If you think someone you love may have become alcoholic, you are probably asking a question that seems simple:
What do I do?
You may have already tried talking to them. You may have asked them to cut back. They may have promised to stop. You may have argued, pleaded, poured out alcohol, covered for them, threatened consequences, or tried to make them understand what their drinking is doing.
And still it continues.
Eventually both of you may be asking essentially the same question:
Why does this keep happening?
Understanding that question is where helping needs to begin.
This Person Became Alcoholic
There is something important to understand from the beginning:
This person became alcoholic. At some point before, they were not.
You may remember that person very well.
Maybe you used to drink together without problems. They could have a couple and stop. They were dependable. Their personality didn’t noticeably change. Drinking didn’t determine what happened for the rest of the evening.
Then something changed.
It may have happened so gradually that neither of you recognized when it happened. That matters because both of you may still be judging today’s drinking by yesterday’s experience.
They may say:
“I’ve always been able to drink.”
Maybe they have.
“I’ve stopped before.”
Maybe they have.
“I can control it when I want to.”
Maybe they once could.
But those aren’t the most important questions anymore.
What happens now?
That is why we began this Restoring Character Through Recovery series with “What Makes Someone Alcoholic?” The amount someone drinks tells us something, but what alcohol does when they drink tells us much more.
They May Not Understand What Is Happening to Them
This may be one of the most important things for someone who loves an alcoholic to understand.
The person drinking may not know why they keep doing it either.
They may wake up after another bad night and sincerely think:
I’m never doing that again.
They may promise you:
“I’m cutting back.”
“I’m not drinking tonight.”
“I’ll only have two.”
And they may mean it.
Then they drink again.
Alcoholics Anonymous describes two important parts of alcoholism: the thinking that returns someone to the first drink and what Dr. William Silkworth called the “phenomenon of craving” after drinking begins.
Before the first drink, the person’s own thinking can tell them that this time will be different.
I’ve learned my lesson.
I’ll control it tonight.
One isn’t going to hurt anything.
I deserve a drink.
I’ll stop after two.
Then alcohol enters the picture, and stopping where they intended may become increasingly difficult. Afterward, they may be just as confused as you are.
“Why did I do that again?”
This is more than a drinking problem. It is also a judgment problem. And that judgment problem affects the person’s ability to judge whether they have a problem.
The Problem Can Be Misunderstood on Both Sides
The person who has become alcoholic may sincerely believe:
“I don’t have a problem.”
“Everyone drinks.”
“I still go to work.”
“I don’t drink every day.”
“I can stop whenever I really want to.”
Or even:
“I don’t have a problem with drinking. You’re the one who has a problem with me drinking.”
From inside their own thinking, those conclusions may seem perfectly reasonable. Meanwhile, the person who loves them is also trying to understand the situation through ordinary experience.
You think:
If they really loved me, they would stop.
If they really meant that promise, they wouldn’t have done it again.
If I explain it clearly enough, they’ll understand.
If they see how much they’re hurting us, surely they’ll change.
Those conclusions are understandable too. But now both people may misunderstand what they are dealing with. The alcoholic doesn’t understand why their intentions keep failing. The loved one doesn’t understand why sincere intentions aren’t enough.
So the cycle becomes:
Drinking → consequences → remorse → promise → trying harder → drinking again.
Eventually trust begins to disappear. That is why there is an important difference between saying:
“I don’t believe you mean it.”
and:
“I believe you mean it. I no longer believe ‘meaning it’ is enough.”
When promises and behavior repeatedly disagree, you eventually have to pay attention to the behavior.
There is something else important to remember here:
You are dealing with someone who is sick.
That does not excuse what they do, remove their responsibility, or mean you should protect them from every consequence. It does change how you understand what you are seeing.
If someone you loved were physically ill and that illness affected what they could do, you would take the illness into account without pretending its consequences weren’t real. Alcoholism deserves that same kind of understanding.
The person remains responsible for what they do. But understanding what is wrong with them helps you respond to the problem rather than simply condemning the person.
Stop Arguing About Whether They Are an Alcoholic
Once you suspect alcoholism, it is tempting to believe the solution begins by getting the other person to admit it. So the conversation becomes:
“You’re an alcoholic.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Look what happened Saturday.”
