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.

LIVING WITH AN "ON Again" - "OFF Again" DRINKER

Does your partner, child or relative drink too much for too long, you know, drunk all the time, then sober up and stop for a while?

What most of us do when living through the horrors of this situation is REACH  OUT  FOR  HELP when the drinking is happening, but once the drinker gets sober, we think things are OK again and we STOP looking for help - everything is OK again!

I went through this situation many times and got nowhere - the drinker kept drinking and I got more frustrated and angry. I deluded myself that the drinking had stopped for good at each sober period - how wrong I was!
How much time I lost while living with this Roller Coaster. I was no closer to getting a decent life - maybe YOU are familiar with this situation.

Finally I realised I was getting nowhere and neither was my partner, the drinker, until I made a determined effort to get help and kept at it.

I finally found where to get help to survive this alcohol affected life, it took a while, but what I learned can help YOU too - I suggest you simply read through  my "HELP PAGES" on the right of my bloc, and see if you can relate to what happened.  I hope that what I learned may help YOU  TOO.

And  my other posts on this blog cover a range of related issues that we live through, so I hope you find some help there too.
READ  THE  "HELP PAGES" !

ALCOHOL ABUSE AND THE FAMILY

Although the abuse of alcohol is becoming recognised as one of Western society's looming problems, the damage caused by an abuser on those close to him/her is still not a large issue in the mind of the public.

So while the physical violence stemming from alcohol abuse is well reported, what is still ignored is the emotional damage and also physical violence inflicted upon those around the abuser.  So the accepted figure of six people affected by any one alcoholic represents harm inflicted upon spouses, children, parents, relatives and friends, even colleagues.

Not knowing any better, many of those close to an alcoholic even "enable" the drinking to continue by covering up any damage done,  making excuses, paying bills, lying to the boss, concealing the truth.  In fact most of the things we do to try to stop someone drinking actually make things worse.

And the drinker will mostly have no earthly idea of the damage being done around him/her and will not even remember the sometimes degrading things that happen while on a binge.  So with someone patching things up, and no bad memories, why stop drinking?  After all, in the drinker's mind, there is no problem, is there?

If you are suffering because of a loved one's alcohol abuse, this blog may help you find a way to a better life.  My personal experiences and what I have learned from my own journey and that of others is included in this blog. 

You can make a start to a better life by working slowly through the "HELP PAGES" shown on the right - they cover the way that I found help and the way to a better life.

I hope that you find help in these pages - this blog is for YOU.