Wow wow!  Thanks for all for the responses.  

There's always two sides to the story, so I know I'm not innocent in all this.  But I've got four guys I make myself accountable to, two of whom are happily married and friends of my wife.  One was a senior church minister And even they listened very openly about the horror stories I told, and the responsibility I take.  That being said, they have been very willing to help me out when I said I needed to separate.  They helped me plan it.  We picked the option that seemed to have the least "permanance" to it, ie. they found a friend who had a spare room.  They even offered to help with moving logistics.  I'm also in AlAnon and really trying to work the program to keep my sanity and get serenity, even with the craziness.

@lieutenantdad and @oktostep.  Yes, my daughter was a handful.  She's been a handful for the BM(first wife) even since she was 9.  It took a while to figure out there was a learning disability, anxiety and some "defiance disorder" involved.  Anyway, my wife couldn't handle it for the first nine months.  After awhile, we laid down the law, and my eldest daughter just decided to  come less often.  So, nine months of craziness, not 3.5 years.  Still, I totally understand the stress it would put to have someone that defiant on showers.  She did help occasionally on dishes but it was a hard slog.  But it was her reaction to the defiance.  After a while, my daughters stopped wanting to stay over and I only saw them on weekends for a few hours.  They'd visit and say hi to my wife, but whenever I asked them about staying over, they'd not answer.

With the movie incident, I have detailed journal entries of every day for a week up to and including the moving incident.  I just couldn't bring myself to write it up again...sorry...I didn't mean to be hazy...I couldn't write up again it because it was surreal.  There was a lunchtime argument after my wife and I were joking about being pregnant.  My 16 yo thought it was a bad idea nd we had to consider how she felt about having anymore kids.  I reminded her we were joking about being pregnant.  My daughter thought we were serious.  All of a sudden,  my wife thinks it all serious and tells my daughter it's her body and she can do what she wants with it.  The whole thing escalates in seconds.  I managed to hose down before it got too crazy.  We had long planned the movie (Avengers Endgame), but at the last moment, my wife tells me she doesn't want to play "happy family" and tells me, point blank, to just take my kids and go to the movie.  She wanted to stay at home.  Okay, I ask her again if that's what she wants and she was a bit sad, but firm in her decision.  I find out later she called her sister.  She had been drinking and was emotional, and upset that I had "abandoned" her.  Now her sister later told me seemed to figure out really quickly what happened, and my wife told me her sister told her "Good that they went to the movies".  Her sister is a tough nut and didn't think my daughter's comments should have been taken too seriously.  I'm not sure what was said then my wife hung up suddenly on her sister.  The sister called me at the movie to tell me she was worried my wife might OD again, couldn't get her to pick up the phone  and we had to decide whether to call an ambulance or not.  We erred on the side of caution and called the ambulance.  I still missed half the movie.

Now this is April 2018 and by then she'd had 4 ODs and 8 hospitalisations.  I knew once she was in the ambulance and at the hospital, there was nothing I could really do. So I managed to watch the very end of the movie...confused because I had missed so much.  Took my daughters home.  Ordered pizze for them.  Ordered pizza for my wife as I was going to see her in Emergency...with the pizza.  When I got there, she asked "Are you angry with me?".  I paused and offered "Yeah...a little bit".  She exploded and said "Get out!  I dont' want to be with people who are angry".

"But I brought you pizza."

It got more surreal after that.  Including the security guard assigned to her trying to soothe my wife telling her just about everyone in the emergency would love to have that pizza right now.

My wife would always complain that I kept making my daughters more important than her.  That was how she said it.  I once tried to explain her that there are many things that are important to me.  My daughters are one  of them.  You...my wife is one of them.  Specifically, I told my wife that she would always be the most imporant woman in my life.   She asked right way, "What's going to happen when your daughters grow up to be women?".  I dunno, but to me that really strikes me as odd.  Even my church minister said he didn't know what to do with that comment.  One of the other guys said, "Well, I'd just say my girls would always be my girls to me".  Okay, it's good advice in hindsight, but am I being too worried about her answer?  This is just one example of what seemed to be this competition between her and my kids.  When I'm with her, I'm with her.  My kids try to bring her into activities, but there are some things we've done for years that she just doesn't enjoy.  

All up, there have been 8 ODs and three of them were reasonably serious attempts.  Although I see my daughters almost every week and talk to them regularly, both have only been willing to stay over night now that I'm separated and in my own place.

My wife once told me she thought my kids hated her.  I asked my eldest, and she said she didn't hate her.  My eldest was just scared of her.  She was scared because her reactions were just all over the place.

Do I think it's salvagable?  Well, at some point everyone has to make a decision about it.  I have a faith in God which I honestly try to work through life and reality.  The last conversation I had with my guys was about what the husband should do in this faith.  And someone asked me where there anything I thought my wife had to do for me to stay.  Most times, it's something the man needs to forgive or let go or really stretch himself to live out the covenant which is marriage.  However, being realistic about what that balance between faith and a secular view of what the next action should be...that's the wrestling. 

My eldest is now 18 and much more relaxed and helpful around the house.  But my wife, the changes are minimal.

Aside from the relationship challenges of being married to someone so fragile, I'm here just double checking opinions about the step-parenting situations I've never really asked about.

