Relapse

[Internationalist]

I need help with staying off alcohol.

I realized I had a problem a year or so ago when I came back from a social event and I blacked out on the train ride home. I vomited yellow bile for the first time since my early 20's. I had also been asked to leave a former share house I was living in due to my drinking (among other things) prior to this. It was at that point I asked my wife for help. With her help, I then was able to get through a pretty decent year with the occasional drink without me getting drunk (as I live in Japan, a lot of that was socially enforced).

However, life has become more and more stressful. I am holding my wedding in April. I am also looking for a new job as I don't believe my current one will allow me to support my family. In addition to my current job (which I am unsatisfied with), my life has been challenging. I have been drinking at home, last night I went to a local izakaya and got pretty drunk and the night before that, I sneaked off to a bar for a beer after work.

While some may not consider this to be the ideal place to bring this up, I feel that it would be helpful to receive advice from those from a more Western perspective. I live in Japan and alcoholism isn't taken seriously at all. Drinking alone is considered a useful way to escape from in what many ways can be a very oppressive culture.

As much as I love my wife, there are cultural differences between us (though she is a non drinker) in which emotions are rarely discussed. If they do get discussed, it usually is because things have reached boiling point, like the situation described in the second paragraph. I would prefer not to reach that point ever again.

I want to reach out to my family back home but I think that in some way that I will be judged over it. I also find that we have had a history of alcoholism through the generations and in most cases, those people's problems have been dismissed.

If anyone can let me know how they have stayed off alcohol then I would be grateful. I have seen some here have been abstinent from all kinds of substances for ten years or more so there are posters here with experience in these kinds of matters.