Aloha Stephen and welcome to the board. It is grand that you can still feel compassion for your wife and children cause you can use that to stay quit.  It is a recovery tool as long as you can abstain from drinking which of course is step one...you are powerless over alcohol and currently suffering the unmanageability of our disease....should be in the house with the clan and not in the car alone and remorseful.  

I was born and raised in our disease from a long solid line of alcoholics and yet when I got into recovery I couldn't even say or spell the word. Why because the culture I was born into didn't use these words and calling someone else a "drunk" would get you put down as disrespectful and bad.  In my family we drank plainly because we could and when we were low if ever we got more.  Yes many of the relatives drank until they we unable to make even minor movement and some did not.  I am one who did not because as all humans are different in some ways I am chemically tolerant.  I use to drink and not get drunk or out of hand except if you considered angry and rageful out of hand.  I had much trouble in society when drinking.   No one suggested I not drink cause that would result in more drinking which is evidence of the alcoholics pride and ego and still the chemical which is a mind and mood altering chemical advanced in and on my body that it changed the color of my appearance and I started going into toxic shock...that phenom where the chemical shuts off your conscious and sub-conscious systems.  There is no easy way of coming out of a toxic shock other than to stay paralyzed until it wears off or kills you.  

Because of other events in my life I got somewhat acquainted with AA.  I wasn't in the program only around it and didn't like it.  I chose the family side of recovery and stayed alcohol free and not sober for 9 years until I took the alcoholic assessment and turned it into a rehab I worked in.  The counselor told me that the "next time I drank I would die" which found more easy to believe that time.

I was oppositional defiant in mentality.  If you told me not to do a thing I would do it and if you tried to control me you would be the one controlled.  The least favorite word I ever said out loud was "Uncle" that term used to quit a fight and I said it only twice in my life...the second time to the disease of alcoholism.  I came home from a meeting and went thru a complete surrender and said with sincere emotion and mental presence,   "UNCLE"  I was done and entered AA not willing to announce that I am alcoholic.  I have never identified myself as "a" alcoholic...it is a disease and not a moral or personal behavior.  I am not an asshole I am alcoholic which I assumed thru my family of origin on both my mother and fathers' sides.  I am a good person and loving and respectful man and alcoholic just like you.

You have stopped drinking before so that part you know...put the cap on after your pour out what is left and rinse the bottle...then toss the bottle.  Next call your local central office and get the phone numbers of alcoholics in your area who will refuse to drink with you and agree to sit with you and tell you what it was like and is like for them.  Get the meeting schedule and the literature and go to a meeting.  Tomorrow duplicate it again.

Remember you are not alone.  It is impossible for you to be alone because (I found) there is a power much more greater than yourself that is attached to you and wants you sober also.   Keep coming back here often to share experience strength and hope.  In support from Hilo HI.  (((((hugs)))))