subject: Giving Al-anon A Try May Open Hidden Doors [print this page] We've known many people who whilst making an attempt to help the ones they love with alcohol addiction have acted as some form of amateur counsellor and therapist for years in the hope it would help the drinker to come to his or her senses. Eventually, they find themselves in a crisis or find themselves exhausted and unable or unwilling to help any more and wonder where all this talk therapy ever got them.
Eventually after sometimes years of supplicatory beseeching someone to stop, the crisis they had always feared happens and their own life is damaged - some times ruined.
So a key message is for anyone who loves a problem drinker is get help for yourself or you will not only end up as obsessive and as ill as they drinker you will also be engaging in maneuvers which will enable the addict you love to go deeper into his or her addiction.
A failure to understand where addiction comes from, how it works and how people with serious alcohol addictions end up prevents those who love a problem drinker from really taking a grip of the situation. That is why Al-Anon is an absolute must for someone anyone whose family member or loved one is a problem drinker.That is why Al-Anon is an absolutely essential (especially in the early days) for anyone whose family member, or loved one has developed an addiction to alcohol.
Not only is loving someone with an dependance on alcohol all consuming and exhausting, it is also one of the last social taboos and admitting to someone else that you have a problem drinker in the family or you are married to one, for example, is just not what most people feel they can or want to own up to. This is often because of a sense of perceived failure or shame or because most people who do not know or love an addict are extremely unsympathetic towards the condition.
There has been a popular view over the years that it has to do with an addict's lack of willpower that lay behind the problem. So for those who love a problem drinker it is a double whammy. Their heart is breaking inside because of the negative effects drinking is having on their loved one and on their own life but they feel an extra bugbear as they don't feel as free to discuss their problem as they would for example if their loved one had cancer.
However, Al-Anon and other family groups have been there as a support network for many years for those affected by living with, or caring about/for someone with an alcohol problem. They provide a refuge where problems can be discussed with people who understand and who are compassionate. And that is not the only benefit as Al-Anon helps families and friends of drinkers understand and accept that it is not their fault that the person they know and love is an alcohol addict and that whilst they cannot change the mind sets of the drinker they can change their own attitudes and see positives where they have only seen darkness before.
Al-Anon also helps families and friends of drinkers understand the art of detachment and to ensure that they do not enable the person they love to sink deeper into their addiction.
