation. And that was the first time I tried it.
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Yulia Ulyanova was an alcoholic for 14 years. She told Poster Daily about how people actually become addicted to alcohol, whether it is possible to stop drinking completely, and why it is most difficult to forgive yourself.
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Hello. My story began in autumn 2009. At this time, my husband became addicted to drugs, but I did not know this yet. We were married for 7 years at that time. Relations began to deteriorate, frequent quarrels, scandals, I thought that he fell out of love with me. At the end of the winter, he started having problems at work. He had his own cafe and the landlords kicked him out. At the beginning of March, he said that he wanted to go to a sanatorium for a week, that his nerves were failing, and in the clinic where he was observed, the therapist gave him the address of some sanatorium. And at one fine moment, the husband came, packed his things and left for the sanatorium. He said he would be back in a week. To say that I was shocked is to say nothing. At this time it was necessary to take out all the equipment from the cafe. To my requests to wait and lie down later, he said that it was more important for him. When he arrived at the sanatorium, he called and said that everything was fine, he arrived and went to bed. All week I could not get through to him, the phone was switched off. I was all on my nerves, what was happening, I did not understand. During this week, I called all my relatives and friends, no one knew exactly where he went. I went to the clinic to find out which doctor sent him and where. I was told that the last time he was in the clinic was in early January. All that was left was to wait. He arrived joyful and contented on Sunday evening. I no longer had the strength or desire to find out something, to understand something, I did not want to endure such an attitude. At my request to get out of my life, he was very surprised. Within a week, he packed his things and moved in with his parents.
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I want to tell you about my relationship with alcohol. Thanks to him, my third marriage is already crumbling!!!)) marriage. They drank together with their first husband, drank only beer, did not look at the degrees. Five seven liters on weekends and 3-4 liters on weekdays. We lived for 10 years and somehow we managed to stop at the end of the marriage, or rather, I almost succeeded. I quit and my husband drank two liters every day, but in a smaller dose. And then my friend from Moscow arrives and ... I went into the gap. Outcome. fight with her husband hysteria and divorce.
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The first day of autumn in Bitsevsky Park. Edge with barbecue, set tables, but without alcohol. The DJ plays trendy music for two hundred guests. Anyone who wanders into the light is given a wooden keychain with "17 NA" burned into it. No conspiracy theories - this is the logo of the Semnashka group (from drug hospital No. 17, where, in fact, meetings are held) of the international community Narcotics Anonymous (AN). A forest banquet is arranged in honor of the fourth anniversary of the creation of the group. The Izvestia correspondent came here to talk with a drug addict who had quit more than two years ago. Mikhail is a cheerful, cheerful man of about 50 in appearance - he smiles broadly. The former drug addict in him is given out only by slightly reddish, as if inflamed, hands. The eyes are clear, open, alive. He very frankly told Izvestia his story. He did this with one goal - to convey to those who are now suffering from addiction that it is possible to get out of this hell. In Narcotics Anonymous, which helped Mikhail stay alive, this is called "bringing the message of recovery." (The specifics of the interlocutor's speech style are preserved.)
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The first time I tried alcohol was at the age of 13. I think it was beer. My classmate and I bought two bottles with pocket money and drank them right on the embankment. We were very exhausted in the sun, and we barely made it home (a few rubles were not left for the tram). I can’t say that I liked this experience, but I still have a feeling of my own maturity and coolness: here I am, buying my own beer.
YURI: Hello everyone! I'm Yuri, a former alcoholic from St. Petersburg. If someone is unable to break out of the alcorism and needs support, we can also communicate through the microphone. Do not be shy, I will be glad if I can support.
If someone tells you that there are no former alcoholics, do not believe it, this is a widespread myth. I decided to write the history of my alcoholism from the very beginning. And it started in childhood...
ALINA: I want to tell you about my love affair with alcohol. Thanks to him, my third marriage is already crumbling!!!)) marriage. They drank together with their first husband, drank only beer, did not look at the degrees. Five seven liters on weekends and 3-4 liters on weekdays. We lived for 10 years and somehow we managed to stop at the end of the marriage, or rather, I almost succeeded. I quit and my husband drank two liters every day, but in a smaller dose. And then my friend from Moscow arrives and ... I went into the gap. The result. A fight with her husband, a tantrum and a divorce ...
