Hi Distraught, and welcome to the forum. This forum is for exactly you, and not limited to military and vets, as what I learnt before opening this forum, is that PTSD is much more wide spread than the military, as your case, and others here already, are good examples. Military PTSD is actually quite small compared to the rest of the cases.

I must say though, Wow... you are definately seeing the full affect of PTSD currently. As you mentioned, the first 9 years she kept it down, but now it has reared its ugly head to really overwhelm her. I know what your saying from the point of view that she is going through, as I've been there, done that side of PTSD, and most likely will have similar reactions during my life when everything gets to much for me.

I don't know what your wife is feeling right now, but at a guess, her past has caught up with her and she has to decide whether to face it head on, or try and bury it, which the later doesn't work anyway... tried that also.

Mate, you really are in between a rock and a hard place. Your worried about your wife in one instance, but also the damage she is doing financially, which will affect you. Me personally, if I was going nuts on the booze, drugs and obvioulsy the money to fund it, then I would expect my wife to cut the accounts off, so nothing more could happen. I would expect all monies to be frozen until the matter is sorted out.

I don't think I would like her doing it, but I know it would be for the best when I came to my senses again. Hopefully, it might push her to seek immediate help, as the therapy just isn't enough at present.

My wife will no doubt be able to provide you a more "spouse" orientated opinion on this, but at the end of the day, it is your decision, and certainly not a light one to make at that. I guess all you can do is fix one problem at a time, and let me just clarify for you, her problems at present aren't the place to start, as she won't come around anytime soon. If things have caught up with her, which she is still trying to suppress the hard way, then she has a lot of work to do yet before becoming reliable again. I know all about this, as it took me a good year and a bit to come around and sort myself out, and I didn't even know I had PTSD at that point, though even when I did know, I still have my days, but its no longer months or years, just a day here, day there...

Me personally, I would expect my wife to fix what she can control, and not what she can't, being me (the one with PTSD)... Your wife is going to take some work to fix at this point, though I definately wouldn't give up on her, as she will get past this one way or another... preferably the way that keeps her living a good life with you again.

I won't lie to you, as dependant upon each persons symptoms, suicide is quite often an affect of depression and other symptoms... its just that only a small percentage actually carry it through, the rest just want help.