“That wasn’t because of drinking.”
“You promised to stop.”
“I can stop anytime I want.”
“Then why don’t you?”
And you can have versions of that conversation for years.
The problem is that you are asking someone whose judgment about alcohol may already be compromised to agree with your judgment about their drinking.
There is another approach.
Stop making the label the argument and start looking at what alcohol is actually doing.
My wife did this with me without knowing she was doing it.
She told me:
“I don’t care that you drink. It’s how you drink.”
She also told me that she couldn’t rely on me when I was drinking.
Those statements bothered me. I knew she actually did care about my drinking. But the second statement was harder for me to dismiss.
Being reliable mattered greatly to me. Helping other people mattered to me. I considered myself someone others could depend upon. Yet the person closest to me was telling me that when I drank, she couldn’t rely on me. She wasn’t trying to win an argument about whether I was alcoholic. She put something in front of me that I had to reconcile:
Who I believed I was did not match what my drinking was producing.
That is a much different conversation.
Instead of:
“Why won’t you admit you’re an alcoholic?”
consider:
“Honey, do you think you might have become alcoholic?”
“Why do you think this keeps happening?”
“You meant to have two. What happened?”
“Is alcohol interfering with something that matters to you?”
You do not have to provide all the answers. Sometimes the better question is the one that leaves the other person with something they have to answer for themselves.
Influence Is Not Control
None of this guarantees that the person will see the problem.
You cannot make another person understand.
You cannot make them stop drinking.
You cannot make them go to AA or treatment.
And you cannot make them choose recovery.
But there is an important difference between saying:
“I cannot control this person.”
and:
“There is nothing I can do.”
You may have influence even though you do not have control.
This distinction is important in an approach called Community Reinforcement and Family Training, or CRAFT. Rather than simply trying to force someone into treatment, it teaches family members to change how they respond to the drinking, reinforce healthier behavior, communicate differently, stop unnecessarily protecting the person from consequences, and recognize opportunities when the person becomes receptive to help.
You can learn more about CRAFT through the NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator: https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/FAQs-searching-alcohol-treatment
The research behind CRAFT is useful, but the principle is simple:
Your response matters even though the final decision is not yours.
Goodhearted People Can Accidentally Help the Alcoholism
This is where love becomes complicated.
Someone drinks too much Sunday night and can’t go to work Monday. So you call their employer.
Someone spends money needed for a bill. So you quietly pay it.
Someone embarrasses themselves. So you invent an explanation.
Someone fails to fulfill a responsibility. So you handle it for them.
Why?
Because you care.
You don’t want them fired.
You don’t want them embarrassed.
You don’t want the family hurt.
You don’t want things to get worse.
But there is a difficult question worth asking:
Am I helping this person deal with the problem—or am I helping them avoid a consequence of the problem?
Those are not always the same thing.
Sometimes goodhearted people protect someone so effectively from the consequences of drinking that they unintentionally make it easier for the drinking to continue.
That doesn’t mean you should manufacture consequences. It doesn’t mean deliberately making someone’s life miserable. And it certainly doesn’t mean standing by while someone endangers themselves, children, or other people.
It means something much simpler:
Don’t create consequences. But don’t automatically remove appropriate consequences either.
Sometimes reality can make a point that another argument cannot.
Your Boundaries Have to Be Real
This is where what is sometimes called “tough love” can either be helpful or terribly misunderstood. Tough love should not mean:
“I’m going to hurt you until you change.”
Nor should a boundary be a threat designed to frighten someone into doing what you want. A real boundary defines what you are willing to do.
There is a difference between:
“You are never drinking again.”
and:
“I will not ride in a car with you after you’ve been drinking.”
There is a difference between:
“You have to stop drinking or else.”
and:
“I cannot continue living this way. If this continues, I will have to live separately.”
The second statement only works if it is true.
One of the most important principles in negotiation is being willing to walk away. That doesn’t mean cleaning someone out, punishing them, or abandoning someone to teach them a lesson.
It means do not establish a consequence you are unwilling to carry out.
