Since you’re here, you probably have a friend or loved one who is an alcoholic. And you probably want to know: how do you help an alcoholic in the real world? What can you do that will make a difference? Let’s find out:
First things first: work on changing your behavior, not the alcoholic
It is a hard fact to swallow at first, but the truth of the matter is that you are probably not going to be able to directly change an alcoholic’s behavior. Manipulating or threatening the alcoholic will only drive them deeper into isolation and heavy drinking.
If you try to control another person’s drinking, you are going to experience a loss of control and real powerlessness. Instead, if you focus on changing your own behavior, you will experience full control and an empowering mindset. This is how you go about helping an alcoholic: by focusing on your own behavior and how you choose to interact with the alcoholic….not by focusing on how you can manipulate or change the other person.
Keep reading. I will explain more below about how changing your behavior can help the alcoholic.
How can I convince an alcoholic to quit drinking?
This is a very difficult thing to do, most would say it is downright impossible. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a difference in the potential sobriety of a person. Show your support as best you can and let them know that you will support them in any way that you can if they choose to stop drinking.
There are no secret tricks or manipulations when it comes to this stuff. Some people imagine that there might be a way to threaten or coerce an alcoholic into quitting drinking. There definitely is not. If you threaten them, they will simply withdrawal further away from you.
Most, if not all alcoholics, are slowly self destructing, and they know it. Threats mean nothing to someone who is self destructing. You can’t intimidate someone who has nothing to lose. It is simply more fuel for the alcoholic fire.
Trying to shame an alcoholic into sobriety doesn’t work either. If you succeed in shaming them, this will only make them want to drink more because they will truly feel shamed. The alcoholic really is a sick person. Would you shame a disabled person? Of course not.
So basically, there is no way to directly convince an alcoholic to quit drinking.
All efforts to influence an alcoholics behavior are going to be mostly indirect, but this does not make them unimportant. You can influence their behavior and decisions, just not in a very fast or direct manner. More on this below.
How can I help an alcoholic make the decision to go to treatment?
Much like trying to convince someone to quit drinking, this can be a difficult task. But getting someone to agree to treatment is much easier, but at the same time, it is probably not very useful. Here’s why:
Recovering alcoholics who are sober now will talk about a point of surrender that they reached in their drinking. Virtually every one of them that you talk to can pinpoint that moment of surrender, when they finally threw in the towel and stopped fighting against their disease. This is the moment of surrender. This is where recovery starts.
No one knows how to induce this moment. If we did then we would have solved the problem of addiction and recovery. The best we can do is to encourage people towards this moment.
Once someone has reached the point of surrender, anything you do to help them will basically work. Any treatment center you send them to will produce good results. If they have not yet reached the point of surrender, then nothing you do will matter. At all. Nothing you do can overcome a lack of surrender. The alcoholic is still fighting and struggling and trying to control things and it’s just not going to work.
So how can you convince them to go to treatment? Simply offer to take them to treatment. If they’re not interested, then it makes no sense to press them further, because they are not ready. Even if you can somehow manipulate them into it, you are wasting your time. Not ready means not ready. And this has never been more true than when it comes to quitting drinking.
The best we can do is to be prepared to get them into treatment when the moment is right. Have a plan, make some calls, see what is available for alcoholic help. Then when the person has finally surrendered, you will have some options as to where you can take them.
How do you know when they’ve surrendered? When they ask for help. When they are ready to change on your terms, not on their terms. When they throw up their arms and say “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. Show me how to live,” that is surrender. That is the start of recovery. Anything else on their part is more manipulation (such as “give me money,” or “I promise to go to treatment next week.”).
How can I organize an effective intervention for an alcoholic?
I have already written extensively about interventions, and I have a small bit of experience with them. I still think it is a possible option in some situations, but for the most part I am starting to see more and more evidence that formal interventions are almost never helpful. There is a sliver of hope here, though, because they occasionally do work in guiding an alcoholic towards recovery. But more and more I am seeing that they are never the magic bullet we think they might be; they cannot possibly be an instrument of real change. An intervention can not be the switch that goes off in the alcoholic’s mind that creates real surrender. That switch must be flipped in some other way, unfortunately, and there is seemingly no rhyme or reason to it.
