Alcohol Rehabs

The family’s best defense against the emotional impact of Alcoholism is gaining knowledge and achieving the emotional maturity and courage needed to put it into effect.

Individuals who may be capable of assisting Alcoholics out side the family may become confused, destructive persons if a member of their own family becomes an active Alcoholic.
This is especially true if the drinking Alcoholic is the husband, wife, or child.

The “next of kin” or person most responsible for the Alcoholic may need asistance and counseling than the Alcoholic if an effective recovery program is tho be launched.
Alcoholism is an illness which has tremendous emotional impact upon the immediate family.
Those most affected by the Alcoholic are the spouse, parents, sister, brother and child.
The more distorted the emotions of these persons become the less adequate their help will be.
The interaction may and often does become destructive rather than helpful.

For example, wives may find themselves blamed for everything that is wrong in an Alcoholic marriage.
This may reach the point where they they may fear this is true.
Yet Alcoholism is an illness.
The wife is no more responsible for Alcoholism than she would be for the existence of diabetes or tuberculosis in he husband.
No wife ever made her husband an Alcoholic, therefore no wife can be held responsible for his recovery.
How ever, by lack of knowlegde she may allow the illness to go unnoticed.
By lack of adequate understanding and courage she may acquiesce in the development of the disease.
For the existence of Alcoholism the wife is not responsible, but she can abet the husband’s avoiding treatment, or taking steps which may lead to earlier recovery, though this cannot be absolutely assured.

This same principle holds true for all the other members of the family, especially the one person upon whom the Alcoholic ultimately depends.
This primary person is thw Alcoholic’s life cannot “treat” the illness.
No docter should treat his own serious illness, and few will ever act as physician
For a member of their immediate family, esecially spouse, parent or child.
As Alcoholism progresses relatives become involved emotionally.

The best help they can give initially is to seek help and treatment foe their own situation so that they will not play into the progressive illness pattern of the alcoholic and thereby contribute to the progress of the illness rather than recovery.
The mistakes made by well-meaning members are almost unbelievable and often make recovery most difficult for the patient.

In the beginning it must be understood that a family may do everything known or thought to be right and the illness might go unchecked.
However, if the family is willing to learn the facts about Alcoholism and put them into effect the chances of recovery are greatly increased.
In fact the best way tho help any Alcoholic recover is to remove ignorance, acquire an adequate attitude based on knowlegde and have the courage to practice these principles when dealing with the Alcoholic.
To begin in the usual manner of attempting to force the Alcoholic to stop drinking without first learning and changing one’s own self will simply make the matter worse.

Initially we must understand that the problems of Alcoholism do not lie in the bottle but in persons.
However, recovery does not begin until the Alcoholic is able to break away completely from the bottle and practice continued abstinence.
Recovery is also similar to the construction of a Gothic arch.
Ther are unseen foundations, many persons may lay various stones in the arch but the keystone must be put in place by the Alcoholic or the structure fails.
No one can do it for the Alcoholic what must be done by the Alcoholic.
You cannot take the patient’s medicine and expect the patient to benefit.
Choices must be made and action taken by the Alcoholic or his or her own volition if recovery is to occur on any pwemanent basis.

It is appalling how well the Alcoholic controls the family, esecially the wife, husband or mother.
The Alcoholic drinks again and again.
The family screams, cries, yells, begs, pleads, prays, threatens, or practice the silent treatment.
It also covers up, protects and shields the Alcoholic from the consequences of the drinking.
If the Alcoholic continues to act like a little God it is because the family is inadequate in opposing this attitude and abets the preservation of the illusion of omnipotence.

In the preservation of this omnipotent neurosis the Alcoholic has two primary weapons.
The family must learn to defend against these two or become virtual slaves to the illness, thereby creating for themselves emotional or mental illness of no small proportion.
The Alcoholic/Addict’s Weapons.

