You’ve gotten great advice already here; about all I can say is to concur with what they’ve already said. From working with a support group for anxiety sufferers, I can assure you that you can’t make people help themselves if they don’t want to. It makes you want to beat some sense into them, but there really isn’t much you can do. Try not to take too much responsibility for things that aren’t in your control, either.
You and the mother should start going to Al-Anon. Not only will it start to give you both a framework for how the disease works, but sometimes this gesture is a powerful incentive for the addict to start attending meetings themselves.
The mother’s enabling behavior is a major reason this is being perpetuated, like others have said, he needs to hit rock bottom. She is in some major denial about her son and what is best for him.
All I can tell you comes from my 20+ years dealing with my alcoholic father. After the family had tried everything we could (rehab, counselling, begging, pleading, cajoling), even knowing it was in all likelihood futile, we came to the conclusion that the only thing we could do was disentangle ourselves and let him sink or swim on his own. It was one of the hardest thing we could have done, particularly knowing what the end result would probably be (his death). It made us feel responsible, even though we weren’t.
After a year living on his own he ended up in hospital this February with alcoholic liver disease, completely yellow and bloated with ascites. In the end, we did step in, as he called us for help. Without it, he would have died in his flat, alone and probably undiscovered for weeks. As it was, he was on death’s door and we were only just in time. He has been told in no uncertain terms by his doctors that drinking again will kill him. After 2 weeks recovering in hospital, having fluid drained from his abdomen, and supportive treatment, he left and has been sober since. He has pulled himself back from the brink, and has turned his life around. This is not the first time he has done this – in 1991 he quit for 10 years. We’re hoping this is the last time he has to do this.
The point of this story is that if you have lived with this behaviour for years (and with all respect, you sound like a relative newcomer to dealing with a chronic alcoholic, and at a distance at that), you know that there is nothing you can do to save someone from themselves. Alcoholism has such a grip on their lives that you cease to matter at all. Your opinion, help, whatever, is useless. It is a bleak, hard truth, and one as a daughter, I found hard to cope with when I was a teenager.
The only thing I could do as his daughter was try to give him a positive reason for giving up alcohol (rather than the list negative ones that is so easy to come up with), but at the end of the day that was probably more for my benefit than his.
With all due respect to QtM, rehab or AA is not always the answer for some people. My father is one of these people. He came back from rehab completely drunk, and the only way he can quit is on his own. His personality just won’t allow other people to ‘tell’ him what to do, he has to decided for himself. I’m not saying it’s the healthiest way to do it, but for him, it’s the only way, so it will have to do. Obviously, you can’t force rehab or counselling on someone who doesn’t want it.
Being the family member of a chronic alcoholic is a very, very hard thing to be, and to this day, I know that my father is unaware of the exact extent that this has blighted our lives. After all, he was drunk for most of it.
Sorry if this isn’t the most coherent post, but it is a subject that is close to my heart, and has affected my life for many years (most of my life).
You may have to accept that there is nothing you can do for him, apart from let him know that if he chooses to stop, you will still be there for him. In the end, my father knew that if he truly wanted help, we would be there for him. This saved his life. Letting your cousin know you would be there for him might save his.
It comes down to you can’t stop them as an adult. You can support them trying to stop, but you have no legal means to stop them other than if they end up on probation. You’d have to call in every time they drank and broke their terms of probation.
A basic assumption for A.A. and most rehabs is that the alcoholic wants to quit. A.A. and rehabs do not promise to get anyone sober, especially if the alcoholic does not want to quit.
If the alcoholic does make the decision to quit, A.A. or a rehab can be invaluable in helping the person sort out all the problems caused by their drinking.
Slee
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t too clear. I was talking about my experience with my father (and people like him). When he wanted to quit, he was determined that it would be on his own terms, without the kind of help that AA or rehab or counselling had to offer. People like him are not helped by AA etc because they are pathalogically incapable of receiving help. I was trying to point out that rebab and AA is not a panacea for all those looking to stop drinking.
It depends on the individual, and I do agree that it can be invaluable for the people who a) want to quit ad b) are willing to be helped by that kind of treatment.
And sometimes rehab and AA can be counterproductive - for my sister, rehab was a way to discover all the ways she hadn’t figured out how to milk the situation - her new addict friends taught her a lot of new tricks. And she made some really good friends with five weeks in inpatient rehab - and MOST of them fell right off the wagon and would call and tell her what bullshit staying sober was. And AA was - early on - a way for her to make the “I’m not an alcoholic” excuse because compared to many in AA, she didn’t drink “that much.”