TITO: Breaking alcohol addiction. My experience.
Last used - from 23 to 25.09.2016.
On a strict schedule. In the morning, everything that is on fire. Until the shutdown. On Mon 26.09 I felt like a deflated ball, penetrated in one place. I began to come to myself only by Thu 29.09.
All these days knocked out of life, games. Systematic use makes it impossible to achieve goals. Unfortunately, any technique leads to a rigid scheme ...
INGA: Good morning! I don’t even know where to start… apparently I have come to the point that I realize and understand that I need help and support. I always thought that I could handle everything on my own, but apparently this is not the case. I am 33, daughters 1.6. I didn’t drink the whole pregnancy, very rarely wine. As a child, my father drank heavily. My addiction started at 26, but there were no binges. Things got worse after giving birth. Of course, I can refer to post-hearth depression, but I'm afraid that by doing so I am only trying to justify ...
ROMAN: Hello! My name is Roman, I am 47 years old, I live in Moscow and I consider myself an alcoholic. To be honest, such a social status categorically does not suit me !!
My story is banal, but not yet solved, and therefore I come to you for help ...
I'll start my mess with a positive. I have a family, two children (girls 21 years old and 6 years old, I love them very much), a wonderful wife, by the way, who rarely drinks. Things are going well overall! You have your own comfortable housing and your own business…
VLADIMIR: Hello. I’m 24 years old, my story is like this ... It all started at the age of 13, after school I liked to drink a bottle of beer with my classmates, but there was no big craving, we only drank in the spring when it was warm, in winter no one thought about beer .At the age of 14, I tried vodka for the first time plus polished with beer, after that I thought that I would never drink again. For a long time I didn’t think about alcohol at all, I had completely different hobbies, music, sports, dating girls, disco I was mad...
“We met with friends. I was a student, he is a recent graduate of Moscow State University. I have known friends for many years, we used to go to the same school. Ordinary intelligent Moscow company. They sang songs, drank wine - like everyone else, it seems to me. He was handsome, sang well, joked witty - the soul of the company. I was very flattered that he drew attention to me. The novel spun quickly and developed very rapidly. We walked around the city, he sang the Beatles to me, read some poetry, told stories about Moscow streets. It was interesting and not boring with him: bright, smart and at the same time soft and kind. I fell in love without memory, of course.
Literally three months later, we decided to move in together. Each of us lived with our parents, we did not want to move in with one of them, we were eager to start our lives, to create a “real family”. Everything was new, everything was great.
We rented an apartment and moved in together. Once they passed by the registry office, he jokingly offered to come in, I supported the joke - they submitted an application. How long had we known each other by that time, six months? Maybe a little more. It seemed to me then that it should be so, that I finally met “my man”, my grandfather went to get married 2 weeks after we met. And then he lived for 50 years in love and harmony.
Played a wedding. After the wedding, his friend from another city came to us, then for the first time I saw my husband very drunk. But I didn’t attach any importance, well, which of us didn’t get drunk?
We began to live. The first months were very good. About two months after the wedding, I became pregnant. We were happy, he spoiled me with goodies, took me to the doctor, attached a photo with an ultrasound above the desktop. At the same time, he drank, but it did not really bother me. Well, a bottle of beer in the evening. He's not lying around drunk! Well, a jar of cocktails. The fact that he at least something, but drank every day, then for some reason did not really bother me.
About two months before the birth, he went on his first binge.