The first weapon is the ability to arouse anger or provoke loss of temper.
If the family member or friend becomes angry and hostile this person has been completely destroyed in so far as ability to help the Alcoholic is concerned.
Consciously or unconsciously the Alcoholic is projecting an image of self-hatred against the other person.
If it is met by anger, hostile attakes it is thereby verified and the Alcoholic in his or her own mind justifies the former drinking and also now has an additional excuse to drink in the future.
The Gods first make angry those whom they to destroy and the Alcoholic has a long experience in acting like a little God.
If your temper is lost all chance to help at this time is thrown away, at least for the moment.

The second weapon of the Alcoholic is the ability to arouse anxiety on the part of the family.
Anxiety compels them to do for the Alcoholic that which can be done only by the Alcoholic if the illness is to be arrested and recovery initiated.
A “bad check” is a good illustration for this principle.
The check may be written before, during or after the drinking period.
The Alcoholic does not have money in the bank to redeem the check.
When the anxiety of the family members becomes to intense regarding what will happen if the check is not redeemed they secure money and cover the check.
This relieves the anxiety of the family and the Alcoholic but is establishes a pattern for the Alcoholic in the area of problem solving.
The Alcoholic now learns that the family is going to suffer the consequences instead, and this becomes the expectation and the rationalization whenever a bad check is written.

More important still, if the family redeems the check the Alcoholic cannot redeem it and therefore this failure is made permanent.
The Alcoholic cannot undo what others have already undone.
This in reality increases the Alcoholic’s sense of failure and guilt, and increases the family’s sense of hostility and condemnation of the Alcoholic.
Thereby the Alcoholic is doubly injured.
The criticism, scolding and moralizing add to the Alcoholic’s guilt and resentment against self and family.
The entire situation is thus made worse.
The family didn’t write the “bad check” but in “making it good” they gave a form of approval while they verbally condemned the same act.

Alcoholics are propelled along the progress of the disease when the family is unable to cope with anwiety aroused by the Alcoholic.
This is in effect part of the illness.
Neither the Alcoholic nor the family is able to face reality.
The writing of the bad check and the redemption of it by the family are but two sides of the same problem.
The Alcoholic can never learn to solve problems in a responsible way if the anxiety of the family compels the removal of the problem before the Alcoholic can be brought to face it and solve it or suffer the consequences.
This “home training course” increases the Alcoholic’s irresponsility, and thereby increases the hostility, resentments and tension between the “patient” and the family.

Anger and anxiety must be avoided by the family or the family will contribute to the progress of the illness.
The family members must first learn to cope with their own problems before any beneficial effects can reach the Alcoholic.
This reqires help just as any seriou illness requires help outside the family from docters, nurses, ect.
The Alcoholic can continue to deny that there is a drinking problem and that help is needed as long as the family provides an automatic escape from consequences of drinking.

Help for the Alcoholic and for the family should be sought outside the circle of relatives, friends, and neighbors.
Preferably it should come from persons trained in this area of work or from experienced members of Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon.
Home remedies for Alcoholism are notoriously injurious.
The illness is so serious it will shorten human lives ten to twenty years if it goes unchecked.

Love And Compassion.

One of the more serious failures in approaching the Alcoholic in the inability to understand the meaning of love.
A family member has no more right to state, “If you love me you would not drink” than the right to say, “If you love me you would not have tuberculosis.”
Excessive drinking reveals the existence of the illness.
Illness is a condition, not a act.
It is not far from the truth that Alcoholics feel unloved and unwanted and not without reason.
Love cannot exist without the dimension of justice.
Love must also have compassion which means to bear with or to suffer with a person.
Compassion does not mean to suffer because of the injustice of a person.
Yet injustice is often suffered repeatedly by families of Alcoholic.

