HAPPY CHRISTMAS !

I wish my readers a very happy and peaceful Christmas season.

But sometimes, when we live with an active drinker, the festive season turns into an unhappy time, because of what the drinker does: drunk at the wrong time, arguments, turning guests off, and so forth.

Many people living with alcoholics find this and do not look forward to Christmas.

What can we do?

Accept that the drinker will drink and make plans accordingly. Maybe YOU can go out and leave the drinker home: after all, the only thing that interests the drinker is drinking.

Try to enjoy the good things that DO happen, and often pleasant things happen even in the bad times. Try to focus on YOURSELF and do some things that YOU enjoy. Forget about the drinker if you have to - just enjoy yourself.

And don't feel guilty about leaving the drinker to their own devices: you did not force the drinker to drink, that is THEIR choice. You can choose to do something pleasant.

Look for the good things that may happen, no matter how small: they will make you feel better.

Bless you all.

COME HOME TO FIND YOUR DRINKER OUT TO IT?

This happens to most of us: we come home only to find our loved one passed out drunk on the sofa, the floor, the bed or some other place.

We feel as if we have been hit in the stomach - winded, deflated, maybe angry: "He/she has been DRINKING AGAIN!" and maybe : "When in Hell is he/she going to stop??"

In the early days of living with and alcoholic, this is all too common an experience.

So WHAT DO WE DO?

ACCEPT that your loved one has lost control of drinking again.

Try to SETTLE DOWN and become CALM.  Maybe though we feel angry, so do something to work off the anger - go for a short walk - go punch a pillow (I mean it - this works off anger) but DO NOT HIT YOUR LOVED ONE.

THINK - he or she has lost control. They are really sick. Being angry will not help you nor them. Try to feel a bit of compassion - as you will learn later, they are suffering from a mental disease called alcoholism.

DO SOMETHING USEFUL for yourself - cook a meal or go out and get one - read the news or watch TV. Try to get your mind off the drinker. Read a book - write a letter- call a friend to chat.

READ the HELP PAGES over on the Right of this page - you will find useful information there.

And remember : YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Thousands of us have been through this AND SURVIVED.

FEEL ASHAMED??

Many of us feel ashamed that we have an out-of-control drinker as a loved one, in our family. We feel that somehow it reflects on us too: a blight on the whole family.

This is quite common and a normal reaction to the horrors that we may be facing within the privacy of our home. Most of us go through this.

We may be desperately trying to hide any evidence of our loved one's alcohol abuse: from neighbors, family or friends. Or our loved one's boss even.

We are usually only partly successful in this.  Sooner or later the drunken behavior has consequences outside of the home. The word gets out.

But it really is NO REFLECTION UPON US.  We are not the drinker. We are not fully responsible for all the drinker does, no matter how we may kid ourselves. The drinker will do what they want whether we try to control the drinking or not.

For a saner way, look through the HELP PAGES over on the right.

And remember: YOU are NOT ALONE in this. WE have been there too.

ARE YOU TRYING TO STOP SOMEONE DRINKING?

Are you thinking that, by taking away the booze from someone who has lost control of their drinking of alcohol, you can stop them drinking?

Maybe you are pouring any booze you find down the sink. Maybe you are hiding any booze you find somewhere else. Maybe you are withholding money or credit card so your loved one cannot buy booze.

Most of us have tried all of these things, and guess what?

The drinking somehow continues, and usually goes underground so that its harder for you to find out.

Sooner or later we realise that the need for alcohol in your loved one is stronger than we are. We are in effect, powerless over alcohol.

Your loved one is in the grip of a powerful disease of the mind, and now, the only thing that is important to them is the next drink.

Not you, nor the kids, nor the job, nor the house, nor food, nor anything else.

Just the next drink.

So what to do?

Save yourself the angst and stop trying to remove booze. Let the person drink. Its going to happen anyway no matter what you do.

Sounds wrong, doesn't it?

To find out more about this - go to the HELP PAGES over on the right and read on about my experiences.

You are not alone!

DO YOU FEEL ALONE?

This is one of the things that happen to us when we are living with an active alcohol abuser: we feel that we are totally alone with the problem, feeling lost and bewildered.

Why?

Because usually we feel very ashamed of our situation and dare not talk about it with anyone.  Certainly not family!  Or friends! So we end up feeling isolated.

And in truth we cannot talk about it to anyone: most people will not understand !! Sometimes others think the alcohol abuser is just "weak" and should be able to stop drinking. YOU will know by now that once alcohol takes a grip of a person's mind, that it starts to control the person: no hope of stopping easily.