But an intervention still might have benefits, even if it can not force recovery to happen instantly. For one thing, a formal intervention can:
1) Let the alcoholic know that people do care.
2) Show them that help is available (in the form of treatment).
3) Be a step towards their eventual surrender, even if it doesn’t get them clean and sober right now.
So if you are considering an intervention, understand that while the goal of the intervention is probably for the alcoholic to attend a treatment center and never drink again, this is probably an unrealistic expectation and you shouldn’t get your hopes up that high. More likely it is a step on their path to eventual sobriety. It might plant a seed for their awakening later on. Keep this in mind if things don’t go perfectly as planned. How do you help an alcoholic? Not by whacking them with a two by four, unfortunately. It takes gentle nudging in the right direction, and this idea of “planting a seed” is just that type of nudging.
How can I stop enabling an alcoholic?
This is really the core strategy that you need to focus on in your dealings with another alcoholic or addict: do not enable them.
What is enabling?
It’s just what it sounds like. If you enable an alcoholic, you allow them to continue drinking when they otherwise might have had to stop for some reason. But this gets tricky, because sometimes when we try to help an alcoholic, we are actually enabling them. Other times when we think we are “hurting” an alcoholic, we are actually helping them by observing healthy boundaries. Figuring out the difference here is critical.
If you can stop enabling the alcoholic, then this will get them closer and closer to facing reality and making an eventual decision to stop drinking on their own. This is the goal of helping the alcoholic–to force them to examine their own reality and hopefully make a change. Trying to convince them verbally is pointless. Threatening them is pointless. The key is to not enable them. Here’s how to go about doing that:
1) Don’t deny them consequences of their drinking
If the alcoholic in your life gets pulled over for drunk driving and lands in jail, leave them there. Do not bail them out. Sitting in jail is a natural consequence of their behavior, and they need to experience that consequence. It is part of the learning process. If you deny them that consequence, then they cannot learn.
Obviously, it might take several consequences before the alcoholic “wakes up” and decides to try something different (like recovery). But if there are never any consequences, why would the alcoholic ever decide to change? They wouldn’t. So do not deny them the natural consequences that occur due to their drinking.
This doesn’t mean you have to go out of your way to punish them or get them into trouble. Just let them fall on their face. If you keep “putting pillows under them” when they fall, then they will never be motivated to change.
2) Understand when you are helping versus enabling
Genuinely helping an alcoholic would involve things such as directing them to a treatment center, encouraging them to get help, or possibly taking them to an AA meeting. Examples of enabling behavior would be like if the alcoholic needs to borrow 50 dollars to keep their electricity turned on.
Just because the alcoholic needs money for something other than drinking does not mean you should give it to them. In fact, you should never loan or give money to someone who is still drinking, regardless of what they need it for. Doing so is enabling because they will continue to spend their other funds on drugs and alcohol.
Your approach to “helping” them needs to become very “hands-off.” The only way to really help them is when it is directly linked to a recovery effort (such as going to meetings or rehab). Everything else you might do for them is just manipulation and control on their part. Help for alcoholics does not come in the form of money or favors. Knowledge and encouragement is what they really need.
Beware of bargaining as well. “Loan me 50 bucks today and I promise I will go to rehab on Monday” does not cut it. Never bargain with them like this. It’s just more manipulation. If they want to bargain, you set the terms, not them. For example: “I will drive you to rehab on Monday if you are still willing to go.”
3) Understand and practice detachment
Detachment is the idea that the disease of alcoholism is separate from the alcoholic themselves. It’s the idea that we can love a person but hate their disease. When we practice detachment, we can view an alcoholic’s outrageous behavior as being part of their disease without taking it so personally. We can still love them even though they are sick and their behavior is unacceptable at times.
If you really want to help an alcoholic then you must start practicing detachment. Doing so will save your sanity as well as to start pushing the alcoholic closer to facing their own reality. That’s because your detachment will force them to examine their own actions instead of your reactions. When you stop reacting to the alcoholic’s outrageous behavior, it takes away an “out” that the alcoholic can use to shift the focus.