Alcohol is an anesthetic. When the Alcoholic drinks, pain is anesthetized. This is the pleasure of Alcoholic escape.
It is the problem solving device to relieve unpleasantness, anxiety, tension and resentments.
When the Alcoholic drinks, pain is avoided for the time being but pain, tension, anxiety and resentments are increased severely in the family.
When the Alcoholic sobers up there is little desire to suffer the consequences of drinking.
Remorse and guilt now compel the Alcoholic to prostrate himself or herself before the family, beg for mercy and promise that it will never happen again.
Or the reverse side of the coin may appear, complete unwillingness to discuss what happened.
Each attempts to gain the same goal, the avoidance of the consequences of drinking.
If the Alcoholic succeeds by either means pain is again avoided or relieved but the family agains pays the price of the consequences of drinking.

Love is Destroyed.

Love cannot continue to exist in this type of action and interaction.
The Alcoholic uses Alcohol to escape pain by drinking and learns how to use the family to escape the pain of the consequences.
The family suffers when the Alcoholic drinks and then suffers the painful consequences also.
If the family bears the brunt of the drinking and absorbs its consequences then compassion cannot exist.
In this condition is allowed to continue by the family, love is gradually destroyed and replaced by fear, resentments and hatred.
The only way love can be retained is by family members learning not to suffer when drinking is progress and refusing to undo the consequences of drinking.
Anything less than this is not compassion and any relationship justice and compassion is not love.

Knowledge of the nature of Alcoholism is an illness, and the courage to live by this knowledge, are essential if fear is not to replace love in marriage or any other relationship.
Unfortunately many family members suffer repeatedly from drinking and its consequences, thinking this is required if they love an Alcoholic.
The tragic result is that Alcoholism is thereby encouraged and fear and resentments take over human emotions.
This is way family members, especially the next of kin of the Alcoholic, need if the disease is to be arrested and recovery initiated.
Otherwise the entire family becomes ill emotionally.
This conition is but another symptom of the progress of the disease.

Before leaving this area of discussion it is necessary to state that there are wives who need Alcoholic husbands or husbands who need Alcoholic wives to gratify their own neurosis.
This may be true of parents, or other family members.
The family must always take a close look to be certain this need does not exist.
Masochism is the need to suffer in order to find a sense of worth or value in life.
It is all too often seen in wives and mothers of Alcoholics who use a Alcoholic in order to suffer.
Some persons are sadistic and must have someone available to punish.
An Alcoholic serves this purpose well.
Others like to dominate and control other persons.
Alcoholics provide a fit subject for excerising such control and dominance.
I any of these three conditions exist then the non-Alcoholic may have a far more serious illness than Alcoholism and this must be treated and arrested before it is possible for this person to do other than contribute to the progress of Alcoholism.

A wife , husbands or other family members needs to take a good look at their own involvement with the Acoholic before any steps should be taken to aid in abstaining from Alcohol.
In most instances a change in the family is necessary before a change in the Alcoholic may be anticipated.
To do nothing is impossible.
As a general rule to do nothing means to give in to the situation, to be run over and exploited and to fight back in quiet, passive, destructive ways.
The family always ineracts with the Alcoholic.
The important thing is to learn which interactions are destructive and which might be creative and then have the courage to attempt a creative approach.
The change must begin with the non-Alcoholic.
The Alcoholic will not seek help to recover as long as the Alcoholic’s needs are met within the family.

Long-Range Sobriety.

A frequent mistake is to attempt to protect Alcoholics from Alcohol by bending every effort to keep them away from the bottle and the bottle away from them.
This cannot be achieved short of incarceration or commitment and even under these circumstances some manage to find Alcohol.
It is hard for the family to learn not to try to prevent the drinking.
Any battle they win today over the bottle will be fought again tomorrow.
Wining the war against the overall illness is the objective.
Motivating the Alcoholic to have a desire to stop drinking and to accept help in this effort is far more effective than trying to take the bottle away.
The only way this motivation can be accomplished is by allowing the drinking with all its consequences to become so painful in itself that the Alcoholic will seek escape from the intolerable pain caused by drinking.
This means offering Alcoholics love and understanding in sobriety, but not protecting them from the bottle or the consequences of drinking.
This may mean suffering, but suffering the pain of the consequences, not by becoming the means of someone else’s escape from consequences.
This means the courage to suffer embarrassment, small or great financial deprivation, loss of job, and in some instances temporary separation in various and sundry ways.
We must offer greater joy in sobriety and allow the painful consequences to become acute if we anticipate ultimate long-rang sobriety.