So you end up alone, isolated, angry, maybe feeling victimised.

You need help.

Have a look at the HELP PAGES over on the right to see how I found help.

And if you have any questions why not make a COMMENT and ask??

Start to think about getting help, and good luck.

MY PARENT IS DRINKING TOO MUCH

One of the most difficult situations to be in is that of a young person growing up with a parent who gets drunk too often.

Your whole life gets affected and you don't know what to do. Things happen like:

• Meals aren't prepared for you.  Your clothes are not washed ready for you to use.
  
• You are so ashamed that you stop bringing your friends home.
  
• You  may start not coming home until late, or stay away as much as you can.
  
• There may be arguments or fights between your parents.

All this is very hard to bear, especially if you are trying to study.

One of the first things to realise is that it is not your fault. You are not the cause of the drinking.

Your parent is in the grip of a mental disease and has lost control of his or her life. Everything else sinks into the background for them: the only thing that matters is having the next drink.

Very likely he or she loves you very much - though that may seem hard to accept - but the grip of alcohol is stronger than love at this stage.

Your parent is not a evil person: they are really sick and need help themselves. But it may take them a long time to reach out for help. Meanwhile you can learn to live despite the drinking going on.

If you have no sober parent, or grandparent that may come to look after you, you certainly should look for help. READ the HELP PAGES over on the right and find out where you can get help.

You  may have to learn to get your own meals and maybe do some washing for yourself: not such a bad thing to learn to be self reliant. Maybe your school or college counsellor may be able to tell you where to get some help in coping with the situation at home.

I FEEL LIKE A VICTIM

Feeling angry and hard done by - a victim suffering from someone else's drinking - is quite a common feeling for a while.

It just seems that you are very alone: no-one knows what you are going through, how much you have to put up with.

Most likely you cannot talk about it with anyone either - we just try to cover the mess up.

Keeping it to ourselves just makes us feel MORE like a victim.

However when we start to get help we learn that those feelings of being a victim actually feed our anger and our resentment.  We start to lose our sense of perspective, maybe get aggressive or reclusive.

None of this is helpful to us. We need to get a different view of our lives which are now affected by alcohol abuse.

We need to find some help from people who understand.

The HELP PAGES over on the right show what I found out when in your position: angry, lonely, ashamed. isolated, resentful.  We can learn to get a better life.  Reach out as I did.

You are not alone: many people are reading this blog along with you.  Have hope.

WHY DO I NEED HELP?

Sometimes we think: 'Why in Hell do I need help? I am not the one drinking!! Shouldn't my alcohol abuser get help instead of me?'

This is often where we start when we fully realise the extent that our lives are being affected by our loved one's drinking.  It's only natural to think: ' I am not the one with the problem!'

Of course our alcoholic needs help! But, most often they are in denial that they have a problem at all. At early stages they think they don't need help at all.

If both parties go on this way, no improvement happens; in fact things will get worse and worse.

Mostly we find that it is US, the sufferer of someone else's drinking, who has to do something.  We need to make our lives at least bearable, to cope with the continual situations that arise caused by the drinker.

Our lives become so unmanageable that often it is US that starts to look for help.  It may be ages before the alcoholic realises that they are in deep trouble. We can't always wait for them to do something - we have to act to look after ourselves.

It may upset us at first to think that we have to take some action, but you can be assured that thousands of people affected by someone else's drinking found that they had to take the first step.

My journey, which may help you to get a better life, is summarised in the Help Pages to the right. I suggest you start there and see if anything makes sense to you.

And remember: you are not alone nor unique: just another person suffering because someone has lost control of their drinking. There is help available.

FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness.  That mat seem a strange topic to be talking about in relation to our loved one's alcohol abuse.

But if we feel angry and resentful toward our alcoholic person, or maybe even the rest of the world, the first person we are harming is ourselves.

Being angry is one of the things that happens to us when we live with an alcohol abuser - happens to all of us.
So we should not feel bad about feeling angry or resentful.

But it is well recognised now that anger against some situation or person increases our inner tensions and that harms our physiology - WE suffer because of our inner anger or resentment.

What can we do?

We can take time to FORGIVE our abuser: they are suffering from a disease of the mind and there is no cure: it's a permanent condition for them.  We would not be angry with them if they had cancer, would we?

