We are a British couple who came to Odessa as complete newcomers, and from the very first moment we fell head over heels in love with this beautiful, vibrant city by the sea. The warm people, the stunning architecture, the lively atmosphere everything about Odessa captured our hearts in a way we never expected. We never planned for any of this to happen here, but life has its own way of guiding you. After a long, exhausting search for treatment that was actually within our budget, I finally found the Vector Plus clinic right here in Odessa, Ukraine. It was the affordable, professional help we had been hoping and praying for. We made the huge, scary decision to relocate, and I took care of absolutely everything – helping with all the documents, visas, moving arrangements, you name it. We packed up our life in Britain and arrived together in this completely foreign but instantly welcoming city, feeling nervous but full of hope. And so it happened that we ended up treating my husband’s alcoholism right here in the place we had grown to adore so much. Straight away we turned to the Vector Plus clinic for professional treatment of alcoholism, and that single decision changed our lives forever.

Alcohol had been squarely in the midst of all our arguments. We had so many nights together in bed and yet so far apart, and that terrible sensation kept creeping in that we were losing something deep in our bones, that a relationship founded on trust, a modicum of predictability and above all, true, pure love, was subsisting. Later it became stronger drinks, and I found myself in a much darker place, thinking my husband drinks vodka every day, what should I do?

Lying and concealing things all the time was the worst thing to endure. It sincerely seemed to me as though drink had taken the place of my husband, and carried him off before my very eyes at the time I most needed him. Not that he was literally drinking at the second, but I could feel it right down to my bones that he was always thinking of the next opportunity he could. I began to play the role of a big crazed, heartbroken wife. I concealed all the bottles of alcohol that I could in the home. When he was not there I poured wine down the drain. I went so far as to label the levels on the spirit bottles at night before going to bed and in the morning to check again to see whether any disappeared, but all of that was utterly futile as an alcoholic will always know how to get a drink regardless of what you do.

My husband did some really crazy things as well. One night I poured myself a vodka and pure water came bubbling out of what was meant to be a full bottle - actually I thought he had become Jesus or something! He had been taking the time to substitute the alcohol bit by bit in secret, so I would not notice the difference. Naturally, when I ultimately learned what he had done, and came after him, both of us could not really say who was more heartbroken and sad at the time.

All the resentment that had resided within me and all the anger that had been brewing deep in the bottom pit of my stomach - I believed it was all due to my husband addiction.

Or at least so I thought at the time. As my husband is sober now, I am forced to confront the greater truth; that there have always been deep cracks and problems in our relationship even before the addiction became central and the focal point of everything. I had just decided to ignore and shove aside all those other matters.

Then, only a few hours after my husband returned to the Vector Plus clinic in Odessa, I was, as well, stranded in bed through a most unfortunate dose of food poisoning. He was no longer secure within the closed confines of the clinic - where even the bang of a door opening too swiftly would have been deemed offensive - and now he was left to run the whole house himself. The expression on his face was all I needed to see when he brought me the sick bowl; my husband was completely shocked. I was only able to mutter, I am so sorry.

And I realize I must be making it sound like he had been at war a year and a day, which is not quite fair, but he was so used to being away at war that it startled him to come home again so abruptly to the real world, with children to look after, and to have me asking him every five minutes, Are you doing all right? - served as a poignant reminder that family life is a mishapsome, unexpected and challenging affair, requiring all your physical and mental powers.

In less than a day the house had become a total mess of germs, dirty dishes, three overworked and cranky kids and overall havoc everywhere. I truly believe that had his health insurance been able to cover it, my husband would have leaped at the opportunity to head directly back into the clinic to get another month. Going home was not like the beautiful picture we had both foolishly thought it would be - children snugly in bed by 8 pm, a beautiful family dinner at the table together, and the opportunity to sit down and discuss openly everything that had happened in the meantime.

I have been working at getting ready to every big event in my life. The first time around, when I was pregnant, I read all the advice given by well-intentioned friends, other parents and doctors. I received heaps of manuals, some of which proved to be useful, and some I disposed of at once. I was given great practical advice, and, whether I took it or not, it was always available in my time of need.

Had somebody given me a decent book on how to get through the weeks and months immediately after rehab, I would most likely have stuck it up on the shelf to read another time. I am a wreck with instructions, but those are what you turn to when all things begin to fall apart. They provide you with actual, practical steps - a little bit like the slightly irritating leaflets the bank will send you regarding preventing overdraft charges. Boring? Absolutely. Useful? Definitely.

Somehow, no one had ever cautioned us that life once rehab was over would be this insanely difficult - or maybe they had, but we were not listening. We were too much daydreaming over our ideal new marriage, where the alcoholism was put in a box labelled DO NOT OPEN, in its place a happy/harmonious family that had absolutely overcome the addiction.

