Wendy was the mother of two children. Wendy had been feeling quite stressed out lately and started to “medicate” herself by having three or four screwdrivers every night after she put her children to bed. After roughly five months of this drinking routine, she finally comprehended the fact that rather than helping her unwind and ”muddle through” her difficulties, drinking made her feel more restless when she awakened in the morning. This, in turn, made her feel increasingly more tense all through the day.
After thinking about her predicament for four or five days, Wendy decided to “open up” about her drinking problem with her best friend. In truth, roughly twenty minutes into their conversation, Wendy’s friend, Kinley, told her about an extremely helpful and supportive physician at the local drug and alcohol abuse treatment clinic. After talking to her friend, Wendy almost instantly got motivated to call the rehab center and schedule an appointment.
Twelve days later she finally got to meet the psychiatrist her friend had been talking about. After their short introduction, Wendy told the psychiatrist that ever since she and her former husband got divorced, she has been struggling financially, spiritually, and emotionally.
At times, she felt that she was one hundred percent over the divorce. Recently, though, she has been feeling extremely depressed about the fact that her former husband and she couldn’t “make it”. When asked by the doctor how long her ex-husband and she went together before they got married, Wendy explained to the physician that Robert, her ex-husband, and she went out for two-and-a-half years and then lived together for a year before they got married.
As Wendy was talking to the doctor, she stressed the point that she honestly thought that Robert and she waited long enough to know one another well enough before they got married. After the kids started to arrive, however, their lives appeared to deteriorate. Moreover, both Robert and she began to drink, and their careless and irresponsible drinking negatively affected their relationship, their love for one another, and their finances.
When things got nasty between them, Robert got a divorce lawyer and filed for a divorce. Although things were noticeably not going well and even though she was regularly depressed, Wendy told the psychiatrist that she didn’t want to put a stop to their relationship. Once she was served the divorce papers, however, she knew that their marriage was over.
The physician explained to Wendy that the stress, anxiety, and tension that she has been experiencing regarding her excessive and unhealthy drinking are some of the common alcohol abuse effects and that the best solution for this situation is rehabilitation for one’s alcohol abuse. In fact, getting alcohol abuse treatment is very important because long-term drinking can get the person into even more serious alcohol and alcoholism problems.
After seven or eight counseling sessions with her doctor, Wendy was little by little able to understand that the real basis of her tension and her depression was that she had not resolved her hostile feelings she has for her ex-husband who had divorced her five years ago. With these insights and with the meds her doctor prescribed, she eventually abstained from drinking, she began to feel significantly less depressed, and she began making time for social events with her family and friends. A few months after getting therapy from her psychiatrist, she even started to date once again.
It was clear that Wendy had come a long way. Indeed, just about seven months after she stopped her rehab, Wendy had finally laid the negative feelings of her ex-husband to rest and was starting to feel more self esteem and more spiritually “sound” and psychologically “together” than she had ever felt in her life.