Detachment is not easy, and you might not do it perfectly at all times. But it’s important to understand the concept and to practice it as best you can. Even if it seems like you are distancing yourself from the alcoholic, it is still the healthiest behavior you can choose. You are choosing to distance yourself from their disease and the emotional turmoil that it creates.
4) Set healthy limits and boundaries
How can we know what healthy boundaries are? By separating the disease from the alcoholic.
In other words, if the person were not drinking, would they still need you to bail them out of jail or call in sick to work for them? Of course not. So don’t do those things for them, ever.
Always ask yourself before attempting to “help” the alcoholic: “Could they do this for themselves if they weren’t drinking?” If the answer is yes, then you should not “help” them with it.
Likewise, if the alcoholic is drunk and is engaging in unacceptable behavior (such as being verbally abusive for example), would that behavior be acceptable to you if they were sober? If the answer is no, then you should not tolerate that behavior….ever.
If their behavior is unacceptable when they are drunk then it is unacceptable, period. You should not tolerate it if you would not expect it from them if they were sober.
This is the process of setting healthy limits and boundaries. You have to decide what is acceptable behavior on their part, regardless of whether or not they have been drinking. In other words, the drinking can no longer be an excuse for their behavior. Separate the disease from the person and act accordingly.
Sometime, when the alcoholic is sober, you will want to communicate your limits and boundaries with them. This doesn’t have to be an angry argument. Simply tell them in advance how you will behave under certain conditions. For example: “I will not loan you money in the future, regardless of what you need it for. I will not bail you out of jail. I will not call in sick to work for you if you are hung over.” And so on.
Always, always, always follow through on your promises. Never make idle threats. Say what you mean and follow through with it. This is the only way to affect lasting change in the relationship.
You might be tempted to make a threat that you do not intend to follow through with. Don’t do it. Only set limits that you fully intend to enforce.
5) Don’t react to their drinking episodes.
Most of the big arguments happen when an alcoholic gets out of control and either gets into trouble or makes a fool of themselves. We have a tendency to react to these situations, and it is natural for us to believe that the greater our reaction is, the more likely it is to change their behavior (or at least get through to them so that they hear us). This is the wrong strategy.
When you react to their drinking episode, they can shift to focusing on to your reaction instead of on their behavior. Carry on as normal and they are forced to examine their part in things. Stop giving them fuel for their fire by reacting and blowing up at them. This just creates arguments and possibly drives them into isolation and more drinking.
This idea of non-reaction does not mean that you forget about your limits and boundaries. By all means, stick to your guns with them. That is extremely important.
Enforce limits and boundaries with decisive action–action that you had previously decided on in a rational moment of clarity and probably also communicated to the alcoholic. In the heat of the moment, do not react. Do not pour fuel on the fire. Simply follow through with the actions that you decided on (such as, “if you come home drunk again, I’m going to go stay over at a friend’s house for the night,” or whatever the case may be).
This is how to enforce limits and boundaries…with action instead of arguing. With detachment instead of emotional turmoil.
Action items – What you can do:
1) Detach. Separate the person from the disease and act accordingly.
2) Don’t enable. Never do for the alcoholic what they could do for themselves if they were sober.
3) Don’t react. Stop blowing up at the alcoholic and thinking that this will change things. Ignore their episodes and they will be forced to look at themselves for once.
If you found this helpful, feel free to share it with others
Recommended Reading
- Overcoming Addiction
- Addiction Recovery is about Discovering New Layers of Information
- 5 Ways to Supercharge Your Recovery, Avoid Relapse, and Dominate Your Addiction Over the Holiday Season
- 10 Ways to Embrace Creative Recovery and Take Your Sobriety to the Next Level
- Warning: Taking Massive Action in Drug Addiction Recovery Could Result in Creating an Awesome Life that You are Genuinely Grateful For
- Holistic Addiction Treatment Center
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Hello,
I don’t know what to do anymore.