If you repeatedly say, “If this happens again, I’m leaving,” and it happens again and you do nothing, something has been learned. The consequence isn’t real. The person drinking may not consciously think about it that way. But experience teaches.
Your boundaries have to mean something.
What If You Drink Too?
This deserves an honest answer.
The person may respond:
“You drink too.”
Maybe you do. That doesn’t automatically settle anything. The important question isn’t simply:
Who drinks?
It is:
What happens when each of us drinks?
Perhaps you can have two drinks and stop while the other person repeatedly cannot. Perhaps their personality changes and yours doesn’t. Perhaps their drinking repeatedly creates consequences that yours does not.
Those differences matter.
But you also need to examine yourself honestly. If you regularly get drunk with the person, participate in the same behavior, or help create the environment in which the drinking occurs, you cannot simply examine their behavior while refusing to examine your own.
Restoring Character Through Recovery requires the same thing from everyone:
Tell yourself the truth too.
Don’t Confuse Promises With Change
If someone you love has become alcoholic, you may hear:
“I’ll cut back.”
“I’m done.”
“I’ll never do that again.”
And you desperately want to believe them.
Remember:
They may desperately want to believe themselves too.
The issue is not whether the promise sounded sincere. Watch what happens next. Real change eventually produces different behavior.
A few days of cutting back followed by the same pattern isn’t the same as solving the problem. Neither is one sober week after a crisis.
Promises matter.
Intentions matter.
But when alcoholism is involved, behavior tells you whether anything has actually changed.
Watch for the Question to Change
For a while you may hear:
“I don’t have a problem.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Everybody is overreacting.”
“I can handle this myself.”
Then one day you may hear something different:
“I don’t know why I keep doing this.”
“I can’t keep living this way.”
“I’m going to lose everything.”
“I think I need help.”
Pay attention. The question may be changing. This is not the moment for:
“I told you so.”
It is the moment for:
“Let me help you find some help.”
That willingness may not last forever. If it appears, help them act on it.
That may mean finding an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with them, helping them find professional treatment, making a phone call, or simply helping them take the next step they have finally become willing to take.
Alcoholics Anonymous meeting finder: https://www.aa.org/find-aa
NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator: https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/
So What Do You Do?
Start by understanding what you are dealing with.
The person you love may have become alcoholic without either of you understanding when or how it happened. Recognize that they are sick and treat them with the same compassion you would anyone else you love who is sick.
But compassion does not require pretending their behavior isn’t hurting people. It does not require rescuing them from every consequence. And it does not require allowing their alcoholism to determine how everyone else must live.
Their judgment about drinking may no longer be reliable, even though it seems reliable to them. They may sincerely make promises they repeatedly fail to keep. You do not have to diagnose them, condemn them, or win an argument over the word alcoholic.
Look at what alcohol is doing.
- Tell the truth about what you see.
- Ask questions that make the person examine the difference between who they believe they are and what their drinking is producing.
- Examine your own behavior honestly.
- Do not unnecessarily rescue them from the consequences of their drinking.
- Do not manufacture punishment.
- Set boundaries around what you will do, and make those boundaries real.
- Watch for willingness.
You cannot make someone choose recovery. But neither are you powerless.
You can stop helping them avoid the reasons they may eventually choose it.
Sometimes loving someone means helping them.
Sometimes loving them means refusing to continue helping alcohol protect itself from reality.
Knowing the difference may be one of the most important things you can learn.
Where to Find Help
If someone you love has become willing to get help, don’t wait until you have everything figured out. Help them take the next step while they are willing.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) — Find an in-person or online AA meeting for someone who wants to stop drinking:
https://www.aa.org/find-aa
NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator — Find and evaluate professional alcohol treatment, including treatment programs, therapists, and addiction doctors:
https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/
If you need help dealing with someone else’s drinking, there are resources for you too.
Al-Anon Family Groups — Find in-person, online, and telephone meetings for people affected by someone else’s drinking:
https://al-anon.org/al-anon-meetings/
CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) — Learn practical ways family members can respond to substance use, encourage healthier behavior, and help move a loved one toward treatment:
https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/FAQs-searching-alcohol-treatment
You cannot take the recovery step for someone else.
But when they become willing to take it, you can help make sure they don’t have to take it alone.
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