Wendy was the mother of three children. Wendy had been feeling quite anxious lately and started to "medicate" herself by having two or three cocktails each night after she put her children to bed. After approximately nine weeks of this drinking routine, she at last grasped the fact that instead of helping her ”loosen up” and cope with her difficulties, drinking made her feel less tranquil when she awakened. This, in turn, made her feel even more tense all through the day.
After thinking about her predicament for a few weeks, Wendy decided to talk about her drinking situation with her best friend. In actual fact, about ten minutes into their conversation, Wendy’s friend, Ellie, told her that she knew about an extremely supportive and competent physician at the local drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. After talking to her friend, Wendy immediately got motivated to call the treatment facility and schedule an appointment.
Eleven days later she finally got to meet the psychiatrist her friend had been talking about. After their short introduction, Wendy explained to the physician that ever since her husband and she got divorced, she has been having a very hard time financially, spiritually, and emotionally.
At times, she felt that she was totally over the divorce. Recently, however, she has been feeling extremely depressed about the fact that she and her former husband couldn't "make it". When asked by the doctor how long her ex-husband and she went together before they got married, Wendy told the doctor that Robert, her former husband, and she went out for four-and-a-half years and then lived together for three years before they got married.
As Wendy was talking to the doctor, she underscored the point that she truthfully thought that she and her ex-husband waited long enough to know one another well enough before they got married. After the children started to arrive, conversely, their relationship seemed to go downhill. What is more, both she and Robert started to drink, and their hazardous and careless drinking adversely affected their relationship, their finances, and their love for one another.
When things became dysfunctional between them, Robert got a divorce attorney and filed for a divorce. Even though things were apparently not going well and even though she was regularly depressed, Wendy told the doctor that she did not want to put a stop to their marriage. Once she was served her divorce papers, however, she knew that their relationship was over.
The doctor explained to Wendy that the tension, stress, and anxiety that she has been going through concerning her excessive and hazardous drinking are some of the normal alcohol abuse effects and that the best solution for this state of affairs is rehabilitation for one's alcohol abuse. In fact, getting alcohol abuse treatment is extremely important because repeated drinking can get the person into even more debilitating alcohol and alcoholism problems.
After seven or eight therapy sessions with her doctor, Wendy was slowly but surely able to comprehend the fact that the real basis of her anxiety and her depression was that she had not worked through her angry feelings she has for her ex-husband who had divorced her two years ago. With these insights and with the drugs her doctor prescribed, she eventually refrained from drinking, she started to feel considerably less depressed, and she started making time for social events with her family and friends. A few months after getting treatment from her psychiatrist, she even began to date once again.
It was clear that Wendy had come a long way. Indeed, just about four months after she stopped her rehab, Wendy had finally laid the depressing emotions of Robert, her ex-husband, to rest and was starting to feel more self worth and more spiritually "sound" and emotionally “together” than she had ever felt in her life.