On the last day of my holiday at my parent’s house, a text arrives from Emily, who I met last year when R and her husband Jim were in rehab. Jim’s funeral is in a few days. The news of his death is sad, if not surprising news. Both R and Jim relapsed a few months after leaving rehab but, unlike my husband, hers had liver disease.

After many failed detoxes at other hospitals, this was Jim’s last stab at sobriety. Despite the warnings, despite Emily, the doctors and all his friends saying “If you pick up the bottle again you will die!” after a hopeful dry phase, and in a little more than a year, Jim drank himself to death.

I forward the details of the funeral to R, but remember he hasn’t replied to a couple of my texts from the day before. I listen to a voicemail from a neighbour, a close friend. She tells me that R lost his keys and came around to collect the spare set from her after lunch. “He said he’s fallen off the wagon,” she says. “He’s gone home to bed, but asked me to tell you not to worry. He seems OK.”

When I call R’s phone it goes straight to voicemail. I speak to my neighbour and ask her to check on him in the morning if the curtains are still closed.

We came here to help. That’s what we all said – me, Emily, all the other husband, wives, lovers, children, parents and friends of the addicts – gathered in the family therapy room of the rehabilitation centre where our loved ones were receiving treatment. Help for them first, and us second, if at all. Not many of us really understood then that we needed to concentrate on getting better ourselves, regardless of what the addict was doing.

There is no one cure for addiction, no magic bullet, no panacea that will lead to a sober life. Relapses are common, a reminder that recovery is hard. (How many times have I heard the cliché “I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make everything better!”)

If only it were that easy. Jim’s imminent funeral confirms my belief that one cannot save the life of an addict unless the addict wants to be saved.

Jim was somebody who had endless support from his family, and although he briefly grabbed on to a healthier life, he didn’t choose to hold on. And R has taken to bed in the afternoon because he would rather drink than face the outside world, and that makes me sad too. But not as sad as it used to, and almost certainly not as sad as it makes him.

To question that my help and support is not important to R would be pessimistic thinking indeed. But I am aware that no amount of expensive rehab, medication or wise words from expert doctors or well-meaning friends will save him from drink. In the end, compulsion, desire and whatever-the-fuck-else it is that makes human beings do things to excess – things that are harmful and can turn the fun into un-fun in no time at all – are stronger than I can fathom. Human behaviour is sometimes beyond science.

In my mind – and despite some recovering alcoholics insisting that their sobriety came as a result of a spiritual awakening – people often give up doing the things that harm them because they are too exhausted to continue. The fatigue – rather than the biblical thunderbolt-from-the-sky moment – can be the thing that eventually makes them stop. But who knows? And who really knows if the decision to stop drinking for ever can ever really mean for ever?

As I sit here thinking about Jim’s too short life – a life that at one point looked as if it could have been turned around – I realise that one can never be too complacent about recovery. R seems to be more cheerful, less anxious, despite his occasional hide-away-from-the-world days; I am not yet too tired to carry on in our relationship and he is not yet too tired to give up on his dreams of a sober life. But as for tomorrow, I know he could get better or he could get worse. Or in years to come, he could end up as the sober one, and I the insufferable drunk.

However much I have learnt to practise tough love, however much I have begun to focus on my own happiness rather than his, I will never be able to stop loving my husband simply because he drinks. I remember Emily once saying: “Drink kills every bit of Jim that is good. I love him, but I can’t fucking stand him.”