My N was never drunk. Everything he did he did sober. He wasn't even high on anything else, like weed. I actually don't see many people on this particular forum who mention their Ns being drunk or high--I mostly see it on other support groups, such as ones for children of alcoholics and the like.

Yes, when I got outside therapists involved/my school councilors involved, he got VERY mad. He didn't think he was doing wrong because everything shitty that happened to him in his youth when he was in a foster home was "much worse" than anything he was putting me through.

He was a, "If you keep crying I'll REALLY give you something to cry about!" type of person, which was terrifying because he physically abused my aunt, and was ex-army, and I'm a very small person, child-sized, so I didn't have much ability to fight back even although I was already at my final adult size.

He always had excuses for why he was acting up--or if he didn't, my enabling aunt did. "It's his heart/it's his childhood/it's this/it's that". A cop said it best when they were called: "My dad has a heart condition too, and he never acts like THAT."

After my N beat me up (he usually stuck to verbal/financial/emotional abuse with me), I heard from my school social worker (who heard from my probation officer--I got one because I was "technically" a run away) that he faked a heart attack on the courthouse steps to demonstrate just how badly I hurt him by being a bad, bad person.

I suppose I was lucky he so readily exposed himself like that to a subset of people who were very familiar with nuts. I mean, the court system and police field a LOT of crazy people, so they learn to identify it, and a grown man faking a heart attack literally on the court house stairs is something they can see through from a mile away.