Three Ways to Help The Problem Drinker in Your Life

By Michael Anne Conley, LMFT

We’ve all heard that you can’t change others, but you can change yourself. This is never truer than when people you care about drink more alcohol than is healthy for them or for you. Here are some things to consider about your situation.

1. Educate Yourself

Most people drink at one time or other in life, so how can you know whether someone has a problem or not? Here are just a few experiences that can occur when people have a drinking problem:

• They plan their social lives around drinking or even drink before attending social events.
• Once they start drinking, they don’t stick with their intention to stop after just “one or two.”
• You wonder if they’ll follow through with agreements they’ve made with you.
• You or someone else has suggested they cut back.
• Even though they’ve had an embarrassing social incident or some other consequence related to  drinking (like a DUI or job loss), they continue drinking.
• They’ve lost work time due to drinking.
• They express remorse, but don’t keep their promises to cut back.
• You remember more about what happened last night than they do.

2. Support Yourself

It can be hard to face that you can’t change someone else. Your power comes, instead, from adjusting how you react to the drinking behavior.

How could changing yourself make a difference? After all, the other person has the problem, not you! My experience tells me that you have the best intentions — but more often than not, your responses to the drinker backfires big time.

Here’s how it works. Nobody wants to have a drinking problem. So people who have this problem look for reasons, reasons outside themselves. The tough day at the office or the rotten boss, that cop who wouldn’t listen, the financial worries, the after-work friends. And you. After all, if you would just stop mentioning the drinking, or if you were more organized or didn’t worry all the time, or if you didn’t do this, or didn’t do that, etc., etc., etc.

The excuses are ways to avoid. And when you are reactive, you make it possible for the problem drinker to focus on you, rather than looking in the mirror.

When you change your own behavior, you remove yourself as a target. One of the best places to get support is Al-Anon [ embed link: http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/how-to-find-a-meeting ] although you may also find the right companionship in your religious community. If you want more privacy, seek an insurance-free psychotherapist with experience in this issue.

3. Tell the Truth

It’s amazing how much clarity you’ll have once you’ve informed yourself and see the drinking behavior more clearly. Then once you establish your support system, you’ll become more effective at not reacting in the ways you once did. You’ll be able to get reality checks from others, and you’ll need it when you take the next step, which is to stop protecting the problem drinker from the consequences of their drinking. Your support system will help you practice saying the truth without any blame or judgment. Truth-telling could start with not cleaning up any messes the problem drinker leaves — like leaving the car where it’s been parked, not making excuses on behalf of the drinker with work or other obligations. It can include letting the person know that you’ve made a decision to change yourself and that when they’re ready, you’ll help them with their next steps.

When a drinker is not ready to address the problem, this is very painful, so don’t try to do this alone.
And these three ways to help the problem drinker in your life aren’t the only actions you can take. But they are effective ways to start. Most importantly, when you change yourself, you will become all the stronger for it.

Michael Anne Conley is a health educator, marriage and family therapist and the director of Stillpoint Integrative Health Center at 953 Mountain View Drive in Lafayette. She has offered holistic approaches to habit change and addiction issues for 27 years.

Originally published in Lafayette Today (March, 2012).