TresSugar

Group Therapy: Should I forgive My husband Or Should I Just Leave Him?

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:00:00 -0800

Two years ago my husband confessed to a secret drinking problem. That day he went to rehab and spent 30 days getting sober. His betrayal and confession nearly destroyed me; it was the lowest time of my life. I wanted to die, but I had two tiny babies that needed me. After his rehab, we went to a counselor and both worked very hard on rebuilding our broken relationship. It was a long, hard road (complete with a surprise pregnancy), but things seemed to be getting back on track.

18 months after the first confession, he delivered more bad news: He had racked up $20,000 in credit card debt that I didn't know about. Worse, he had missed payments and the interest rate was 30% for months before he noticed.

I am not sure I can move past two huge betrayals in one marriage - I was barely hanging on after the first one. I don't want to work on this relationship any more, but I don't want to go through the agony of divorce either. And we have three young kids now. He is an active dad and I don't want to do it totally alone. What should I do?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To be read more GROUP THERAPY, click here or submit your own question here.]

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DearSugar Needs Your Help: My Best Friend Is a Total Mess!

DearSugar — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:00:00 -0700

DearSugar and She's Gone Off The Deep End Danielle need your help. Her best friend is leading a secret life of alcohol abuse and infidelity and she doesn't know what to do. Her family is all in the know but she's in such denial that their attempts to help aren't working. She's spiraling out of control so do you have any advice to offer before it's too late?

Dear Sugar,

I have known my best friend for over 17 years. We went to junior high, high school, even college together. We live in the same town now and lately, I've become very worried about her. I’m planning a wedding (she’s the matron-of-honor, but hasn't helped at all), and we hardly talk or see each other anymore. Until her husband and mother called me on separate occasions, I would have no idea about the secret life she leads. Apparently for the past seven months, she’s been going out three to five times a week, often alone, to bars where she drinks excessively to the point of blacking out. When she drinks, she gets very flirtatious and her husband told me that she admitted to cheating on him when he was away. He even says when he goes to bars with her (to make sure she’s safe), that she kisses other guys and girls in front of him.

He loves her and says he's going to stand by her side “for better or worse.” They’re in couples counseling, but nothing much has changed. He often calls to confide in me (my friend has no idea), and I am in shock from what I hear. When I tried talking to her about it, she denied everything - said she only goes out once a week, doesn’t have a drinking problem, didn’t cheat on her husband and claims to be working through the problems in her marriage. I think she’s having a mid-life crisis, resorting back to her college-like behavior. It breaks my heart that she has changed into this person I’ve lost all respect for, and I feel so badly for her husband. I’m desperately worried about her and miss my best friend. I fear for what her future holds so I'm wide open to any advice you could offer.

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Sober Knows Best

GiggleSugar — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:00:00 -0700

I could never be a proponent of the temperance movement (long live liquid sanity!), but these gals still kick arse in my book. Unlike all the other defeated and docile women of yesteryear, these ladies had the gumption to take a ~~stand~~ group photo and rally behind a cause they were passionate about. If there were a modern-day nacho movement, I'd do the same.

Thanks, College Humor!

The Non-Alcoholic Keg Party

GiggleSugar — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:00:00 -0800

A group of Princeton punks decided to throw a keg party and not tell anyone that the brew was zero proof. So everyone drank, chugged, and had a gay, old time until the "alcohol" kicked in - then the real party started. Sober drunks are the worst.

TGIF!

GiggleSugar — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:00:00 -0700

Yes y'all, Friday has finally arrived and for most of us it'll bring a long weekend with it. Do you have any party plans yet? And if so, will drinking games be involved? Whatever you do-- don't agree to play "The National Drinking Game" because it's a buzzkill of a PSA. Just ask these people.

The OCD

GiggleSugar — Fri, 04 May 2007 08:00:00 -0700

Take the gang from The OC, add a variety of psychological issues (as if these kids need anymore!), and what do you get? A little something called: The OCD. In between the repetitive hand washing, word spelling, lock adjusting and overconsumption of alcoholic beverages, the drama unfolds. Can you cope through it?

A News Study Shows Alcoholics Misread Facial Cues

TresSugar — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:00:00 -0700

They don’t call it getting blotto for nothing.

You’ve probably heard the claim that alcohol kills brain cells. A new study makes this a little more concrete: long-time alcoholics’ brains (even those who are now sober) are not good at recognizing facial expressions. Specifically, their brain’s limbic system (which supports emotion, long-term memory and the ability to smell things) does not register facial expressions of joy, sadness or disappointment as intensely for them.

