Workaholism - Living in the Crack House during Recovery

As I've previously posted, my husband is a bona fide workaholic.  This is an addiction like any other: alcohol, drugs, or shopping.

So, what happens when your spouse's workplace--nay, profession--is workaholism central, a figurative crack house where he or she can get their fix?  What is a spouse to do?

This weekend Jack and I went to a party for his work this weekend.  It was interesting to see these people he spends so much time with, and to chat with their spouses.  If Jack and I hadn't had our recent collapse and efforts towards recovery, this party would have been thirty times worse.

A conversation with one of the docs turned to Father's Day with one of the few docs in the room who is probably not a workaholic.

"My daughter is taking me to see How to Tame Your Dragon, Part 2."

"I read that got three and half stars in the Seattle Times," Jack replied.

"It doesn't matter if it is good or not," said the doc/dad as he smiled.  "My daughter will love it and that is all that matters."

Three weeks ago, I would have burst into tears.  The Boy had wanted to see the new Godzilla movie. He is eleven.  What eleven year old doesn't love a monster movie?

Jack's reply: "That movie looks stupid.  I don't want to see it.  You can take the kids to see it when I am working Monday."  (Which was Memorial Day.)

I didn't reply.  I just took the kids Monday.

While I was gone for eight days, he had no choice but to deal with the kids and their good moods, bad moods, too much homework, not enough homework, doesn't like what we are having for dinner, and needing to drive them places.  This past weekend, The Boy and Jack watched World Cup soccer, streaming it from Univision, hearing the play-by-play in Spanish where the only words they understood were a few numbers, Messi and GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!  It took a disaster for him to make an effort to meet the needs of The Boy.

The other parts of the party were hard. One spouse came up to me (she is a second wife of one of the docs) and said she realized for her husband work would always come first, family second.  It was like that in her family growing up, so she was used to it.  She was used to it, but she apparently didn't like it.  She was looking for me to commiserate, but I couldn't say anything.  What could I say without giving it all away?  My husband--and likely yours and 75% of the docs in this room--would pass a test for that would meet a clinical definition of workaholic?  That the culture breeds thinking about the work all of the time?  And it reinforces what important work it is.  What could be more important that saving the lives of children?  Honestly, not much.

Jack told me once about a line from House of God.  The surgeon was heading back to the hospital for an emergency procedure and his daughter was home ill, probably with the flu and not a ruptured spleen.

"Daddy is going to the hospital to take care of a sick kid," the mom replied when the child asked where her father was.

"But I am a sick child," the child replied.

One of the signs of workaholism is going to work when you family is sick.  I remember on several occasions when I was sick when the kids were little.  I was doubled up on the floor between visits to the bathroom.  Jack left me there as he went off to work.

The other part of the culture that Jack is immersed in that makes it hard to break out of is the "I don't do anything in my life other than science or medicine."  I was talking to one of his colleagues about a writing project I am working on.  She looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.  She didn't know how to reply or what to say.

I begin to wonder what we have in common when all he thinks about is science and medicine, two fields so far from anything I've ever done or studied.  And he is in a work environment where most of the other folks have an equally similar narrow focus.

Any thoughts on how to help him break his addiction while living in the crack house?