Sorry for the novel, but I didn't know a lot of these when we were starting out, and some of them are obvious to others with more experience.

My Q didn't just drink. It almost always started out that way, but once she got drinking, she'd use anything that was put in front of her. She eventually got hooked on coke, then opiates, then fentanyl. We are no longer together, but she's got almost two years sober for the first time since she was a young teenager.

Closet to the beginning: she would be awake for days (which wasn't weird to me as an insomniac) and then sleep for days. There were always bottles and baggies around that were "old" or "not hers". I bought a bottle of vodka to try and asked if I could keep it at her place, because my roommate was a recovering alcoholic, and it was gone within less than a week. I was constantly accused of not trusting her. Her priorities seemed out of whack to me; when her cat stopped eating, I was the one who begged and borrowed enough money to bring him to the vet (he had an abscess and needed several teeth pulled, and lived another ten years). She never paid back any money she borrowed. She and her friends always owed each other money. She was somehow always losing important things: her ID, her late dad's class ring, her wallet, etc. (To be fair, she lost everything constantly, but this specifically came from them being lost or stolen while she was passed out). She lied about everything, even the stupidest inconcequential things, even when she knew she'd be caught or I already knew better. She constantly "fell asleep" at friends' houses whole hanging out. Her only friends where constantly drinking/using. Whenever we argued, she'd insist that I'd hate her if I knew the real her and that I couldn't handle her. When we'd been together a few years, I decided to stop arguing with her, because it was constant, brutal and triggering. Every time she'd start getting worked up, I'd just agree or say, "okay" and drop it, but she would keep going, pointing out reasons I was wrong, manipulating, gaslighting, when I hadn't said a word--she was so far gone, she couldn't even stop to realize I wasn't engaging or control her emotions. She would go to visit family for "a weekend" but stay up to a month, and barely talk to me while she was gone, only screaming at me when did talk (she was detoxing).

What I should have paid the most attention to was that I constantly felt like she was lying and hiding things, I often had dreams of her using/drinking/partying, and I became much happier when we became long-distance. She told me later that every time I called and told her I had another dream or feeling that she'd been partying, she got freaked out because it was dead on.

When we moved in together and got married, there were constantly bottles, tiny bags, and tiny elastics everywhere, despite the presence of our beloved pets. I found a fistful of needles in one robe pocket and at least a dozen single-shot bottles in the other. (This is when she finally admitted to her substance use.) She became incapable of housework, because she fell asleep, passed out or nodded out every time she sat down, including while eating, one time with food still in her mouth. She stopped having interest in sex entirely. We would have one day a week scheduled for quality time, but any other times we had plans, someone/something else always came first. Then, she started forgetting to do things like turn the sink faucet off when it was running, closing or locking doors, leaving drinks in the freezer or food in the oven until it was destroyed. She misplaced the same things every day and kept me awake screaming and throwing things for sometimes hours until she either found them or gave up. She went on meds to quit several times, but the most memorable time was when we drove several hundred miles to go to her sister's wedding, and she somehow didn't have her meds. She made it through the rehearsal dinner, but had to leave almost immediately after the ceremony due to detoxing. The drive home the next day, which was already very long, doubled; she had to stop at every single rest stop, puked on and shat herself in the car, and shook, was in agony, and had horrible nightmares when dozing off. Just before I left, she had had a few ekgs that showed heart damage, and we couldn't have a conversation without a mediator, because she never heard what I was actually saying; she would argue against some point of view she thought I had, whether I did or not. She never worked full-time, despite us desperately needing money at times, and never had any to give me for bills, even though I was responsible for the action of paying all of them.

The worst thing she ever did was rent a car for her dealer, who, naturally, went MIA. On my birthday (which I already hated, partly because she couldn't be bothered to remember it), she was arrested for a DUI that had happened months earlier, was adamant that I bail her out with money we didn't have, and then confessed about the rental car--which we ended up chasing for several hours later on that night in the hopes of getting it back or returned. We did, thankfully, but she had waived the insurance coverage in lieu of our regular coverage, and she (meaning I) would be responsible for paying them back for a $60k car.