Even when codependents recognize the problem for what it is, they often make the mistake of trying to control their partner’s consumption — the amount an alcoholic drinks or a user uses — while fighting desperately to keep the bottom from falling out from under the family. They may count drinks or water whiskey. They may hide a stash or flush pills down the toilet. All that usually succeeds in doing is to drive the drinking or drug use underground. Then they can only guess about the extent of actual use. And since chemical dependency tends toward increasing levels of use, a dependent person’s behavior often becomes less predictable and more unreliable. The result? The web of stress and unhappiness their partners live inside gets tighter all the time. If you need proof, try juggling a dysfunctional partner’s moods and demands with one hand, while balancing an overdrawn checkbook, bewildered friends and angry family, and their own anxiety and depression with the other. Perhaps the worst feeling of all is the gnawing guilty feeling that maybe the dependent partner wouldn’t drink or use so much if he or she were a better partner, better lover, better person. Of course, that’s crazy. But that’s often the way it is. Gayle Rosellini http://www.doitnow.org/pages/804.html
If you’re going to be crazy,
you have to get paid for it
or else you’re going to be locked up.
Hunter S. Thompson