Hi LieutenantDad.

All of the four guys are married.  One of them has a daughter (20yo) with a mental illness somewhat similar to my wife.  But the underlying cause is very different.  He was the first one to offer help on moving logistics when I first brought up the topic.  We've had many chats being a listening post to each other.  In particular around chosen relationships and unchosen relationships.  His being the unchosen one.  The one advancing the idea of faith based idea of marriage was my church minister.  He has been incredibly patient listening to me and supporting even through the suicide attempts.  To be blunt, I think once I mentioned I was really close to thinking about divorce he knew to had to offer a faith-based approach  about marriage for me to consider.  He was, in effect, just doing his job.  That being said, he and the others know the incredibly difficult times I've been through, not just with my kids, but my wife's behaviours in general.  And as I've discovered, their awareness of her behaviours even before I met her

Fair call on not pulling my kid into line about preganancy.  My wife andI are both older and she's pretty sure she's not going to get pregnant, so it's been a running inside joke. It's good to be challenged about keeping the kids at kids.  In hindsight I could have reacted more strongly on my wife's behalf with that.  That doesn't excuse how she chose to react to my daughter with that level fo drinking and she started having suicidal ideation as well.

However, I've spoken to my wife about her alcohol intake, especially as she's on psychotropic meds.  We've been to three couples counsellors they all mentioned it's not a good idea to drink on meds.  Her GP said the same to her.  Her psychiatrist seems to have a slightly softer view on it but my wife would always come back with her view on his willingness to let her drink a little bit.  "No more than 10 standard drinks a week"  "Don't drink by yourself".  She's been able to go 50 days without alcohol, but always goes back to it.  I tried booking sessions with him and they got cancelled.  I asked about going with her and the two times I've been in the room with him, he's given a soft line like "If she's drinking that much, then she using alcohol for medical purposes".  

I have a value "I don't want to raise kids with someone who uses alcohol to self-medicate".  I think I finally realised she was self-medicating about about 9 months into the marriage.  By then I was emeshed and I managed to really start to get myself out of the co-dependency about a year ago.  I've been able to hold back my comments when she's drinking.  That's her choice and how she listens and doesn't listen to her medical team is her business. 

The thing now is even my DD14 commented for the first time to my wife on how much she's drinking.  On the one hand I'm glad she's got sensible ideas about drinking.  Her older sister doesn't drink and the younger one seem pretty mature about it as well.  I spoke to my youngest after her comments, but I could only comment that she kept the conversation level toned about my wife's excuses for the multiple glasses of wine on her own.  And that you can't really do much about changing people's behaviour that way.  My DD14 told me she wanted to take the glass and pour it out and I said it was good you didn't.  But what do with these kinds of situations?

I mentioned we went to three couples counsellors.  The second one early last year was because I was stressed about the girls not staying over and she was stressed about the girls coming over at all.  When the counsellor asked her maybe if she could stay at a girlfriends place, my wife erupted and accused the counsellor of trying to kick her out of her home.  The counsellor calmly tried to explain she wasn't trying to kick her out and she might consider that as a "gift to your husband".  My wife was furious and still kept going on about being kicked out of her house.  We didn't make it past the second session with that counsellor.  Months later, I asked her about that chat and asked her if she heard the counsellor say "it's a gift to your husband".  She honestly couldn't remember the counsellor saying that.  Hmmm...I think she gets so angry that nothing you say actually gets inside her ears if she's that dysregulated.

Did I mention she's also spent over $10,000 on iPhone games while we were married?  I'm pretty sure she was spending a similar amount  before I met her.  Her Candy Crush level was ridicuously high and you can't get to that level in that short a time without a lot of extra in-app purchases. That's an addiction.  And she doesn't want to talk about it.

We tried to rebuild trust back in May this during the separation.  But the same day we managed to get some trust back, she had another OD (on headache medication) and then two days later, she read my journals. Not just a page and then closed it.  She read them for four hours and six months worth.  There's nothing terrible to read, and she actually complimented me on my writing style.  I told her I was angry about her reading it.  She then claimed that she now understood me better and why I didn't like it when she drank alcohol and it was good that she read it.  I still was in shock that she read that much.  The OD didn't help with trust building.  Then she used things she read against me and then asked me to have a drink with her over dinner...and I'm left wondering if she really paid attention to what she read.  Those two items pretty much were the final straw back in May this year.

I know this is a step parenting site, but I made myself jump in and write my stories and read others because I needed some perspective on whether this an impossible situation.  Blended families are hard enough.  Then add when people  have mental illness on top.  For that, I worry about the recent independent medical examiner wrote my wife won't be able to go back to work after the workplace bullying, and if she does she can't go back to her old job(childcare director), can't work in a team environment as she won't be able to handle any criticism in that environment.  Marriages are a team sport and there will be always be some small conflict that needs to be worked through. 

I can take a step of faith with God, but that same ancient faith book has a story where the devil tempts the Son of God to jump off a tall tower saying...don't worry "God will protect you".  And the Son cautioned "Do not test the Lord thy God".  Hmmm...

One day at a time.

And I know if I'd need some professional help to keep me stable if we decide to try to make it work.