Forgiveness is the antidote for anger, bitterness and resentment.  We need to release all the pent up feelings for our own health - our health, not anyone else's.  Every now and then we see in the news that some wise parents have forgiven the killer of their child: NOT for the benefit of the criminal; but for their own peace of mind, so that they can get on with their grief and their lives. Very wise people.

Forgiving our loved one is an important part of our recovery; it's not easy but it has many benefits.

It's the start of getting some measure of goodness out of our lives, despite the conditions brought upon us by our alcoholic.

I hope you will think about this, maybe read about anger and it's long term effects on the body.  God Bless.

HOW CAN I FORGIVE THE DRINKER?

In the early days when we become fully aware that our loved one puts the next drink ahead of us and any love for us, it hurts. 

We may even become angry, sometimes even hating whom our loved one has become: a total stranger.

But when we seek help, one of the first things we learn is that our loved one is in the grip of a powerful disease: alcoholism.    It could have been MS, or emphysema, or a heart serious condition.  But it's not: it's alcoholism.

Alcoholism is that bad - in fact it is incurable. Think of that: it never leaves you once you have the disease: there is no cure - except total abstinence.

When we look at our loved one's drunkenness as the effects of a disease, gradually we can begin to feel some compassion: as we would for one of the other diseases mentioned above.

Our drinker has to learn to overcome the disease of alcoholism all by him/ her self: we cannot help one iota.

Think about that the next time you feel anger or resentment building up (as it does!) and it may help you avoid some nasty behaviour toward your loved one.   I hope so, for losing our cool only makes the drinker feel worse.  The antidote to which is: have another drink!

Try this sometime.  Don't give your loved one a reason to reach for a drink!   God Bless.

WHY CAN'T THEY JUST STOP DRINKING?

Before I learned about the power of alcohol over some people, I used to think that surely, someone affected by alcohol could just stop drinking and resume a normal life.

Later when my wife was inebriated for long periods our friends wondered why she couldn't just stop. I wondered too: surely she loved me enough to stop hurting me?

Later still, when I sought help, I learned about alcohol affecting the brain and that in fact it is recognised as a disease of the brain. Alcohol abuse steadily enables the disease take control of the drinker's brain so that ultimately nothing is more important than getting the next drink.

No way can such an affected person 'just stop' !

What followed was that I had absolutely no power over the drinker's brain - the alcohol was far stronger than was any love for me.  I was powerless against alcohol.

I had to learn a different way to live with the drinker, my dear wife, and more information about getting help is included in the 'Help Pages' which I hope you can peruse.

You are not alone in living with the effects of alcohol on your loved one. But you may need to seek help.

COVERING UP THE MESS

One of the things we all do when we struggle to live with an alcohol abuser is to hide all the awful things that happen when our loved one is drunk.

This is only natural: we are so ashamed that we try to cover things up from the view of others. Vomit on the floors; urine where it should not be; our loved on lying on the floor or out in the yard; our loved one going out badly dressed or even naked; crashing the car; falling over in public; yelling abuse at friends: I have seen or heard about all of these things.

We may phone up with an excuse when our loved one is too drunk to go to work; we may have to break dinner engagements due to our loved one's drunkenness; there seems to be endless situations that we may have to cope with.

But as we learn more about the disease of alcoholism, we learn that sometime or other, we have to let our drinker suffer the consequences of their drinking.  This may mean they lose their job, their friends, their children.

But as long as we cover up the nasty stuff, the drinker has no reason to think about stopping. After all, if they can drink and the world does not stop, then what's the problem?

But we have to learn this 'letting the consequences happen' or to ' detach with love' slowly, and this is one of the things I had to learn.  My journey is outlined in the 'Help Pages' - I hope you find some help too.

HOW CAN I STOP MY LOVED ONE DRINKING?

This is what we ALL want to know: if he or she cannot stop drinking themselves, then how can I get them to stop?

Most of try to stop the drinking by finding the hidden stash of booze then pouring it down the sink.
Result: the booze still comes into the house but is hidden in increasingly more cunning ways.

We may try asking the drinker to stop drinking for our sake - after all, they love us, don't they?
Result: the drinker may agree to stop, but then we find they have resumed drinking again, maybe worse.

We may try telling them that the drinking is ruining our lives, that we can't stand it anymore.
Result: this can  make the drinker feel guilty, the antidote to which is to have more to drink.

So, does that mean that we can do virtually NOTHING to get the drinker to stop?
Unfortunately, that is just about the case. The only way a drinker can stop reaching for the next drink, or the first drink, is to want to.

And from bitter experience we have learned that we have no control over what the drinker thinks or will do.