Recovery from any serious illness may involve considerable time and on occasions there may be relapses.
The world has not come to an end if after a period of sobriety the Alcoholic drinks again.
If the family does not panic and revert to the former destructive means of dealing with the problem the “slip” may be used to advantage and become an additional reason for the Alcoholic to accept the fact that the first drink must be avoided.

In the process of recovery, it is not reasonable to expect all compulsive action to disappear overnight.
Alcoholics may become as engrossed in treatment and recovery as they were a short time ago in the drinking.
This is especially true if they find and accept Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Alcoholic may now spend each evening with these recovery Alcoholics.
The best bet against resentments in this area is for family members to join Al-Anon family groups, Al-Anon and Alateen, and attend open AA meetings.
Al-non is just as vital to the emotional recovery of the family as AA is to the Acoholic.
It attempts to provide insight and understanding into the problems of its own members.
Recovery from Alcoholism involves the healing of the emotional illness of all members of the family.
If the Alcoholic recovers emotionally and family members do not, there may be a serious breach in the family structure.
The family must grow up emotionally before, during and after the Alcoholic recovers or serious estrangement may occur.
Whether or not the Alcoholic achieves sobriety the time for the family members to being working out their own emotional recovery is now!

Begin With Self.

The place to begin in helping with recovery from Alcoholism in the family is with self.
Learn all you can.
Put it into practice, not just into words.
This will be far more effective than anything you attempt to do for the Alcoholic.
In summation there are several rules of thumb which may be observed.
1. Learn all the facts and put them to work in your own life. Don’t start with the Alcoholic.
2. Attend Al-non meetings, AA meetings, and if possible go to a mental health clinic, Alcoholism information center or to a competent counselor or minister who has had expeerience in this field.
3. Remember you are emotionally involved.
Changing your attitude and approach to the problem can speed up recovery.
4. Encourage all beneficial activities of the Alcoholic and cooperate in making them possible.
5. Learn that love cannot exist without compassion, discipline and justice, and to accept love or give it without these qualities is to destroy it eventually.
It is easier to find a list of don’ts in dealing with Alcoholics for it is easier to undestand why you fail than to know why you succeed.
The following list is not inclusive but it makes a good beginning.
1. Don’t lecture, moralize, scold, blame, threaten, argue when drunk or sobar, pour out liquor, lose your temper or cover up the consequences of drinking. You may feel better but the situation will be worse.
2. Don’t lose your temper and thereby destroy yourself and any possibility of help.
3. Don’t allow your anxiety to compel you to do for Alcoholics what they must do for themselves.
4. Don’t accept promises, for this is just a method of postponing pain. In the same way don’t keep switching agreements. If an agreement is made stick to it.
5. Don’t allow the Alcoholic to lie to you and accept it for the truth for in so doing you encourage this process. The truth is often painful, but get at it.
6. Don’t let the Alcoholic outsmart you for this teaches him to avoid responsibility and lose respect for you at the same time.
7. Don’t let the Alcoholic exploit you or take advantage of you for in so doing you become an accomplice in the evasion of responsibility.
8. Don’t try to follow this as a rule book. It is simply a “guide” to be used with intelligence and evaluation. Attend al-Anon meetings and if you feel the need, you can also seek good professional help. You may find you need this help as well as the Alcoholic.
9. Don’t put off facing the reality that Alcoholism is a progressive illness that gets increasingly worse as drinking continues. Start now to learn, to understand and to plan for recovery. To do nothing is the worst choice you can make.

Many family members no longer live with an Alcoholic but feel their lives have been deeply affected by the disease or their family’s reactions to it.
They find their adult lives have become unmanageable because of the heavy emotional involvement they continue to have with the past.
They too have found comfort and recovery in Al-Anon.