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Sheri’s Story: My Wife Speaks about our Alcoholic Marriage
His cough made a hollow, painful, barking sound, and his breathing was labored. Her infant son’s struggles to breath and the sudden onset of it all was beyond terrifying. It was the middle of the night, and she scooped him from his crib to rush him to the hospital. Her confident actions were betrayed by the look of panic on her face and the trembling she felt through her entire body.
Her husband seemed half coherent as she tried to wake him and explain the urgency of the moment. She worried for the safety of her young daughter as she raced her baby son out the door and into the car. Her husband had been drinking that evening. He had drank until he passed out, and now she was leaving her daughter in his disoriented and semiconscious care.
How did she get in this situation? How did she commit her life to a man that now disgusted her in so many ways? How could she leave her first born in the care of a man who seemed incapable of caring for himself? How did it all get this dysfunctional and unloving?
My wife, the wife of a high-functioning alcoholic, has a story to tell about surviving this most traumatic disease, and you’ve just read an excerpt from episode nine of the Untoxicated Podcast where Sheri speaks publicly for the first time.