So what can we do?
We can get help to first: learn to live with the drinking and leave the drinker alone.

This is not easy to do, but can be learned - it is the first step to getting our sanity back and some measure of contentment back into our lives.  The life of the drinker is, we have to learn, solely the drinker's concern.

I encourage you to read through the 'Help Pages' over on the right to learn more: we can get a better life and maybe even help the drinker begin to want to stop drinking.

Please read on. And know that you are NOT alone.

HOW CAN I HAVE A LIFE WITH ALL THE THINGS MY DRUNK PARTNER DOES?

Very often we are continually embarrassed, angered, ashamed or upset by what our drinker does. How in Hell are we supposed to carry on with all the garbage that takes place?

This is one of the hardest things to live with: putting up with the awful things he or she does - and has absolutely no memory of later - that make us cringe.

It takes time to grasp that it is your drinker's actions - not yours - that are the problem and that are on show. With the right help, we come to learn to disassociate from the behaviour: we don't let it get to us, we try to detach from it.

We also learn to let consequences follow whatever the drinker does, rather that try to cover over or 'patch things up'. The drinker has to learn that there ARE consequences to what they do.

These new behaviours on our behalf don't get learned easily and we need help to learn. My journey into getting help is set out in the 'HELP PAGES' on the right.

I hope the information there will help you.

ARE YOU WORRIED??

Are you worried about someone close to you because they drink too much?

How much IS drinking too much?

Some people can drink a lot and still function quite well at work, but it may be at home that the problems occur. 

If your loved one is:
*no longer able to communicate openly with you,
*or is drunk every night,
*or is getting violent towards you or other family members,
*seems to be another, withdrawn person while drinking,
*is causing embarrassing incidents with your friends,
*or you are cancelling outings because of the drinking, then

PROBABLY  YOU  SHOULD  SEEK  HELP -
your loved one's drinking is affecting your and your family's life, in an adverse way.

It took me a year or two to face up to the fact that my loved one was indeed in trouble before I began to do something about it.

For a time we do not want to believe that our loved one is doing these things - I thought my loved one was suffering from depression - I kept hoping that things would get better.

They didn't  - they got worse.

If you relate to any of the warning signs above, think about getting some help.

You can look through the help pages to find one way to get help, as I did.

Thank goodness I did - our lives are worth living now.

DENIAL

One of the hardest things to cope with is when your alcohol affected loved one absolutely DENIES that he or she has a drinking problem.  This is really hard when you are trying to have a normal life, which however is being destroyed by the actions of the drinker.
It seems we have to understand that, in THEIR mind, there IS no problem - they think they are coping and that no-one is being affected. We learn too, that when they do things when they are drunk, later on when sober they will have abosolutely no idea of what they did. This is quite normal in a drinker.
It's not normal for US, but it's normal for a person seriously affected by alcohol.
It's so frustrating for us who have to live with the consequences of someone's uncontrolled drinking.
What to do?
Not much we can do! No amount of argument or quoting of examples will be accepted by the drinker.
We have to understand that one of the hardest things a drinker has to face is that they DO have a drinking problem - this is a big hurdle for them to get over, and it can take many months in AA before they can admit this.
So we have to learn to lead our lives differently, as we cannot change the mind of our drinker.
You can see what I learned in the 'HELP PAGES' over on the right.
I have been away for most of August so apologies to those who are following my blog.
God Bless.

ARE YOU FEELING ANGRY?

Is your loved one's constant drinking upsetting you and making you angry?

Maybe you were feeling frustrated after doing everything you could think of to stop the drinking, only to find you were powerless over the drinking, and then became angry?

This happens to most of us - anger is a natural response when we realise that we are suffering because of our loved one's drinking. It's not healthy for us and it doesn't help, but its what happens to us when we see our loved one sinking into a hopeless situation: not being able to control the drinking.

But it does not have to stay that way: there is a way past anger, but we have to learn some different attitudes to our drinker. He or she is feeling bad about the constant need to drink and does not know what to do about it. And it does not help if we are angry - in fact we make things worse.

If we rant at our drinker, they are likely to drink more to escape our wrath and condemnation.

Have a look at the HELP PAGES over on the right to see how I worked my way through this situation and got help when I thought all was lost.

This is for YOU.

LOVED ONE DRUNK ? WHAT DO I DO??

It took me quite a while before I accepted that my wife's drinking was out of control.  I tried everything to stop her drinking bouts but nothing worked.