I never really questioned my husband about it all during his recovery programme at Vector Plus - he struggles enough to discuss normal everyday things, but nothing about the ones that really changed his life. When he attends a party and I enquire about it he will just say things like, I did not dance, I talked to a bald-headed man with a big nose but I cannot remember his name and I could not get my coat and I left it there.

But with this experience it seems different. I do not want to press or nose in. I understand that all I really need to know will come out naturally in due time. All the rest is merely irrelevant at the moment.

One week after my husband was discharged back into the real world out of the Vector Plus clinic in Odessa, he was taking the children to school, going to work everyday and attending AA meetings. I even found a support group on my side and for a moment the feeling was that all is back on track.

Then my husband began to attend less of the meetings, and began to draw into himself again. It hit me really hard. My mind was racing, so I was waking up in the middle of the night. I was thinking of all sorts of weird things and I began to hate him because he was gradually backing off into the recovery programme that had appeared to have helped him so much. In the mornings I was angry with him. I simply could not gulp down my disappointment and instead offer it the unconditional kindliness I knew I was supposed to be offering. Even such little questions as "Would you like a cup of tea? spat out bitterly and harshly, and I could not restrain myself.

Those arguments that we always had were at night when the children were asleep. We could never discuss any of that with our friends or family. And therein lay the rub. It had all been done privately, out of sight of the very folks who had been so helpful to us. We owed them a debt of gratitude after all they had given us. The cure in Vector Plus was the magic cure but it had not yet hit the nail on the head and we were finding it hard to continue faking that all was well.

And who was exerting all that strain upon us? It was us. My husband has always been very strict on himself and alcohol was what had soothed his fidgety, overactive brain. I had always had this idealised vision in my head of what the ideal marriage would be like and I was constantly contrasting our relationship with others who appeared to have it all figured out.

We would have made the worst stuffed suit-case that ever existed. My husband had allowed himself a real time out to sort his own baggage, however, I had been so preoccupied with the daily tasks - loading the dishwasher and breaking up the fights between the kids - that I had not even thought about my own life. I occasionally laugh at myself joking that I ought to have registered myself into the Vector Plus clinic so that I too could get my own treatment programme, which is simply known as Sorting my own shit out.

Learning the bitter lesson that dreams are not usually as happy as we tend to believe dreams to be, we have been forced to begin work on concrete plans to see us through to the future.

The long term is hard to consider when all people keep preaching that you have to take life day by day. And despite the fact that I do feel truly good about all of the things that the last few months have demonstrated to us, I am sore due to everything that preceded it. My husband does not drink any longer, yet it is difficult to notice how many of the old habits that were going hand in hand with the booze have altered. I may sound like I blame him to not have done well and that is not just right. I must also own up to my own role in all this as well, and drop these blinkers I have so that I can see clearly our life as it is. Well, problems there are, but there is so much to thank God about, too.

Treatment in Odessa

And finally, there is the Vector Plus clinic in Odessa itself. It may appear on the inside like a modern caring medical facility in the very heart of the city yet those few crucial weeks it provided my husband with the sort of sanctuary he desperately needed to face all his demons and it was all at a price that just seems affordable to us. Not all people can be that fortunate to have such an opportunity. The time the Vector Plus clinic was opened to my husband was when I had given out the largest sigh of relief I have ever experienced. I really thought that the agonizing part of my life had ended. The fact that there was yet another chapter to be read was something I never prepared myself to do.

My current gradual revelation is as follows: the alcohol which I had been convinced was the mere issue was actually merely a symptom of far more fundamental issues with our relationship. The marriage is going to be an ongoing process and requires our attention at all times. The rehab programme at Vector Plus was a significant start but the entire family is now learning the hard lesson that it certainly has not been the panacea.

Life After Rehab

When I drove into driveway of the Vector Plus clinic in Odessa and picked up my husband who had undergone the entire 28-day addiction recovery program, my heart was so full of pure joy. We embraced one another with such strong will that we both cried, and we did all the emotional things that friends, lovers and movie stars do after such a long separation.

And this was the start of something new, something good and totally pure, we said. A time when all the great crinkles and the untidy crevices in our life must have been ironed away, and we could at last walk on with a steady stride on sure ground.

It is three months later than that date, and my husband is still sober. It is truly a miracle, plain and simple, and I am so proud of all the things that he has done and how much he has struggled. Meanwhile, nothing has been easy or smooth sailing. In retrospect, the past weeks have actually been amongst the worst we have ever experienced in our overall relationship.

That is when I finally understood that the real question is not only how to persuade your husband to seek treatment for alcoholism, but what to do after he actually does it because that is where the real work begins.