Making sure that the two test groups were matched in IQ, socioeconomic status and education, researchers showed 15 now-sober alcoholics and 15 nonalcoholics pictures of faces asking, “How intelligent do you think this person is?” The pictures represented a face that was positive, negative or neutral. Using an MRI to check out how the respective groups’ limbic systems were operating, they saw strong activity in the nonalcoholics’ brains in response to the emotion-expressing photos, but for the abstaining alcoholics - it was all the same to them.

Without being able to read a person’s expressions, even the recovering alcoholic (to say nothing of a practicing alcoholic), will have more difficulty with interpersonal situations - with coworkers, significant others and family members. They may misread what's happening and overreact or underreact. All this may cause more strife for them, which could lead to more drinking. What researchers aren’t clear about it is which came first - emotional insensitivity and hence alcoholism, or alcohol-induced emotional insensitivity?

How to Spot a High-Functioning Alcoholic

TresSugar — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:00:00 -0700

High-functioning alcoholics are often considered a hidden class of addict, but I've met more than a few of them in my life. So has Sarah Allen Benton, a recovering high-functioning alcoholic who just released a book about the disease: Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic.

According to Benton, a so-called HFA is someone who lives a seemingly normal life, often balancing family or romance with a successful career, while also abusing alcohol - and often denying it. In Benton's case:

"Having outside accomplishments led me and others to excuse my drinking and avoid categorizing me as an alcoholic. My success was the mask that disguised the underlying demon and fed my denial."

Do you think you might know a high-functioning alcoholic? Learn the warning signs when you read more.

Many times, the problem comes to light due to an unfortunate incident, like a drunk-driving accident, or the realization that the HFA simply can't control her drinking. But since the alcoholism doesn't fit into our typical understanding of addiction, it can stay hidden for years. Here are some things to look out for.

Excessive social drinking. Overindulging on occasional nights out doesn't automatically make you an HFA; it all depends on how much you consume. "Low-risk" drinking, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), for females consists of no more than seven drinks per week and three drinks per sitting.
Missed obligations. Shunning work or kid-related obligations could be indicative of a drinking problem.
Loss of control. Social drinkers who can't seem to limit their intake after one drink or who act differently than when they're sober could be HFAs.
Broken rules. Drinkers who set per-drink limits for themselves but fail to adhere to them could be battling alcoholism.
Alcohol obsession. People who seem to obsess about drinking could be HFAs. If one drink sets off a serious craving, that's a bad sign.

For more, check out Benton's blog or the resources page of the NIAAA. Do you know or have you ever known a high-functioning alcoholic? Share your stories in the comments (sign out to comment anonymously!).

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Alcohol Makes Your Mind Wander, But You Won't Notice

TresSugar — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Anyone who's been tipsy knows it can set your mind a-wandering. What's worse, you may not even notice that it's wandering. Wait, sorry - what was I just saying?

A new University of Pittsburgh study suggests that even small amounts of alcohol can make you zone out without realizing that you're zoning out. In fact, putting back a few may put you in a state of meta-consciousness, where thoughts pass through your head without you fully noticing.

For the study, participants had to read part of War and Peace after consuming alcohol (try that next time you're drunk) and push a button when they caught their minds wandering:

The results revealed that while they were reading the text those who had consumed alcohol were mind-wandering without realizing it about 25 percent of the time - more than double that of those who had not consumed alcohol.

I've definitely been involved in some meandering bar conversations that suggest these finding are true. But it's hardly a laughing matter when talking about high-functioning alcoholics or other problem drinkers. According to psychology professor Michael Sayette, "this 'double-whammy' may explain why alcohol often disrupts efforts to exercise self-control."

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Have Cafe Novelists Replaced Boozin' Writers?

TresSugar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:30:07 -0700

In the past, the writer's life was often a lush life. Many great American novelists - including Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever - were notorious drunks. In fact, according to an article by Tom Shone in the new issue of More Intelligent Life, five of America's seven Nobel literary laureates were alcoholics:

In America William Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald were the Paris and Britney of their day, caught in the funhouse mirror of fame, their careers a vivid tabloid mash-up of hospitalizations and electroshock therapies.

Rehab wasn't something people did back in the '30s. Neither was recovery-centric memoir writing. When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story for Esquire chronicling his struggles, Hemingway told him to cast his "balls into the sea-if you have any balls left."

Ever since rehab went mainstream in the 1960s, Shone observes, the boozing writer stereotype is less typical. Both Cheever and Raymond Carver came out of rehab and kept writing; Stephen King got sober after an intervention. So where have all the overindulgent writers gone?