My mom is an alcoholic and my dad has a job where he leaves for 10 weeks at a time. From what i’ve assumed, my dad is almost like my moms savior. he met her at young age when her drinking, and i think drug problems, were at its worst, and with a 1 year old girl, now my 17 yr old big sister. My dad came from a family that just barley made meats end, and my mom came from a family where things were handed to her on a silver spoon. As far as i know, my mom started into drugs at a very young age, like 13 or so. Since I can remember, my mom always had her evening drinks, and was in bed at like 8 or 9. Shes had on and off jobs, and she recently just quit her job working at our local soup kitchen and food bank as “Food Bank Coordinator” For the few years she worked there, I thought she had seen people who had it worse then her, that she had a loving, functional family. We definitely don’t roll in money in my house, but we’re not up tight about saving. She had a few drinking binge episodes while she was still working at the food bank, but she recently admitted to me that she quit her job so she could stay at home while my younger brother, sister, and I go to school. Ever since her first bad episode about 3 years ago, weve kept all alcohol out of the house and for a while she went to meetings. we’ve offered her a long-term rehab program, but its really not plausible because of my dad’s job. Also since then, she doesn’t drink at all when my dad is home, and I obviously know that she does when my dad isn’t home. A few days ago she went on a binge while my dad, brother, sister, and I went skiing for the day. We came home, and she was drunk as any of her other binges. This is the first time my dad has seen this in a long time, or even ever, i don’t really know. He doesn’t really go out of his way to say anything to her, or act on the situation, he just always lets it go. My brother still doesn’t really understand it all, but my sister and I do. We really want help her. Any advice would be great!
I am dating an alcoholic and she is very caring and there for our family when we need her financially, but she never knows when to stop drinking and makes excuses for her drinking because of her past. I have dealt with people like this in the past and i am ready to bail. I have a hard time dealing with people like this, and i feel that i have to give up a life that i never had of hanging with my friends and drinking socially now because if i do then she will feel it is ok to drink. i am unsure what to do in this case..i know that i should just halp her but im not sure how to because when i bring it up she becomes stubborn adnd hostile,,,
ps. After all the great promises, he had two days of sobriety and now it’s on again. I have quit social drinking in support, which means that my sense of smell is even more acute and I can smell that sweet sickly alcoholic smell more keenly. I feel like I am at war with an invisible force over which I have no control. I practiced the don’t react strategy today. Also declined the invitation to go to the bar with him, even if I were to just drink coffee. Then I just left him in town, knowing he’d get blotto, and feeling an overwhelming sadness.
My partner is an alcoholic and this is wreaking havoc upon our relationship. I am trying my best to love her and be there in whatever way that I can, but I have just about reached my limit. I am working full-time, going to grad school full-time, doing an internship… each and every night I am kept awake into the wee hours of the morning (2, sometimes 3am…) because she is up drinking, playing music loud, slamming doors and cabinets…*sigh*. I am at my own wit’s end with this situation. She has a lot of pain from the past that I know she is trying to deal with, but this is so not the way to do it. I know that and she has even said it isn’t the best manner, but this is a disease… I grew up with an alcoholic father (…she did too by the way…). It is hard to practice a “hands off” sort of strategy because that opens up an entire range of events that leaves you feeling like you should have done something to prevent it. For instance, she sometimes goes to the bathroom and falls asleep on the loo… a few times I have been awakened by the sound of her falling off and plowing head first into a cabinet we have in there… perfumes and everything within crashing into the bathtub. Or being awakened by her calls for help and going into the bathroom and seeing blood everywhere from her trying to shave her legs…. or her sitting in freezing cold water after running out all of the hot water. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I feel absolutely powerless and trapped.