I was completely unprepared for this. All my life I thought that drinking bouts happen to “declassed elements”, it’s “hanuriks under the fence” that go on binges and “eat vodka”. But with me, with my relatives, with my friends, in our environment this cannot happen, because it cannot, period. We are educated intelligent people, our parents are educated intelligent people, well, what a binge. However, it was him. For six days my husband lay, drank and vomited. He didn't do anything else. I didn’t know what to do, so I obediently brought him “for a hangover” (he said that otherwise he would die, that now 50 grams of a hangover and not a drop more). I brought food to his bed that he didn't eat. Could not. Huge as an airship, with her pregnant belly, she went to the local supermarket and bought beer, which she herself had never drunk, burning with humiliating shame. I could not bring myself to tell someone about this, to consult with someone: I told all my friends and family that I had an ideal marriage, a wonderful husband and not life at all, but a fairy tale. And here it is. Gradually, he himself got out of the binge - he simply could not drink anymore. I really wanted to forget the past week. And we all pretended like nothing happened.
Then a child was born. I wrote a diploma and worked from home, the child did not sleep well, so did we. I started arguing with my husband. After a couple of weeks, he went on a drinking binge again. I was horrified. I didn't give him a drop of alcohol for any hangover, and he was still drunk in the smoke every day. When he finally sobered up, about five days later, I made a row and "big talk".
He swore and swore that this was the last time. That it's just the stress of the last few months. I believed. But it was impossible to believe. That's how hell began.
Our life went according to a repeating scenario: for a week he drank soundly, practically lying down, getting up only to go to the toilet. Then for several days he did not drink at all, as far as I could tell, but remained half drunk. Then he began to drink a little every other day. Then every day. Then drink again. Such an endless circle of 3-5 weeks.
I got close to his older sister. She told me that his father was actually an alcoholic, and that his family tried their best to hide it from me. That my husband has been drinking for a long time, and his family held their breath when we met - in the wake of romantic happiness, he hardly drank. They only prayed that I would not find out about this before the wedding, and then they put pressure on us to have a baby (but preferably three and as soon as possible). That his second sister moved out of the house at the age of 17 - just not to live in an apartment with two alcoholics.
I loved him, I loved our daughter, and for a long time the very thought of divorce seemed blasphemous to me. He is sick, I said to myself, he is unhappy, who am I to be if I leave him in such a situation? I have to save him. And I tried to save. Somewhere after the third or fourth binge, I began to insist that we turn to a narcologist. I heard that there is coding and stitching, but I didn’t really know what it was. But I knew for sure that alcoholism is a disease, which means that it must be treated. Why after the third or fourth? Because I denied. I was hiding from reality. I didn't believe that all this was happening to me. I thought I did. That it can't be, because it can never be. But sometime, what cannot be, happens for the third time in a row, we have to admit that it exists.
He was not violent and aggressive, he did not try to hit me. He was a quiet alcoholic, just lying and suffering. When he was drunk, he started to say things. Either he said that I was the dream of his whole life, then, on the contrary, that he hates me. Either he said that he would die soon, or that he was a martyr. That I am a martyr. He was emotionally thrown from one extreme to another. And along with it, I was thrown.
I never drank with him. I was a nursing mother, the right girl. It never even crossed my mind to join his drinking. I was looking for a way out. First on the internet. I read articles by narcologists, I sat on a forum where there were relatives of alcoholics. There I learned that there are special groups. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, only for relatives. Called to support, not to fall into co-dependence, to give an opportunity to speak out. And I joined this group.
The group consisted of several dull women and a curator. Also dull. The first thing the curator said when opening the group was “An alcoholic will never stop being an alcoholic.” And then the participants began to speak. There were a few simple rules: no interruption, no criticism, and no judgment at all. Talk one by one. Do not demand to speak from someone who is not ready. And the women spoke. And I listened to them and was inwardly horrified. Their alcoholic relatives—husbands, fathers, brothers, mothers—were not the dregs of society. They were ordinary people - of those whom I used to respect. Professor at some institute. Railway engineer. School teacher. Even a doctor. And they all drank.
In parallel, I was looking for a narcologist. The cheerleading girls were skeptical about the idea. The narcologists did not help them. They told all sorts of horror stories (I'm not sure from my own experience) about the terrible side effects of stitching and coding, how people became disabled or even died. But I was persistent. I thought that since alcoholism is a disease, a doctor is needed. Finally, on the recommendation, I found a narcologist. First, she went to him. The first thing he said to me was, “Alcoholics are never exes, do you understand that? An alcoholic may not drink. But he will remain an alcoholic forever.” Then we talked for probably an hour. He said what I already knew: that in order to have a result, the patient’s desire is needed, that his firm will is needed, that if he doesn’t want, nothing will work, even lie down with bones. And he also said that you can’t “sew up” a person whose blood contains alcohol. It is necessary that at least three days he did not drink.
