Ever since spaceman turned things around, every single day has been bonus after bonus of progress and healing. And just as I suspected, once we got him on the right track, the two of us would blossom in untold ways.
At this point, too many (good) things are piling up that I would like to share, but without telling the backstory of this one big thing, the significance of it and everything else now unfolding cannot be realized... not by anyone who doesn't yet know the backstory anyway.
So here goes:
Spaceman has AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder). Denial is a bitch, let me tell you. And so is Vodka! I have received quite the education in dealing with alcoholism, and yet, every single person and their circumstances are unique. I don't pretend to understand anyone else's situation, but I can tell our story a bit.
AUD is debilitating. It does not matter if you have a heart of gold or coal. And spaceman's heart is a rainbow of goodness. For that reason, I found that although this quite serious red flag became obvious after about 2 months of living together (because I'm dense and took that long to realize), I found that at every choice-point, I simply COULD NOT send this beautiful soul packing. My heart was broken, we were crumbling, and yet I could not leave him to his vice to die an inevitably early death.
Is every detail necessary? I'm sure you have some idea of it already... the stress, the conversations repeated because he was too drunk to remember from the night before, the hidden bottles, the promises broken, the refusals to admit, the arguments while drunk... you name it. We did not escape it, except violence. Spaceman is a kind soul, and a happy drunk (or rather, was) and has never raised a hand to me. He didn't have to. Threatening to walk out a few times was traumatizing enough to me. Like many with AUD, drinking was an escape from his worries, a means to forget, to stop the pain from consuming him.
He lost his two children to his ex-wife's personal vendetta against him. And, he lost his best friend, his brother, to a sudden heart attack in the room next to his one night. That is enough to tell you of his pain for now. I am not elaborating, because it is highly personal, and his story, more than ours. I will focus on ours. But please know, finding someone you love dearly dead one morning is extremely traumatizing. And losing contact with children you have only ever wanted to love and nourish is soul-shattering, especially when they reach of-age and do not come seeking you out and have not been found either.
So back to our story:
What I find so endearing about his personal struggle through this has been his sheer determination despite all the setbacks he endured. Having a genetic predisposition from both sides of his family made it even tougher. This has been a long drawn out process, pulling him out of that tailspin, and there are a few factors that were god-sends, one of which I wish I could tell the world about: TSM (The Sinclair Method), a pharmacological extinction method developed by Dr. Sinclair using Naltrexone.
Naltrexone or "Nal" for short is a pill that blocks opioid receptors in the brain, the same receptors that get stimulated when drinking. Only, and here comes that part that seems unbelievable until you understand it better, one MUST DRINK while using Naltrexone in order for it to work its seeming magic over time.
Naltrexone + Drinking = Cure
We eventually modified it for us to be:
Naltrexone + Drinking + Transparency = Cure
If one is not transparent with their significant other, troubles brew. But of course this method can be used even without any help from a significant other, so technically Nal + Drinking = Cure is still the actual cure.
The transparency part came into play for us because that bitch, vodka, kept sinking her hooks into him time and time again. He needed to begin the process of being open about the things he's been hiding for so long, and that was not an easy thing to do at first.. not for a long time in fact. Sneakiness in drinking is simply part of the core of AUD. It's not personal, though it sure feels personal and I had to learn to deal constructively with deceit from my significant other. It helped to realize that this man was never deceitful in any other subject or manner, other than with his drinking.
It sounds severe, doesn't it? It sounds like a deal breaker, I know. Believe me, it almost broke us, time and time again.
But on Feb. 8th, 2018, the birthday of his deceased brother, spaceman made a decision, a strong-backed decision to drop vodka from his life entirely. It was then that the TSM method kicked into its highest gear yet and we quickly climbed out of the vicious cycle that is AUD addiction. Don't get me wrong, it's not that the Nal wasn't working before that point. Spaceman swears that he could never have gotten to the point where he felt strong enough to kick the hard liquor to the curb without it. It's just that I suspect he needed a stronger dose to achieve that while still drinking vodka. It's just one of those steps in the TSM process... while you are doing your Nal + Drinking method of weaning off alcohol, you eventually experience milestones such as that. He still drinks beer or wine on Naltrexone sometimes. But he ALWAYS has his Nal pill at least an hour before drinking. This shrinks the neural pathways that were once used reinforce addiction, and over time his cravings have shrunk, bit by awesome bit.
Having said all that... I cannot express to you how significantly different "this time" truly feels. Few people have even known of his AUD outside of my little family's walls. One person, my older sister figured it out and I swore her to silence, insisting it's our story to tell, when and IF we choose to tell it. She has complied and been super supportive of our process. His family also knows. It came down to it at one point. One of my readers here, also knew, as I reached out for desperate help during one of the stronger stress points in our journey. A couple of my best friends knew, though that wasn't particularly helpful. One may also be in her own AUD struggle and the other has a boyfriend who is also AUD stricken. And I... my presence faded from everyone's lives while all this raged around me. I recoiled inward just to manage my own situation.
So that is it. That is the big ordeal of which I have been writing circles around for so long. And now that we have regrown our trust, regrown his faith in himself, he has begun the process of dealing with emotional triggers on-the-level, without numbing them. And now the world is laying bare all kinds of fruits from our labor. I can't wait to tell you about those as well! <3
