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*seems to be another, withdrawn person while drinking,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.