Wendy was the mother of three children. Wendy had been feeling quite stressed out lately and started to "medicate" herself by having three or four martinis each evening after she put her children to bed. After roughly six months of this drinking routine, she finally comprehended the fact that rather than helping her ”lighten up” and cope with her problems, drinking made her feel more restless when she awakened in the morning. This, in turn, made her feel more anxious throughout the day.
After thinking about her situation for a week or two, Wendy decided to discuss her problem drinking with her best friend. In point of fact, about twenty-five minutes into their conversation, Wendy’s friend, Cynthia, told her that she knew about an extremely proficient and highly qualified physician at the local drug and alcohol abuse treatment clinic. After talking to her friend, Wendy immediately got encouraged to call the treatment center and schedule an appointment.
Eight days later she finally got to meet the doctor her best friend had talked about. After their short introduction, Wendy explained to the doctor that ever since she and her former husband got divorced, she has been having a difficult time financially, psychologically, and spiritually.
At times, she felt that she was totally over the divorce. Recently, conversely, she has been feeling very 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 dated before they got married, Wendy told the psychiatrist that Robert, her ex-husband, and she went out for five years and then lived together for a-year-and-a-half before they got married.
As Wendy was talking to the doctor, she underlined the point that she really thought that her ex-husband and she waited long enough to know one another well enough before they got married. After the children started to arrive, conversely, their lives appeared to fall apart. To make matters worse, both she and Robert started to drink, and their careless and irresponsible drinking negatively affected their finances, their relationship, and their love for one another.
When things became less than cordial between them, Robert got a divorce attorney and filed for a divorce. Although things were clearly not going well and although she was often depressed, Wendy told the physician that she didn’t want their marriage to come to an end. Once she was served the divorce papers, however, she knew that their relationship was over.
The physician told Wendy that the anxiety, stress, and tension that she has been suffering from regarding her irresponsible and hazardous drinking are some of the typical 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 chronic drinking can get the individual into even more debilitating alcohol and alcoholism difficulties.
After nine or ten treatment sessions with her psychiatrist, Wendy was gradually able to see that the real cause of her anxiety and her depression was that she had not resolved her hostile feelings she has for her ex-husband who had divorced her four years ago. With these insights and with the drugs her doctor prescribed, she eventually stopped drinking, she began to feel much less depressed, and she started making time for social events with her family and friends. A few months after receiving counseling from her psychiatrist, she even began to date once again.
It was obvious that Wendy had come a long way. In point of fact, just about four months after she completed her rehab, Wendy had finally laid the harmful thoughts of her ex-husband to rest and was beginning to feel more self worth and more spiritually "sound" and emotionally “together” than she had ever felt in her life.
