Topic: getting help

If you love someone who is struggling with addiction or alcoholism, you can help their journey to recovery by learning some simple communications rules.

It’s not really surprise or shock that convinces the alcoholic to seek treatment. It’s a combination of influence and leverage.

That doesn’t mean you need a program that treats senior exclusively. It does suggest that you should concentrate your efforts on programs with access to physician care beyond simple detox.

Current research suggests that an optimal treatment episode is in the neighborhood of three months. That doesn’t mean it must be all in residence.

When we think of denial, we picture someone angrily insisting he doesn’t have a problem. But denial is more subtle than that.

The first step in knowing how to deal with husband, wife, or other person we love who has alcoholism is understanding the facts about alcohol abuse and the reasons alcoholic people resist help.

We can’t control the alcoholic/ addict, but we’re not powerless. Some things we can do (and stop doing) to help them listen to something besides the addiction…

So the professional’s real value to an intervention is as a guide. One who can offer something the family really does need: a degree of informed objectivity.

Pretty soon we’re having a big argument which ends with me feeling miserable and him gone to the pub.

The family had good representation from important people in the alcoholic’s life, and there was professional help, but that’s not leverage.