I know this is not a site to actually get advice (…or at least it doesn’t seem to be), but hopefully my experiences shared will at the least let someone else know they are not alone. As I stated in my previous post, I am at my wit’s end with my partner’s drinking. She literally blamed me for her problem… a problem she has had since before we even started dating. I recall when we were just hanging out doing normal “friends stuff”, she would drop me high and dry to make a run to the liquor store. I just thought okay, maybe she is having a party or something. Little did I know until we started living together.. she is going through a 750ml bottle every 1 to 2 days. :o( It scares me to no end to imagine the damage she is doing to her internal organs with that amount of drinking. She made a statement last night, pretty much saying that when you see someone in trouble you reach out and do something. What am I supposed to do in this situation? Force her to go to rehab??? I have read not just on this site, but a slew of others that all say the same exact thing…. you can’t force an alcoholic to go into rehab, or to stop drinking or to do anything they are not ready to do. She still won’t admit that she has a problem! So the feasibility of getting her to go to rehab, is definitely a “cart before the horse” situation. I am trying to be positive and hang in there, but right now and I know this will sound extremely selfish, I have enough of my own worries… how to hold on to my job because I arrive half asleep because she keeps me up all hours of the night with her psychotic behavior…. how to keep up with my graduate studies… try reading this level material with music blaring and someone banging crap non-stop! If things don’t show some sign of improvement, I hate to say it, I may have to leave her. God knows I love her with my whole heart, I do… I need her to seek help. All I can do is keep praying for strength, wisdom and courage… for both of us.
Alcoholic blogs are B.S.
Something quite significant happened to these people, and no one wants to face it.
All the placating, self-righteous mumbo-jumbo is pathetic.
Alcoholics are possessed by the futility of human existence.
Foolish celebrations, elaborate facades, extreme experiences and trivial diversions are worthless to such souls.
Make life really matter and alcoholics will cure themselves. Otherwise, save your tears for yourselves because reality is coming for you as well.
No sadistic God, masochistic savior, intellectual clown or distressed relative is going to stop an alcoholic from drinking.
Alcoholics are fully conscious souls of earthly reality.
The rest of humankind is blind, deaf or dumb. Dah—apple.
Unless you can change the universe, do not ever try to modify an alcoholic’s mind.
Elute
P.S. Delusion is the only saving grace of humankind. After all, who would consciously birth a child to death or attempt to change the outcome of eternity, but creatures of masked instinct?
my father is an alcoholic. he recently lost his job this summer and has been getting worse and worse. he has been in and out of treatment twice now but always checks himself out saying he will be fine. He seems fine for about a week or so until he has a time where he gives in and drinks or does some sort of drug. i don’t know what to do anymore and im scared he’s going to kill himself. I try not to get mad at him but all i want to do is cry when he is under the influence. i am at a loss of solutions. so ANY solutions or help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
I have decided to take steps and wrote a letter to my husband telling him how unhappy i was because of his drinking and that i can’t do it anymore, he needed to make a decision to change things or go our own ways. after reading this i will no longer go pick him up at the club when he needs a ride cause he is too drunk. i have always felt guilty if i didn’t and something happened but i believe now thats the only way to make him wake up
Truly great advice, I appreciated it. Briefly, my family member doesn’t have times of sobriety, he is too ill with alcoholism. He will/is die(ing) as he continues, but I can’t stop it and he can’t stop it. Being at the point of death isn’t a point of surrender for him, which, I guess makes everything hopeless?!? (especially for those of us concerned with his soul after death.)
