Being and dealing with an alcoholic partner can have a huge impact on a person’s life. 

Dealing with an alcoholic husband (or partner) is not easy. An alcoholic’s behavior and actions make little logical sense to others. They are often selfish and inconsiderate. As someone who loves them, you will likely struggle to understand why they seemingly continue to choose alcohol over you and others. Surely, they would reduce their drinking or stop altogether if they loved you? 

Book Overview

To save your family and yourself from the chaos the alcoholic brings to your life, one must know how to turn away and learn how to take care of your loved ones and yourself. This is not easy. Most humans have been raised to love and care for the people in their lives. To break this tradition is heart-wrenching and seemingly impossible. Few can do it alone. Fortunately, the author found the Al-Anon organization of most incredible help. This book is about the author’s struggles as she battled to find her way to a new satisfying life for herself and her children. 

Enabling: Dealing With An Alcoholic Partner

Alcoholism affects the body and the brain of an alcoholic on a colossal level. The brain becomes chemically changed and damaged due to repeated exposure to alcohol. The changes that send forth in the brain of an alcoholic are profound and can never be fully repaired.

Thus, it is crucial to understand alcoholism as an illness. When it comes to alcohol, willpower or even the most special need or desire to stop is not enough for an alcoholic to recover control. Once past a certain point, an alcoholic will never regain control over their drinking.

Margaret Moschak was inspired to write her book on tough love alcoholic as she felt the need to share her story with the world to inspire others. What made her story more motivating was how the author narrated her journey of waking up to the nightmare most want to ignore. For Margret, who has struggled with her husband’s alcoholism, she primarily decided to go with enabling. Enabling is a term used to detail when a person is helping someone’s alcoholism. When you have a partner, it is natural to want to protect them from harm. However, when your partner is an alcoholic, this instinct can prevent them from getting the help they desperately need to recover. Living with an alcoholic partner, it is unlikely that you are not enabling their drinking somehow. Of course, you realize that your intention is not to harm them but to save them from harm. This is where it is essential to understand that no one can keep an alcoholic. Only they can decide to stop drinking, seek help and get well. 

Later, Margaret realized that continually saving her alcoholic husband from the consequences of his drinking only enabled his drinking to continue, progress, and become more dangerous. Hence, she decided to make the most important decision she had ever made. That is, removing herself and her kids from the harmful situation. 

Author’s Corner

Margaret Jackson Moschak spent most of her life studying people. She takes interests whether employed as a teacher in high school, as a secretary in a welfare office, working in local politics, encouraging young students to love reading, managing an exhibiting art group, and always searching out why people interact as they do with one another. Growing up, it has always been this way as she is part of a vast family from Northern New York.   

Moschak earned her Master’s degree at the University of New York at Albany. Currently, she lives in Ithaca, New York, as a Taoist Tai Chi Instructor. Margaret has a daughter, three sons, and five grandchildren.