Looking back now, I realise that I persevered too long before reaching out for help.

All that happened was that my wife's drinking got worse and I slowly became a nervous, angry, isolated partner.  I wish I had sought help earlier, I would not have become so screwed up.

When to seek help?

• When you find yourself frustrated, angry or resentful MOST of the time - danger signals for your health.
• When you find yourself isolating from family or friends, or refusing social contacts.
• When you can think of nothing else but his or her drinking.

If any of the above sounds familiar - have a look at the HELP PAGES over on the right hand side, and follow how I found my way back to sanity.

Best wishes for your recovery!

ACCEPTING I HAVE A PROBLEM DRINKER

Facing up to the reality that our loved one has lost control of their drinking and is becoming more and more controlled by the need to drink is one of the hardest things we have to do.

I didn't want to know about it for a while, and blamed the excessive drinking on "depression". I found it very hard to even think that my loved one was in trouble with alcohol.

Until some kind friends told me that she had a drinking problem. Then I had to face it for the first time. Even so it took quite a while before I sought help.

Then I tried everything to stop her drinking: seeking the reason for her drinking, trying to rationalise her reasons, hiding booze, pouring it down the sink, getting angry, feeling sad, lost and totally bewildered.

I had to seek the right help to understand what was going on - my General Practioner or Doctor simply said: "If she cannot stop, get out of the relationship!"

I could not do that, so I sought help elsewhere; to find out how I got help have a look through the Help Pages on the right.

I hope you find some useful information from my blog: its written just for YOU!

WHEN DO I SEEK HELP?

We, who have lived with an alcohol abuser, know this question only too well.

Maybe you've tried everything to stop your loved one drinking, and maybe its only got worse.  The only thing the drinker seems to be interested in is - "When do I have the next drink!"  You are probably starting to feel lonely - your lovely partner or child is no longer the same - when they drink they become someone else; someone you really do not like. Perhaps you feel shame, or guilt (maybe it is my fault?) or anger.

But how bad does it have to get before you seek help?

If you can relate to any of the situations in the second paragraph, and you have tried everything you can think of to stop the drinking, you are probably there - you should seek help.

One of the things we first learn is: We didn't CAUSE it, we can't CONTROL it, and we can't CURE it.

Like me, we all come to realise that we cannot cope on our own - our life has become a shambles as we try to cope with the awful effects from someone's drinking.

You're there - decide today to do something to get help. You can read what I did in the 'Help' Pages over on the right hand side.

Believe me, what you are suffering, many of us have suffered too - but there IS help available. I am sure that just by reading the 'Help' Pages you will start to feel that there is hope for a better life for YOU.

You are not alone.

FEELING FRUSTRATED?

How frustrated we feel, living with an alcohol abuser. After a while we have tried everything to get them to stop - hiding or dumping alcohol, pleading with them, venting anger at them, but nothing changes.

Frustration soon turns to anger. Sometimes we feel righteous indignation.

None of this helps the drinker. In fact, picking up our emotions directed against him or her only makes them feel bad. The solution? Have another drink and blot it out for a while.

So we continue to suffer, we too heading around into a downward spiral of angry depression.

We need a new approach - this is what I had to find out the hard way.

How I did this is discussed over in the 'Help Pages' to the right.

If you have any comments about how useful you may have found these notes, please let me know.

One last thought for this week:    YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  

 There will be thousands of people just like you around the world, feeling angry, trapped and lonely.

I want you to know there is a way forward which many of us have found.

Read on.

LOVED ONE'S DRINKING OUT OF CONTROL ??

What a shock it is to realise that our loved one cannot stop drinking!

We become tense, watching every move they  make - looking for signs of drinking.  Maybe we find out that our drinker is trying to hide their drinking - then its a cat and mouse game of 'catch me if you can!'

A giant wedge is now driven between you and your loved one.  He or she prefers - yes prefers - to drink rather than consider you or spend time with you.  You have lost your loved one to alcohol.

What a dreadful shock it is to realise this - your loved one has become a stranger to you - someone you have never seen before.

We often react by trying to stop the drinking, by all sorts of means - destroying alcohol, withholding money, pouring alcohol down the drain, venting our anger, pleading, taking revenge.

Does any of this work?

Read what I found out about living with alcoholism over on the 'HELP PAGES'  to the right.

And please let me know if any of my work helps you - I would really like to know that.

OUR ATTITUDE MATTERS

The face we show to our drinker is noticed by them, though it may not seem so at times.