Hi my name is ben and i am 18 years old, i lost my mum to alcholism on the 29th of december 2010. She was a great mum to me and my little sister but she was always a bit of a drinker, it all started to go down hill when my grandad got cancer three years ago she was getting drunk most nights, and then she lost her job becuase it was moving to a new town and she could not drive. a year on and her drinking got worse to the point i was comiing home from school and she would be so drunk she could not stand up this drove my dad mad who would come home from work all day to find me and my sister trying to cook dinner for him, we all tryed to help her by taking her to the docters to AA meetings but she would come back drunk from them she thought she was better then them becuase she was samll and it only took a bottle and half to get her really drunk when she herd other saying they drunk bottles of vodka and whiskey she thought she was not as bad as them. we all tryed to help but in the end my dad gave up he moved out every now and then becuase the police was comin round eveyday to bring her home form where they found her drunk he could not take it my lil sister went to her friends house and i stayed with my mum most of the time. she was in and out of jobs for three years but after a year of my grandad having cancer he past away and we thought mayby this is the big kick up the arse she needs to sort it out but it made her worse.after three years of not doing anything as a family all the holidays ruined by my mum drinking to much in the day and getting out of her head at night and wondering off in to towns and stuff while we was abroad. at the start of december while my dad was in ireland on a trip with work and my sister was at a friends house i came downstair to talk to my mum who had been pretty good over the weekend i noticed that all her skin and eyes had gone yellow and she couldent move because of a pain in the side of her back. i told her to phone an ambulance and it came and it took her to hospital i was alone with her for the whole day luckily my girlfriend could drive to take me home. i spent a month everyday with my dad an sister an all my family going up to see her on the first night her heart had stopped due to the pressure on her lungs due to all the bleeding she had from her spleen which sharrted from where she fell down the stairs when she was drunk, she was moved to the intensive care unit and i never got to hear her voice again. a whole month she was lying there on the bed hooked up to so many machines i could not hug her with out setting alarms off everyday she looked worse she a couple of operations for one week it looked like she was going to make it but becuase her liver had been damged so much by drinking and her kidneys where so bad they could not do much more . so on the 29th of december we had already stayed over that night becuase we was told she wasent going to make the night but she did but after 2 in the afternoon we was told there was no chance so me and my dad and sister and all my family had to round my mum watching all the machines count down to zero i sat there for three hours holding my mums hand knowing when three sets of numbers hit zero she will be gone forver knowing i could do nothing at all to save my mum made me feel useless it was the worst thing i have ever been through in my life and it will stay with me forever i love my mum she was great but those 3 years of police round my house the fights and arguments that december of 2010 where i spent chritmas day round a hopsital bed with my mum who couldnert even look me in the eys to tell me she loved me or to hear me say i love her is the worst thing posssible to go through. i know there will be some people on here who may suffer from alchol or know someone who suffers from alchol i know what it is like and you have to think about your familys your kids, brother, sisters, mum and dads what they will have to go through becuase you cant lay off the bottle i know it is hard for some but to see what i have seen at my age i would not wish this on my enemys or anyone in the world this will stay with me foever.
my boyfriend is, i guess you would say, a functioning alcoholic. I don’t drink at all myself, i find no need or want to. i see what is does to other people and i don’t want to go through that, not even a buzz. we have been together for over a year, almost two, and off and on for the last 4 months or so mostly due to his drinking. he believes that he can’t have fun without drinking and he recently told me that his family “accepts” his behavior.
his mom is the biggest problem, she is the main enabler in his life and she has basically made him force me out of his life because i don’t “understand” him and i don’t “really care about him” the way that she does. we lived together for a short period and this is when i really saw how bad his drinking was. he would come home from work already drinking and continue until he went to bed. i can almost never tell how his mood is going to be, he has never been violent with me, but he goes from loving me like crazy to hating me over something as simple as putting something where he doesn’t want it.
every single one of our fights have taken place while he was drunk or when i tried to talk to him about his drinking. i love this man more than anything in the world, but i don’t know how to reach him. i have tried everything that i can think of, but it’s made much harder now that he isn’t talking to me at all because i was crying and telling him that he was killing himself with the amount that he drinks and i can’t watch it happen to him anymore.
i’ve read some of the other posts, and it really makes me feel like i’m not alone. i just needed to vent and maybe get some advice. i love him so much, and i’ve slowly watched him change into a person that i don’t even know anymore. thanks for reading.
My boyfriend is an alcoholic.
I have tried detachment and my life is a lot less complicated now.
I am, however, a bit confused with the behavioral aspect.
If he is calling me awful names and saying terrible things about me to my face, am I supposed to just NOT react?
What would be a healthy thing to say?
Or should I just ignore him?
Any action I do (ignoring/leaving the apartment) is immediately followed by a relentless stream of awful text messages from him.
I sat here tonight listening to him begin to call me horrible names. And after the 3rd name… He seemed to stop and look guilty.
Then I just walked away.
I wish he would hit rock-bottom aready. If he never does, then its death, jails, or institutions.
He’s like Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde. I miss him so much. And I can’t even tell him that I miss him or care about him because he will verbally attack me and tell me I’m full of shit.
