A Whole New Plan

So, as of the end of summer Sam seemed to have kicked the physical addiction of needing to drink everyday, but since then he usually has a major relapse every two-three weeks that lasts a day or two and is some serious binging often into late at night. This usually left me really upset at him and him feeling really awful. And it was just a really terrible cycle that we were trapped in of really great times followed by ragingly awful times that often included big fights.

A friend of mine's stepdad is a therapist specializing in addiction medicine and has done a lot of research on it. He is especially interested in a concept called harm reduction which woks on fixing the emotional and psychological problems/issues that cause people to fill them with addictions and the risky behavior that goes with it. Does this sound familiar? Basically the idea is that for people who instant abstinence isn't working or sustainable for (again familiar), should maybe just focus on reducing the harm they do to themselves and their life while working with their therapist to fix (long term) the underlying emotional and psychological bits.

Sam has been seeing a therapist. And the binging was hurting me as much or more than it hurt Sam. So, we decided to sort of try a harm reduction approach. I asked him to come up with a max limit of drinking for any given week that he felt he could comfortably stay within the limits of, and I would go along with that and not be a crazy person as long as his plan included the following: drinking everyday was unacceptable, it needed to be kind of close to the limits that his doctor said wouldn't fuck with his medicine, and that it ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT include drinking by himself alone late at night and preferably had all his drinking chaperoned. I picked those limits because that is what makes me a crazy deranged person.

As part of the plan, we would both agree that this is not a judgment plan or a final plan. It is a work in progress, and we both needed to be very clear and very vocal if it wasn't working for us, so we could make adjustments that reduced the harm to our relationship as necessary, and we would give everything a fighting chance to work. Because quite frankly I don't really care if he drinks now that he doesn't need to drink a bottle of wine everyday. I care that he gets better, and I care that he doesn't destroy our relationship with the crazy binging.

So, Sam came up with the following plan. He can drink up to three times a week (with a week being Monday-Sunday). However, if he is drinking on a work night, he has to have less than two drinks and if he is drinking on a Friday or Saturday or other non-work night, he may have up to four drinks.

Last night we had our first test. We had a bottle of wine, and he had three glasses, so he didn't even hit the maximum (and I admitted to him that I was really worried that he would strain the maximums of this every time instead of just having it be something he could sometimes live well within the margins of). Hopefully this will be a better working solution for us. And hopefully he will get the emotional wounds he needs healed fixed up by his head shrinker.