BPDs and alcohol abuse

[Their Dad]

Hello,

My UBPD ex wife is under court order to not consume alcohol while in the presence of, or caring for, our two children.  She has been telling me for several months that she has quit drinking. Yet, a mutual friend recently forwarded a couple photos of her out drinking with her girlfriends.  They are not from nights that she has the kids.  However, I am concerned she is drinking again and lies about it.  I feel it's just a matter of time til she is drinking in front of the kids. 

Have others here dealt with ex BPD that are heavy drinkers?

Thank you.

TD

[livednlearned]

O my yes.

I had the same language in my custody order. N/BPDx was not to drink before or during visitation.

Then one night he had a psychotic episode while S13 was in the house (11 at the time). That led to a psych evaluation.

In the psych evaluation, he claimed that the episode was caused by a combination of ambien and alcohol, and maybe a pain killer. He said he took the pain killer because of surgery he had that day. He took the ambien to help him sleep.

He actually admitted he was drinking. In an official court document.

No one made a big deal out of it. In fact, no one even called it out. I was not allowed to read the report until we were in court and N/BPDx said I could read it.

By then, I guess the behavior was so disordered that it didn't matter whether he was eating grapes or three sheets to the wind.

He ended up losing custody and visitation was terminated. But I don't think it was necessarily because he was drinking. It was the whole story -- the 100+ messages he sent in a 12 hour period, the content of the messages, the fact that he is a lawyer and um, should know a thing or two about emailing threats and incoherent messages, despite being given multiple warnings to cut it out.

I'm pretty sure my ex drank after S13 went to bed. That's when I would start to get strange emails, almost like clock work at 8pm. Like a lot of kids who grow up with alcoholics, my son could tell from the slightest change in his dad's voice that he was impaired. Maybe not drunk, but definitely drinking. After things started to really unravel, S11 mentioned to me that his dad drank while he was in the house, but he never saw any alcohol. I believe him. I used to be able to walk in the door and could tell before N/BPDx even turned his head whether he had been drinking. It's a sixth sense you develop, I think. A survival skill.

[tjay933]

mine used to hide bottles around the house. thought I didn't know about them. would only start drinking after I'd gone to bed. what he didn't know is that I would measure the bottles early am and kept a record or how much was missing with a calculation of how much he'd drank the night before. up to a cup of hard a day-that I knew of.

[scraps66]

Mine did it while on anti-depressants and while breast feeding.  Not terribly, but enough. 

[ogopogodude]

My wife would hide booze everywhere, strategic little spots in nooks and crannies, as well as in all sorts of containers. She thought me and the kids were stupid.

My wine cellar used to be my passion.  I had at one point almost 500 bottles in my cellar. I was always wondering what happened to certain awesome bottles of wine that i purchased (as I was saving certain ones that cellar well for special occasions).  I had some bottles signed by famous people, ... .all were GONE when I re-entered my house with the kids when it was court ordered for buttercup to leave the matrimonial home.

My cellar's contents were certainly worth well over 10 g and that is likely being quite conservative.  When me and the kids, left for a two year period and returned, ... not one bottle was in the cellar.

Not a one.

(by the way, I am quite knowledgeable with New World reds (meaning, that european reds such as Italian, spanish, etc, I know very little about but Australian, South American, Californian etc I am much more familiar with... .So, if anyone wants to know what a good red is for this upcoming weekend in order to impress their gal, go out and buy bottle of  a MollyDooker --australian-- such as The Boxer, or Two Left Feet. Or any cab sav from California is a safe bet).

[Cleveland]

I would definitely document the pics so that you can dispute her claims that she quit drinking at all.  As for drinking during custody, you'll have to just stay on top of it.

Mine wasn't so bad as to hide bottles, but man were her drinking habits annoying.  Once she started never had an empty hand, didn't eat or hydrate so it all hit her, almost impossible to get along with when she drank.

[livednlearned]

One thing occurred to me about your question: are you looking to do anything legal about this?

Because there is the legal aspect, and then there is helping your kids cope. Can you let us know how old your kids are, and what kind of custody arrangement you have?

It's very likely that your wife will drink while she's with the kids -- my experience with alcoholics is that if there is a will, there is a way. I assumed it was going to happen. I also assumed it would be difficult to prove. So I did some exercises with S13 where we would talk through how he would solve a hypothetical problem. This is a good thing you can do with your kids. Doesn't have to be worse-case scenario kinds of things. You can start with small things. "What would you do if you came home from school and the door was locked?" Then you talk about how there is a hidden key.

I had to do this with S13 because he had no confidence in himself. He would encounter an obstacle and give up. So perhaps you can build up to the big one, which is what the kids would do if their mom drank herself into a stupor, or did some dangerous or scary while drunk. My son said he would go to the neighbor's if something happened to N/BPDx. He also had a phone. If his dad passed out, he knew he could call me, or 911, or find his dad's phone and call, or go to the neighbors so an adult could help him. He's older now and has some more sense about what he would do, but this has become a pretty standard part of how we talk. He knows that if I do not pick him up from school at the agreed upon time, he should call my SO. Or his aunt. Or my parent. Or his best friend's mom. Or 911. These are all things he came up with, and it gave him confidence that he can think through a problem and come up with a solution. Also, when he does solve a problem on his own, I point it out. "You didn't know what to do, but you did x, and then y, and that worked out."

[bravhart1]

Don't know if uBPDm is an alcoholic, but I do know that she accuses DH of being one, which I haven't seen at all. So it makes me wonder if she is and she is projecting as usual. BPD's REALLY do accuse others of exactly what they are doing. It's like clockwork.

Just in the last month BPDm has been up in arms about what vitamins we give. Weird.

Now we find out she's been giving sleep aid to SD6.

[tjay933]

Now we find out she's been giving sleep aid to SD6.

what kind of sleep aids and for what purpose? what is the logic behind give a 6 yo sleeping meds. depending on what she is giving this could be a big problem-could be endangering the child.

[bravhart1]

I'm sure it's not something she should be giving, but it would take the Calvary to drag the honest truth out of the woman. I'll we know is that SD6 talks about how much she likes getting the sleep medicine at moms and how it's hard to go to sleep at dads because we have a bedtime, in bed, and no meds. At moms it's sleep med, fall asleep watching tv with mom and carried to moms bed later.

We are very concerned about it, but after talking to the therapist, she agrees that any inquisition we make will be met with stonewalling and denial. We have to wait for hard proof. :'(

[tjay933]

would it be appropriate-please others chime in here too-to ask mom to send some "sleep meds" the next time the child comes to your place to ensure she gets "adequate rest" as she does with mom? then take it to a pharmacy and they should be able to id it for you. then you can decide how to proceed?

[bravhart1]

Since we are no contact with major trust issues, she would see that as a red herring for sure.

Since her motives have never been pure , she assumes that everyone else's aren't either. Made it very hard to communicate with her before we went no contact.

I am disgusted that even though all the professionals know that she is not right, they give her overnights before she's even started her therapy.