How to Help an Alcoholic

It is not easy by any means to help an alcoholic. In fact, most people who have experience with this sort of thing would argue that you cannot really help an alcoholic directly no matter what you do; that they must help themselves instead. Certainly there are really no tactics to directly manipulate an alcoholic that are going to be beneficial. For example, do you think it would help to try and prevent the alcoholic from finding their booze? Of course not. Any determined alcoholic is going to find ways to drink, regardless of any obstacles that you put in their path.

Essentially, the alcoholic is self destructing due to their drinking. There is no way you can prevent someone from self destructing. If you try to get in their way, this will only agitate them and cause further self destruction. Therefore, the only way you can really help the alcoholic is indirectly. Look at your own behavior regarding this person. Are you enabling them to drink in any way? Are you rescuing them or denying them their natural consequences of drinking? In other words, if an alcoholic is hung over and you are calling in sick to work for them and making excuses, are you really helping them? In actuality you are not helping them but you are further enabling them to continue drinking! This is counter intuitive to most people so you might have to learn more about it. The best place to do that is at an organization called Al-Anon. They have meetings where you can gain support and learn more about how to deal with an alcoholic in your life.

Alcoholics are motivated by pain. They drink to cover up their emotional pain, but at the same time, they are creating more pain for themselves through drinking. In the end, it is pain that will motivate them to change. If they are not experiencing pain in their life then they will not quit drinking. If you want them to quit drinking then you should never deny them of their pain. This means that you should not rescue them from situations in which they are creating havoc and pain in their own life due to their drinking. You must stand back and let them fall and skin their knee, no matter how badly you want to help them. This is how they will come to their decision to change their life. Only through pain.

If you want to know how to help an alcoholic, then there is also the idea of the formal intervention, where you gather up all the friends and family members of the struggling alcoholic and confront the alcoholic and try to convince them to go to get help. This technique has been dramatized a bit in the media recently and so many people think that it is a viable method to convince someone to stop drinking. What you should realize is that an intervention is far from being a magic bullet. In fact, it is highly unlikely that an intervention will produce the desired outcome at all. It is more realistic to visualize an intervention as a step on the path towards sobriety. The person might not get sober for a long time following the intervention, but this doesn't mean that it has failed necessarily. An intervention can plant a seed. It can let the alcoholic know that people do care about them.

What an intervention cannot do is it cannot lead an alcoholic into a state of instant surrender. This is important for you to understand because this state of surrender is all that matters when it comes to quitting drinking. The only way that a person can stop drinking and change their life is if they have entered a state of total and complete surrender. They have to throw up their hands and say "I can't do this anymore. Someone show me how to live." If they are still trying to dictate things or control things then they are not ready to stop drinking.

Now the critical thing to understand is that an intervention does not produce this state of surrender in someone. It has nothing to do with their level of surrender. So if the person is not at that state, then the intervention will only be helpful up to a certain point. It will not convince the person to stop drinking. It will only show them that others do care about them. But it is their level of surrender that will dictate whether or not they get sober.

Some would say yes, others say that it does not matter if they are not ready for change in their life. I would advise you to encourage treatment but not to harp on the subject, as this will create resentment and distance between you and the alcoholic. Let them know that help is available.

Realize too that treatment is not a magic bullet. Treatment cannot work a miracle if someone is not willing to change. So it doesn't make much sense to push someone into treatment if they are dead set against the idea. You already know that it is not going to produce meaningful sobriety if they are resistant to the idea. You should only encourage treatment if they are fully willing to go.

You cannot help someone who is not trying to help themselves. If you are trying too hard to help the alcoholic and they are not matching your efforts then that is a real problem. You need to back off and let them find their own path in some cases. If you are trying too hard to help them and they are not responsive to this then you need to step away from the situation. You cannot help someone who is resistant like this. Let them know that you will help them when they are ready and then back off and let them find their own path. Sometimes we have to learn things the hard way.