“But he was drunk!”
The troubling relationship between addiction and domestic violence
By Leah Mitchell
Angela’s story is a common one, but when she first arrived in my office, she did not yet realize that. “My husband Mike is not like other abusers,” she explained hurriedly. “He is a nice guy really. His drinking is the problem. Until he started drinking, he was a great man.”
“A great man” was not the description I would have used as I flip the pages in her protection order. She had two hospitalizations for strangulation. One of those occurred after she wrestled a gun out of her husband’s hand. “Mike wasn’t threatening to shoot me,” she said defensively when I mentioned that incident. “He was just waving the gun around to scare me. But he got mad when I took the gun away. That’s when he grabbed me by the throat. He was drunk. It wasn’t really him.”
This man who supposedly wasn’t really Mike did a tremendous amount of damage to their family home—holes punched in the wall, two broken windows, and even a fire started on the carpet when he dropped a cigarette while passed out. Now they were being evicted. And through it all, Mike’s drinking only worsened. Angela suspected that he was also using illegal drugs. He was spending days at a time away from home, and her paycheck disappeared from their account as soon as it was deposited.
“My friends from church are praying that he will come to his senses,” she said. “I can’t give up on him. If I leave, he might harm himself. I’m looking up a new counselor for his addiction.” She twisted her hands miserably in her lap. She tried to be optimistic, but the truth was that Angela had been trying to get Mike into addiction counseling for years. She had bought him books on overcoming addiction. She had scheduled appointments with numerous counselors and rehabilitation centers. The books she ordered for Mike sat unopened on his desk. Occasionally, Mike would go to a counseling session if she nagged him, but his resolve never lasted more than a week or two. Lately, he would not even pretend to change. “Leave me alone!” he shouted at Angela whenever she brought it up. “You are such a controlling shrew! No wonder I drink!”
Angela was increasingly frightened. Facing eviction, with no money left in the bank account, no money for car repairs or even food, she was overwhelmed with the consequences of addiction—an addiction that she now knew that all her love and patience could not control. She feared that one day, Mike would have another violent outburst and kill her.
“He’s not the man I married,” Angela repeated tearfully. “I just want the old Mike back.”
Despite Angela’s initial perception, her situation is not at all unusual for domestic violence. Addiction and abuse are strongly correlated, with studies showing that between 40% and 60% of domestic violence situations also involve addiction. Many advocates believe the true percentage is much higher, since abusers often lie about their addiction problem.
The common perception in society (including among many abuse victims) is that addiction mitigates responsibility. “He was just drunk,” people say. That mitigation is accompanied by a belief that all one needs to do is get help for the abuser, to support him in the fight. The true culprit, people claim, is the alcohol, the drugs, the thrill of gambling, or even sex. Churches often encourage this idea as well, urging abuse victims to remain in the relationship and support their spouse through the rehabilitation process.
Yet, as a victim advocate, I question this perception of addiction-related abuse.
First, while victims may initially claim that the marriage was perfect until addiction took hold, that is almost never true. There is undoubtedly significant deterioration as the abuser slides further into addiction, but abuse was usually present from the beginning. In Angela’s case, she admitted that her husband had a temper from the very beginning of their relationship. Two days after their wedding (and long before he slid into alcohol addiction), he hit her for the first time. In fact, she blamed his subsequent plunge into alcohol on his guilt over that violence. It appeared that the addiction followed the violence rather than the other way around. In other cases, the violence may not have begun until after the addiction took hold, but controlling behaviors and cruel emotional abuse were present from the earliest stages of the relationship.
Second, addicted abusers rarely have any real interest in change. After some big episode of violence, the victim expects the abuser to feel intense remorse and plunge immediately into rehabilitation programs, but they are severely disappointed. The abuser may make an initial show of regret, but improvements are fleeting. Abusers declare they are too busy to attend counseling or read books. They demand that the victim simply forgive and move on. They even blame subsequent violent outbursts on the victim’s efforts to limit their access to substances. After a few cycles of violence, the abuser usually ceases any pretense of regret.
The common thread woven into both problems—addiction and domestic violence—is a demand for immediate gratification. Abuse is a tool by which abusers extract things they want from their victims—money, sex, labor, and/or social image. Addiction provides immediate gratification as well—a buzz from substances, or thrills from gambling and sex. Furthermore, addiction excuses abuse (“I was drunk, so it doesn’t count”), while abuse provides a convenient scapegoat for addiction (“I drink because we fight!”). With both problems feeding into and excusing the other, abusers like Mike constantly reinforce their own behaviors and become highly resistant to change.
For Angela, however, the root of the problem was not as important as the final result. Angela was in a situation she does not control. Despite what some popular marriage books and even some churches may claim, Angela had no real ability to manage either her husband’s addiction or his abuse. Although she initially worried that Mike might come to harm if she left, she ultimately recognized that Mike was deep into addiction even while she stayed there and tried to help him. Her presence made no real difference. In fact, to the extent that she had an effect, her efforts to support Mike had backfired. Addictions are expensive. Angela’s paycheck (which Mike eagerly seized from their joint bank account the same day it was deposited) undoubtedly purchased Mike’s alcohol and other substances.
With her efforts to help Mike proving fruitless, Angela finally considered her own safety and security. Her money was gone, and her housing would soon be gone. Mike was an active threat even to Angela’s life. He had already strangled her twice. Let’s fully think through the implications of that. Mike, in a drunken rage, strangled his wife nearly to death. Upon sobering up and realizing what he had done, he still did not choose to get help for his alcoholism. He continued to drink and continued to resist his wife’s efforts to get him into addiction counseling. Then he strangled her again. For a second time, he saw the effects of his rage on his wife’s body and realized that he nearly killed her. And upon emerging from his drunken state, he again refused help for his addiction.
Angela eventually reached the inescapable conclusion that Mike had no intention of addressing his substance use problem. Even Angela’s life was not enough motivation to compel him to seek help. A third strangulation could prove fatal, and she had no way of preventing it from happening as long as she continued residing with him.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism informs us that we have a duty to “preserve the life of ourselves and others,” including avoiding any occasions “which tend to the unjust taking away of life” (WSC 135). In a wife’s eager desire to heal her husband and the marriage relationship, this duty to her own life is often shuffled to the side. In any abuse relationship, the needs of the abuser get larger and larger, crowding out any consideration of the victim. Victims are trained to neglect their own needs and spend all their time tending to the abuser. The marriage enters a toxic and potentially deadly spiral.
Angela ultimately did choose to leave her abuser. By the time she filed for divorce, she had lost her home and her car due to his financial exploitation. Shortly after she left, Mike moved in with a new girlfriend who shared his substance abuse. Mike’s appearance at divorce court was a shock—unshaven, filthy clothes, and reeking of alcohol. He was recently arrested for domestic violence against his new girlfriend.
Today Angela expresses sadness over her former husband’s downward trajectory, but she no longer second-guesses her decision. “Alcohol became his wife,” she tells me. “I became the other woman, while his primary loyalty was to a bottle. I don’t know to what extent he had control over his actions toward the end. But I know I couldn’t help him, even though I tried for years. I will pray for him. But I’m glad I’m safe now. I wanted to show God’s love to Mike. It took a while for me to understand that God loves me too and that my life matters.”