If we are critical, nasty, sarcastic, abusive or downright rude to our drinker, how are they going to feel?

If you were in their place - what would YOU feel like doing?

Have another drink so that I don't feel the anger from you, or to bury the guilt I feel for a while.

This is really a natural response for our drinker - "If I'm being hit on, I will escape by having another drink!"

It needs to change - Why ? To take away another excuse for our drinker to keep drinking.

So what SHOULD our attitude be? 

This helps:  Try to take your focus away from the drinker and onto yourself.  Easy?  Not at all.
BUT - if you can do this - focus on yourself, how you are feeling, what you are doing - then you are not hitting on your drinker.  You stop giving him or her a reason to drink.

You will reduce the tension in your environment and its surprising what a difference it can make to the drinker.

Try it.  See what I mean.  I had to learn to do this too.

To learn more, have a look at the HELP pages over to the right.

You are not alone!

MY DRINKER CAN'T BE AN ALCOHOLIC!

Those of us living with an active alcohol abuser - drinking most of the time, unable to easily stop drinking, maybe drunk more often than not - seem to have trouble realising that we do have a problem drinker.  Maybe we cannot face the reality that the drinking is out of control.

What we are doing is DENYING that there is a problem in our family.  After all, we feel the SHAME,  maybe we feel that we CAUSED the drinking, and we try to COVER UP all of the nasty stuff that happens.

One of the hardest things is to accept that we have a problem drinker on our hands.  Once we seek help, we begin to realise that probably, we have an ALCOHOLIC on our hands.

This is something we all go through - first DENIAL, then ANGER and FRUSTRATION and maybe then we begin to look for help.

Does this sound like you?  It's what I went through.  How I got help is detailed over in the HELP PAGES so if you want to start thinking about some help, I suggest you read through those pages.

God Bless.

HE/SHE DRINKS, SO I GIVE THEM A HARD TIME

When we live with an alcohol abuser sometimes we cannot help "taking it out" on them - letting them know we are angry, hurt and thoroughly disgusted by their actions.  I was the same - its "natural" to do this.

But I had to learn that all I was doing was giving the drinker MORE reasons to drink.  I did not know that the drinker already was feeling bad by what the were doing, and here I was just making it worse.  So naturally the thing to do was - have another drink to blot it all out.

Learning that they were in the grip of a terribly strong  mental disease, I could begin to have some compassion for the plight of  my drinker. 

I had to learn to back off, "keep my mouth shut, my mind off the drinker, and my mitts off too".  I had to learn to let the drinker find their own way along their journey, free of my haranging.

By taking our pressure off the drinker, they are left with their own actions to suffer from - not ours.

To see how my journey led me to these findings, read the "Help Pages" to the right,
and God Bless you. 

We have been there too.

OH MY GOD! THEY'RE DRINKING AGAIN!!

What a horrible feeling it is after some time, finding out that your loved one has started drinking again.    Stomach feels like its been kicked - we ask why? What started it off again?  What did I do?  What is WRONG with him/her? Why is he/she wrecking our lives again?  I really thought the drinking was ended this time!
This all too familiar scenario happens to us all who live with a drinker, or someone who is trying to give it up, but just cannot do it yet.  The thing is, the drinker is battling a most powerful mental disease, and yet is only human - sometimes the disease wins, and for little reason, he/she will reach for a drink. One drink and they cannot stop.
What can we do?
Nothing to stop the drinking. We have to learn - each time this happens - to ACCEPT it - take our MIND  OFF it - and focus on OURSELVES. 
How do we learn to do this, when it hurts so  much?
You can read what I did over in the "Help Pages" - how I managed to keep on going, with HOPE - while the drinker went up and down, time after time.

What can I do to stop the drinking??

We naturally think that there must be something - something -  we can do to stop the drinker consuming endless alcohol.  There MUST be something we can do.
So we try all sorts of things to thwart the drinker's habit.  But all that happens, we find, is that the drinking continues but maybe goes underground, gets less obvious, more sneaky. But continues.
We get more and more hurt and frustrated, don't we? It's just what happens to most of us, the ones living with an alcoholic.
I had to learn all about this - the power alcohol has over some people's minds, so that the drinking becomes the most important thing in their lives.  What to do?
What I learned is written in the "Help Pages" opposite, so I encourage you to delve in to them and see if anything makes sense to you. Send me a comment. I'd love to hear from anyone reading these pages, as some of you are.
And remember: You did not CAUSE the drinking, you cannot CONTROL the drinking, and you cannot CURE the drinking.