I'm probably going to get slammed for this, but here goes anyway. LW1 - dump the abusive alcoholic. Don't bother with AlAnon. I'm sure there are people for whom AlAnon is a necessary step, if your mother or father or someone else you can't permanently disengage from is the alcoholic in your life. But a boyfriend you've already broken up with once? Just no. I had a friend who, after knowing her for several years, started drinking to die. I had never seen someone go downhill so fast from drinking. I stayed friends with her for 18 more months. She refused to legitimately get help for herself. But she manipulated and abused everyone around her while claiming she knew she needed help. The last straw for me was when she told me I "should probably go to AlAnon" to learn how to deal with her drinking. At the time my mother was failing, she almost died, she had to go into a nursing home, my brother was losing it and here this abusive drunk decides I should learn to deal with her lousy behavior.