And I began to persuade my husband to sew up. Beg. Threaten. Beg. Blackmail a child. He said: “Yes, yes, yes.” But he drank. And he lied. Have us began to appear stash in the apartment. I hid money. He is bottles. I took everything from him, to the penny - he went to the grocery store and got drunk with local drunks. If he didn’t take it away, he drank it all away, and he told me that he had lost or been robbed. And again this cycle: binge - a few days of respite - binge. Usually, at the end of a drinking bout, when he was very physically ill, he agreed to sew himself up. But he never went three days without a drop of alcohol.
Over time, he had strange attacks, when he suddenly turned sharply pale, gasped for air. Once he carried the child to wash and suddenly fell. I was nearby, picked up the baby and looked in horror at my husband, who literally slid down the wall. He did not let me call a doctor, he was afraid that I would “sew him up” forcibly. After some time, he recovered himself.
I was grasping at straws. In the support group, women often shared all sorts of folk remedies that would "definitely help." Once there they told me about such a “panacea”: you take, they say, a teaspoon of ammonia, dissolve it in a glass of water, give it to drink in one gulp - and that's it. Will never drink. I came home and told my husband everything honestly. “You,” I say, “want to stop drinking? But you can't? And here is a super tool. You will drink ammonia and more - never! “We were young and stupid. He obediently took the glass from me and took a couple of sips. He goggled his eyes, coughed terribly, collapsed as if knocked down. While I dialed the ambulance number with trembling hands, he woke up, took the phone away from me and said: “If you want to kill me, find an easier way, or something.” And, of course, he didn't stop drinking.
I began to blame myself. I remembered him - a cheerful joker - before the wedding. I guess I'm such a bad wife that he drinks. I went in a dressing gown, I didn’t make up (I remind you - a baby, a diploma, a job), I didn’t do this and that. I ate myself. I somehow forgot that before meeting me he was already an alcoholic. And that one or two weeks between drinking bouts, he continued to be the soul of the company. And what is going on in our house - only I saw.
About a year later, I finally admitted that I needed to get a divorce. While the child is still small, he does not understand and does not repeat after his father. I finally allowed myself to admit that I did everything I could think of, and nothing helped. And that I destroy myself every day, that from my past - easy-going, cheerful, beautiful, self-confident - there remains a pale, unfortunate shadow, forever crying and terribly tired. We talked and sort of agreed on everything. I asked only that he come sober when he visits the child, nothing more. He went to his parents.
I sobbed for almost a day, I was terribly sorry for myself, the child, my beautiful dream (as it seemed to me, embodied in this marriage), my husband, who would completely disappear without me. The next day he returned and said that he could not live without us and was ready to try everything again. And of course I accepted it. We even went to the narcologist together. Only nothing has changed: the next day the husband got drunk again. I kicked him out again, a week later he came back again. We tried to “start over” three more times. After the third time, he went on a binge for two weeks, I packed my things, the child and left the rented apartment for my mother. After a while we divorced through the court.
The first year and a half after the divorce, I was terribly covered. I could not even watch a movie in which the characters drank something, I became physically ill. I pushed my friends not to drink in front of me. Gradually it faded away. Three years later, I was even able to drink a glass of wine myself. But I still definitely feel this smell - the smell of hard drinking and the smell of an alcoholic: it cannot be confused with anything, neither with the consequences of a violent drunkenness, nor with an illness. I sometimes run into people on the subway - decently dressed, clean-shaven - and I recoil, knowing for sure that this is it. I have an alcoholic in front of me. And I feel fear. I once made friends with a woman who also had an experience of living with an alcoholic, and she told me that she felt the same way. It's forever. There are no former alcoholics. And the wives of alcoholics, apparently, too.
