Is someone you love drinking too much? Dealing with a loved one’s alcohol abuse or alcoholism can be painful and challenging for the whole family, but there is help available.

How alcohol abuse affects family and friends

Alcohol abuse and addiction (also known as “alcohol use disorder”) doesn’t just affect the person drinking—it affects their families and loved ones, too. Watching a friend or family member struggle with a drinking problem can be as heartbreakingly painful as it is frustrating. Your loved one may be disrupting family life by neglecting their responsibilities, getting into financial and legal difficulties, or mistreating or even abusing you and other family members.

Witnessing your loved one’s drinking and the deterioration of your relationship can trigger many distressing emotions, including shame, fear, anger, and self-blame. Your loved one’s addiction may even be so overwhelming that it seems easier to ignore it and pretend that nothing is wrong. But in the long run denying it will only bring more harm to you, your loved one with the problem, and the rest of your family.

It’s important to remember that you’re not alone in your struggle. Alcoholism and alcohol abuse affects millions of people, from every social class, race, background, and culture. But there is help available. While you can’t do the hard work of overcoming addiction for your loved one, your patience, love, and support can play a crucial part in their long-term recovery. With these guidelines, you can help ease your loved one’s suffering, preserve your own mental health and well-being, and restore calm and stability to your relationship and family life.

Recognizing the signs of a problem

For many people, drinking is an ordinary part of life. In most places, it’s legal and socially acceptable for an adult to enjoy an alcoholic drink. But since alcohol’s effects vary so much from one person to another, it’s not always easy to tell when a loved one’s alcohol intake has crossed the line from responsible, social drinking to alcohol abuse. There’s no specific amount that indicates someone has an alcohol use disorder. Rather, it’s defined by how drinking affects your loved one’s life.

In these difficult times of the global pandemic, economic uncertainty, and high unemployment, many people are drinking more than they used to in an attempt to relieve stress. While it’s easy to understand, that doesn’t make it less of a concern. Consuming alcohol to cope with stress, deal with difficulties, or to avoid feeling bad, may be a sign that your loved one’s drinking has become a problem.

Your loved one may also have a drinking problem if they:

• Regularly neglect their responsibilities at home, work, or school because they’re drinking or recovering from drinking.
• Often binge drink or drink more than they intended to.
• Lie about or try to cover up how much they’re drinking.
• Black out or can’t remember what they said or did when using alcohol.
• Continue drinking even when it’s causing problems in their relationships with you and others.
• Use alcohol to self-medicate a mental health problem such as anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder.

If you recognize the warning signs that your loved one has a problem with alcohol, the first step to helping them is to learn all you can about addiction and alcohol abuse. When you’ve researched all the different types of treatment and self-help options open to them, you’ll be ready to talk to your loved about their drinking and offer the support and resources they need.

How to talk to someone about their drinking

It’s not easy to talk to someone about their drinking. You may be worried that if you bring up your concerns the person will get angry, defensive, lash out, or simply deny that they have a problem. In fact, these are all common reactions. But that’s not a reason to avoid saying anything. Your loved one’s drinking isn’t likely to get better on its own; it’s more likely to get worse until you speak up.

While it’s important to be open and honest about your concerns, you need to remember that you cannot force someone to stop abusing alcohol. As much as you may want to, and as hard as it is to watch, you cannot make someone stop drinking. The choice is up to them. What you can do, though, is offer them steps they can take to address their problem—whether that’s calling a helpline, talking to a doctor or counsellor, entering treatment, or going to a group meeting.

Tips for talking to an alcoholic about their drinking: Things that can HELP

• Choose a time when your loved one is not drinking and you’re both calm and focused. Choose a place that’s quiet and private, where you won’t be interrupted—and turn off your phone and other devices to avoid distractions.
• Express your concerns in a caring way. Tell your loved one about the worries you have regarding their drinking and the effects it’s having on their health, your relationship, and the family as a whole. Try to remain neutral and be compassionate rather than judge your loved one’s behavior or try to shame them.
• Encourage your loved one to open up about the reasons why they’re abusing alcohol. Are they stressed, bored, lonely, or anxious, for example? Many different factors could be contributing to their drinking, but to stay sober your loved one will need to address any underlying causes.
• Consider staging a family meeting or an intervention if you’d rather not go it alone. Again, everyone needs to come from a place of caring, rather than see this as an opportunity to bully, accuse, or vent their anger at the person with the drinking problem.

Things to AVOID

• Don’t take any negative reactions personally. It may take several attempts to begin a real conversation with your loved one about their drinking. Expect pushbacks and denial. Give the person time and space to come to terms with your concerns and start to see the problem for themselves.
• Don’t attempt to threaten, punish, bribe, or preach. Avoid emotional appeals that only add to the problem drinker’s feelings of guilt and increase their compulsion to drink. Offer advice, not ultimatums.
• Don’t cover up for your loved one or make excuses for their behavior. Trying to shield them from their responsibilities will only prevent them from seeing the negative consequences of their drinking and could delay them deciding to get help for the problem.
• Don’t blame yourself. You aren’t to blame for your loved one’s drinking problem, you aren’t guilty or responsible for their behavior, and you can’t make them change.

Encouraging an alcoholic to get help

Don’t expect your loved one to overcome a drinking problem alone. Even if they don’t require medical supervision to withdraw safely, they’ll still need support, guidance, and new coping skills to quit or cut back on their drinking.

You can encourage your friend or family member to get help by:

• Offering to accompany them to doctor appointments, group meetings, or counselling sessions.
• Sitting with them while they call a helpline for advice.
• Making a concrete plan with them, detailing what changes they’ll make and how.

Your role doesn’t end when your loved agrees to seek help. Recovery is an ongoing process, requiring time and patience. Someone who abuses alcohol will not magically become a different person once they’re sober. In fact, they’ll face a host of new challenges. They’ll have to find new ways of living without alcohol and they’ll also have to tackle the problems that led to their alcohol abuse in the first place. But with your ongoing support and love, they can get there.

To quit or cut down?

Of course, not everyone who drinks too much is an alcoholic. Depending on the level of your loved one’s problem—and how much control they have over their drinking—they may be able to reduce their alcohol intake to a healthier level rather than quit altogether.

If your loved one’s goal is to reduce their drinking, you can provide support by helping them set new limits and realistic ways of sticking to those limits. For example, if your loved one commits to at least two days each week when they won’t drink at all, what will they do instead? On days they do allow themselves to drink, how will they adhere to healthy drinking limits—not more than one drink a day for a woman, two drinks a day for a man?

Help your loved one to write down their drinking goals and devise strategies for adhering to them. These could include no longer drinking at home, taking a break between drinks, avoiding bad influences, and pursuing new interests and social groups that don’t revolve around drinking.

Source: Help Guide.org (https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/addiction/how-to-help-alcoholic )