I need help. Please.
I’ll skip all the frilly language. Over Memorial Day weekend I had to call an ambulance for my boyfriend after he woke me up screaming my name from the bathroom at 2:00 in the morning. There was blood absolutely everywhere, from the mouth and the anus. It looked like the fucking Shining. Two surgeries and a blood transfusion later, we’re here. Mallory Weiss tear from gagging, from drinking too much and puking too often. Hypertension, dangerously high blood pressure. I’m in therapy dealing with flashbacks and anxiety around using the restroom at all, fears of the porcelain breaking and slicing me open. It’s a mess and I cry all the time.
I’m 23, he’s 27. He refuses therapy. He’s seeing a psychiatrist (because I forced him to) but I’ve heard the phone calls and he’s not being honest. We’ve agreed to taper down from cheap vodka to a case of beer to four tall boys a night after I found him hiding bottles. But it never goes that way. There’s always more. Before work, after work, in the car, in the driveway, every time he “goes to the bathroom.” And like crabs in a boiling pot, we’re just pulling each other down.
I have my own drinking problem (hence being in the subreddit) but I seriously need help with his. I’m struggling HARD with my own sobriety but I know that I’m actively failing his, knowing it could literally KILL HIM.
TLDR; I’m asking you veterans, people who have been through hell and back and made it out the other side, what worked for you? What did it take to make lasting changes? The fear of literal death isn’t a good enough motivator anymore. Thank you all.