How to Help an Alcoholic or Drug Addict

If someone that you know and love is in the throws of active addiction, you may be wondering how to help an alcoholic or drug addict. There is nothing unreasonable about wanting to help someone that you love and there are a few things that you can do to help. But, as a recovering addict and alcoholic, I am qualified to tell you that there is not too much that you will be able to do to help an alcoholic when they are in active addiction.

Here’s the truth about the matter. Part of the disease of alcoholism has to do with self-centeredness. The alcoholic or addict cares about getting high or drunk and not much else. In the moment they don’t care about you or their responsibilites or something they said they were going to do last week. They just don’t care about those things. They care about themselves and getting their high. Usually, this type of pattern can last anywhere from days to years where the alcoholic or addict is simply doing what they need to do to enjoy the high. To the outside person however it looks like they are destroying their livers. Many simple duties like personal hygiene do not get taken care of and the addict begins to slip further into misery. So, you may have a loved one who is going on about their problems or getting into more severe problems be it legal or financial or what have you and you can barely sit by and watch this addict or alcoholic destroy themselves. Naturally the question comes up, if you are watching someone do this to themselves: You ask yourself how to help an alcoholic? It is an entirely reasonable question because you genuinely want to help. And I can tell you you are not going to like the answer, but remember it is coming from a drug addict and alcoholic myself so I know this is the right answer. Here it is:

If you want to help an alcoholic you need to speed up his or her suffering. You need to do whatever you can to expedite their process of hitting rock bottom so that they will then look for help because the suffering has gotten so bad that they, in all their self-centeredness, want to stop the thing (finally) that is causing the pain. So, wait, what exactly am I saying? I will say it again:

Here is the answer to your question how to help an alcoholic and, like I said you might not like the answer but that doesn’t change it. You help an alcoholic by increasing the rate of their decline into misery. OK, hopefully you are starting to see where I am coming from. But you may not like that answer. Well, you had better start accepting it, my friend. Alcoholism and drug addiction is a tough disease and until you start to take desperate measures to confront it then you are doing nothing but helping the problem. Remember, the alcoholic (through no fault of their own) is a self-centered creature. He wants to increase his pleasure and limit his suffering and in the process he will create tremendous wreckage in the lives of the people that he is close to. So, as soon as his life gets to the point that the suffering is worse than the pleasure is pleasurable he will begin to be open about getting help for his addiction. And I will discuss what to do at that point in a moment. For the time being you need to get it through your skull that the only way to help an alcoholic is to let them reach their bottom so that then they are willing to accept help, enter drug rehab and begin to effect some real changes in their life. So, let’s look at an example.

Your husband Jack drinks every night, misses work, beats you and steals money from you. Okay. In this situation the only way to help Jack is to stand up for yourself. Remove yourself from the situation. Stop calling into to his work and making excuses for him. Call the police and get him arrested file charges on him. Do what it takes to make his life miserable. Once he is homeless and has lost his job he might begin to see how unhappy he really is. Then, and only then, once his life is beginning to manifest the signs of hopelessness congruent to the level of misery and self pity that he is feeling, then you should begin to make offerings about going to drug rehab and beginning work in a 12 step program. Remember, that the only way to help an alcoholic is to make them accountable. The longer that you enable their drinking by providing money and assistance the longer it will take them to come to the realization that they are destroying themselves. Let’s look at another example.

Your son is an alcoholic. He lives at your house rent free, you give him money for booze and he doesn’t have a job. Well, the alcoholic is going to continue to exploit this situation for potentially years while you are wondering how to help an alcoholic the whole time. The longer you enable him to sustain his present form of living, even though it is killing you, the longer that he will suffer because circumstances will not allow him to face his alcoholism on its own terms. This is simply a mistake. You can not help an alcoholic by enabling him. You need to kick him out of the house, stop giving him money and let him fail on his own. Then let him know that if at any point he decides that he wants to check into drug rehab and do something about his alcoholism that you will help him. He simply will not want to go into treatment on his own if he hasn’t suffered enough yet. That much is clear as day to me. He needs to get to point in his life that he has hit a bottom and wants to make a change. So, I hope I have been clear about this. I know you want to help the alcoholic or drug addict in your life. And, I can assure you, that person wants help to, however they are not going to be ready to accept help until they are ready to make a change at which point I think it is imperative that you get them into a good drug rehab and let the healing process begin.

Now, if you don’t think you have the stomach or the guts to make your alcoholic loved one face the reality of the situation of their drinking then we have a problem. I know that it will take them many more years of drinking and drug use before they enter rehab if you continue to coddle them and take care of their problems. If you don’t think you can take a stand and stop enabling then I don’t blame you, just don’t operate under the illusion that you are helping an alcoholic. You are not. You are hurting them by not letting them face the consequences of the behavior that they have chosen and as a result they could be in an alcoholic stupor for many more years. I will answer this question again, how to help an alcoholic? Help an alcoholic by stopping helping them.