One of the most important things to do if you are living with an alcoholic is to set limits and boundaries. You can do this by:

1) Deciding what is acceptable behavior and what is NOT acceptable behavior from the alcoholic.

2) Communicating this to the alcoholic.

That’s it. If you can do these 2 things, then your behavior can have a positive effect. While it is impossible to make someone change against their will, your actions can still have an effect.

So, the question you need to start with is this: “What constitutes unacceptable behavior?”

The answer to this question can be better understood if you practice the concept of detachment. With detachment, what you do is to mentally separate the alcoholics behavior from their disease of alcoholism. This can help illustrate what is acceptable and what is not.

Basically, anything that you would find unacceptable from a sober person is unacceptable from someone who is alcoholic. In other words, there are no excuses, no free rides just because someone has a disease. Don’t make any concessions because someone is alcoholic. If an alcoholic gets drunk and stays up all night partying, then misses work, do not scramble around for them and try to save them and save their job. You would not do this for a sober person so why should you do it for someone who is drunk? They need to face their own consequences without you coming to their rescue.

Now this does not mean that you need to maliciously try to trip them up or get them into trouble. The alcoholic can do this on their own. Simply stop rescuing them and allowing them to manipulate you into propagating their drinking. Put your foot down and decide what is not acceptable to you and stick to your guns. Here are some guidelines for how to do that:

1) Never make hollow threats - it might be tempting to threaten the alcoholic with something that you don’t really intend to follow through with. Resist the temptation to do so as this will create problems when you are later tested. Only set limits and boundaries that you fully intend to enforce.

2) Never do anything for the alcoholic that they could do for themselves – if they were sober. No enabling.

3) No more rescuing – let them experience natural consequences of their drinking. The only thing that will make them change eventually is to experience enough pain from their drinking. Never deny them of their pain.

It is a fine line between helping the alcoholic and enabling them.  This become especially tricky when you are living with the alcoholic.  It is easy to say that we should not deny the alcoholic of their pain, but it is another thing to let them actually fall on their face a few times.  Difficult to practice in real life.