Hi my husband has been drinking for some time now and he has made his mind up on giving it up I had an operation two weeks ago today, and when i had it he said he has to stop drinking we have two kids ages 10 and 6 years old and they see what goes on all the, time and they are the ones who feel it the most and they are only kids they should not got through it at their ages, they should have a life where they can talk to their dad when they need to talk to him when they need him, he has been through a detox last year he did seven weeks without drink which i thought was really good and they say he will be able to do it again as he has done it before, so i am hoping that this time it will work he said he wants to go onto Antabuse this time to help him not to drink which i think is a good thing and he needs the support as well to help him through it.
I have had it where he verbally attacks me and calls me names under the sun which i have got used to it as i have had to protect my kids i think that is why i am like i am a stronger person for it, i don’t take anything for granted i am a kind of person who will try help others if they need the help but when one of you are an alcoholic it is harder because one of you have to keep the peace between everyone, so yes i am a person who has lost all hope and i am only hoping that i can be that strong for him when he goes through it again we always let him know that we all care about him no matter what but if he does not stop drinking he is going to cause himself really damage to his mind and body.
I miss the man i married 11 years ago he was full of fun i just want that back i love him so much i would do anything for him.
Hi my name is kimberly my boyfriend is drinking everyday he say he has been that way since he was 11 yrs old he has been in and out of jail since a teenager his mom was not there for him when he was growing up but this is my situation when i met him he was drinking but i didn’t know it was this bad he gets violent sometimes he takes his anger out on me and the kids all the time on Mother’s day he broke my finger he tells people he did not mean too so i believed him and stayed he has brused my kids up a few times cause he don’t know his strength when he drinks he has choked me till i bout passed out he has been to jail for DUI a few times i got him out everytime i tell him i will leave with the kids and sometimes he say he will kill me but it’s not as bad as it’s been he has stop hitting me he still takes his anger out on the kids and he fuss at me for any and every little thing i do or don’t do now he says he knows he drinks alot but he wants to stop cause we can barely make the bills around here we have 5 kids small kids at that he says that everyday he tells hisself that he will not drink today but then he get’s off from work and there he go all over again and he always make me feel bad for hiding money from him what should i do cause i have about reached a point of giving up i use to fuss about the drinking but somehow i don’t do it anymore i even find myself going to the store for him at times cause i fear him he knows he has a liver problem and no insurance and he is also bipolared with no meds but i don’t think he will ever stop am i wrong for giving up on him now please help me with this
I have nothing to say, we all have the same stories. In a blender, this trait here, that trait there…..it’s all the same. The alcoholic breaks your heart and ruins your life. How long do you hold on? Until you can’t anymore.
My girlfriend has been an alcoholic since she was 18. She recently turned 36. We have had a backward relationship whereas I began taking care of her from the start and she clang to me as she was ending a 4 year relationship.
I was her support and would always be there for her. As time passed we grew closer, yet I moved away to another state. We have had daily contact and I would visit with her. Our relationship grew.
All of a sudden I noticed a personality change in her only to find out she met another guy who was also providing her with pills and drinking. I stayed close, yet was lied to about it for months. I then found out that he was manipulating and enabling her with more drugs and booze.
When she found out I knew she ended the relationship with him and clung back on to me. We got past the lies and mistrust and I proposed to her.
Two weeks after I proposed she and I had not seen her as I was back home she entered an extensive rehab program. She called me everyday after I proposed and I did not notice her drinking. She admitted the night before rehab was to start that she had been drinking since I had left.
I told her I was proud of her and would step aside and wait. I have been on pins and needles since. I know it all takes time. I know she wants sobriety and things we talked about. But, what will they tell her in rehab? Will I be put on the shelf?
@ Don S – I think you would do well to go to an Al-anon meeting and tell them your whole story, see what they would have you do. Lots of details in there and no clear answers. I would think about postponing further developments with a person like that until they had more stable sobriety, but that is just an opinion of course. Good luck to you.