EVENTUALLY, she got to the point where AA could help her. But she had to be sober for a few months BEFORE AA could help her. Strange, but that was how it worked for her.
And sometimes detox is medically necessary.
For my sister, she visited my other sister for a long weekend. The other sister is a nurse, took one look at Miss Liver Damage 2007 and took her to the hospital. My baby sister never went back to her own home. Almost two years later she still lives in that town- she lived with my sister for a year and had to be sober to stay there since my sister had two little kids who took priority over the drunk. Having almost died, no home to go home to (her house was being foreclosed on and her relationship had ended badly) her choice was to die quickly on the street or sober up. She picked the sober up.
(shortened because I hate it when people quote a long post just to quote it)
Read this post by Sleestak and then read it again. Print it out and give it to your friend. From my point of view as a recovering alcoholic (3 1/2 years) this is right on and is probably the best stated view of alcoholism and recovery that I’ve seen in quite awhile.
In my case it took a withdrawal seizure and a trip to the E.R. where my wife found out that I’d been drinking a whole lot more than I’d let on, to lead me to the path of recovery. I spent a week detoxing then went to a support group through Kaiser and then started visiting AA. I didn’t stick with AA even after going through a couple of sponsors, but I seem to be one of the lucky ones who can manage their sobriety through communication (like this) and reading about recovery.
The bottom line (as has been stated already) is that there is nothing you can do to make your friend quit drinking. What you can do is let him know that you love him and would support him if he wanted to try to quit. Hopefully he can find his bottom before he dies from it, but you need to be aware that he might rather die than give up what has become his way of life. Ultimately it’s his decision.
No matter what happens with him though, I would strongly recommend you go to Al-Anon. It’s not just a support group for those with friends or family suffering from alcoholism, it’s a support group for people. My wife goes but very little of her recovery or learning has stemmed from my drinking. It’s really just a weekly support group, you should give it a try, at least once.
No matter what, good luck to you and your friend, I wish you both the best of luck.
Mark
Just say something along the lines of, “Joe (or whatever his name is), you’re a great guy. But you’re a stupid fuck who is killing himself with booze. If you for real decide that you want to stop drinking, I will do everything I can to help you. But until you do, I can’t watch you do this. I’ll come to your funeral when you finally succeed in killing yourself, I’ll miss you, but until you decide to get clean and sober, you are out of my life.”
It’ll be rough.
Well, he has been sober for a few days now, and apparently didn’t require hospital detox. We’ll see how it goes. I call him every day to check on his status.
There is nothing you can say to him that will matter. Trust me, your good will is going to go unnoticed because he will not listen. All you can do is wait for him to hit bottom and ask for help. And I do hope you will be there for him.
This is not coming out of my ass, because I am trying to stop drinking. My husband is a treasure and he never yells at me for getting drunk but I can see that he’s worried and I hate hurting him. I’m glad your friend has you, but you cannot enable him. Just catch him when he falls.
As I write this my husband is upstairs detoxing at home bc in resident detox failed him. So he took too much Librium and is barely coherent. I called poison control they said it’s ok. There is nothing you can do until they want to stop. My husband drinks to supress systenthasia and to sleep. He goes on binges in hotels and I have to figure out which credit card is used and drive to that city and check in to get a key and bring him home. Sometimes it’s far like Cali to dc or down the road from my house. It’s so sad to see him do this to himself. We have one year old and now she’s involved since I have to bring her to find him. For the first time he is considering a resident program. He tried aa and rational recovery and they didn’t work for him. So here’s to hoping our marriage lasts but my focus is on my child. My husband checked out on us a long time ago which is a shame bc I’m here waiting for him to get through this week.
I’ve been sober for nearly 15 years; AA helped but it was mainly my recognition of my problem and my resolve to quit. I had to lose a few friends because of it; guys who couldn’t tie their shoes without a couple of drinks to stop their hands shaking. Your cousin will have to face that; his friends are likely to be drinkers and they wont offer him any support. Instead, they will try to get him to “have just one; one drink won’t hurt you.” One drink might not hurt your cousin, but that one drink might just well kill him.
Go back and read sleestack’s post. He hits the nail right on the head.