I’ve recently got back in touch with an old childhood friend of mine, only to discover that he’s struggling with bipolar disorder and turning to alcohol and drugs to help himself. He’s 19 and in college, though he’s not sure what he wants to do with his future; he really is a very lost soul. He is gay, and his experiences as a young adolescent were quite traumatic, as he lost all of his friends when he came out to them, and he’s scared of telling his parents. He recently lost his virginity to a guy he met online, on a website advertising one-night stands, and all of his sexual encounters since then have been similar in nature. He’s emotionally needy, but has never had a stable relationship. I’m really worried about him; he’s failing at school, he doesn’t seem to want to do anything except drink when he’s down. On St. Patrick’s day, he blacked out after about 3 PM, but that ended a week-long session of binging. He was planning on restarting it again tonight, but I managed to talk him ’round to taking a nap instead. I think I’m the only one of his friends that is actually worried about him. What can I do to help him? The first thing to address would be his fear of coming out to his family, which I believe is a cause of his disorder, as well as getting over the internalized homophobia that I suspect he harbors. As for the bipolar, he either refuses to take meds or claims how badly he needs them. I’m really stuck with his case, and any help would be appreciated.
My partner has been alcohol-free for about a month now. I don’t expect smooth sailing all the way but am feeling pretty positive. I think that not drinking anywhere near him is helping and I have a measure of detatchment in my back pocket in case he falls off the wagon. But here’s hoping!
Hi,
I have a brother whom I am most concerned about, he is a very heavy drinker, drinking 4 to sometimes 5 nights a week alone. I’m not sure how to help him,or what to say. can someone give me some advice please
My husband is a everyday drinker. we have been together for almost 4 years.When he drinks and gets mad he takes it out on me and things get out of control.I love him but he needs to stop drinking or i am going to leave him. I have told him this before but it never worked he always went back to drinking. I just told him i will leave him if he don’t stop drinking again on Monday. We have kids together.Everything is good till he drinks. I can’t take it anymore !! What can I do?
My sister has been an alcoholic for over 10 years (although my mother hid it from the rest of us for many years).
We know that past events in her life contributed to her drinking, and counselling sessions haven’t worked. She has never seen a professional for help. And we don’t even know now who COULD help.
Yesterday she took an overdose. She is supposed to take anti depressants but is often too drunk to take them if it’s left to her to remember. She has only recently been asked by the family to move out, and took the overdose after only being in her own home a week.
When drunk it is difficult to ignore her behaviour. She becomes desperate for attention and talks non stop. To anyone who will listen. If you try to listen and appear interested you eventually become irritated (the conversations are very repetitive and quite often involve blaming people for various things, or simply name calling). If you ignore her she can become angry and often aggressive (throwing things, punching people etc). Neither reaction seems to work.
As soon as left alone she drinks. And quite often gets arrested for fighting or being drunk in public. She also now appears to hallucinate, and sometimes talks to people who aren’t there (when drunk), and even now in hospital one instance of it happening when sober. We were told this was withdrawal, but as far as we know she’s never had withdrawal symptoms before.
She says that she doesn’t want to live. This is her FIFTH suicide attempt.
How do you deal with an alcoholic who is also depressed (as I presume most are?). How can you call the police / ignore them when they start kicking the door down, and you know they’ll be arrested and never have a chance to find work due to having a crminal record ? How can you call the police when they punch you, and you know this time they’ll end up in prison and be much MORE depressed. And when they are almost ALWAYS drunk, how can you enjoy a normal conversation where you can try to discuss the depression ? How can you let them live their own life and be detached when the first thing they do is empty the contents of the medicine cupboard into their stomach the moment they are left alone ? Thanks
PS We are in the UK, not the US. The only help here apears to be the AA. She used to just go there drunk if we didnt take her ourselves, and afterwards complained that everyone just talks about their past. She stoppped attending as it seemed pointless.
Also, if someone needs money for bills in their first home, as they aren’t used to budgeting and made a mistake (maybe they spent it on drink, maybe they didnt). You just can’t be sure. Either way they are short of money, panic, decide enough is enough and decide to end it all. How to you live with the fact that you didnt help them ??
Along the same lines – if they have moved out and turn up at your house (obviously in a state where they could put themselves in danger, and are possibly hallucinating). How are you meant to react to this ?
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