Perhaps everyone who has come into contact with alcoholism in their immediate environment has asked themselves the question: How to help an alcoholic? They are certainly asked by partners and partners, children or friends of addicts. As the disease progresses, it will take time to heal it. The alcoholic requires specialist drug addiction treatment. The addicted person can only be helped by persuading him to undertake specialist treatment.
Change in attitude
You should try to persuade the addicted person to use specialist help, but not by means of threats, blackmail or arguments. The addicted person will not react to them. Only a change in family attitude will make the alcoholic aware that he is drinking of his own choice, with all the consequences of drinking resting solely on him.
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Therefore, you should not correct the mistakes made by the addicted person, make excuses and explain them in front of the environment, hide their problem, clean up after it and cover up any traces of drinking or mishaps under the influence of alcohol. Only in this way can the alcoholic be given a chance to correct his mistakes and reflect on the consequences of his actions. When the family takes these consequences upon itself, it does not give the sick person such a chance.
Intervention
One of the types of help for an alcoholic is the so-called method of intervention. It consists of a meeting of the drinking person in the group of people from the immediate environment – family, neighbors, colleagues from work. At such a meeting, the addict should be presented with the events and facts related to his addiction. The condition is that the alcoholic is sober during the intervention. The conversation should be constructive and kind. Its aim should be to establish the date and place of starting therapy. Convincing a sick person to treatment is not easy. Generally, an addicted person must experience a shock to self-medicate. That is why it is said that most alcoholics drink until they hit rock bottom – they don’t lose their job, home, partner, family. However, it is not worth waiting for this critical moment.
Important rules
Helping an alcoholic is not a matter of one conversation, but a matter of months or even years of effort. In the fight against alcoholism, actions are more important than words. A person from the close circle of the addicted person should bring the alcoholic to the ground by acting. And likewise, the other way around – what the alcoholic says and promises should not be considered, but what he does. It is worth remembering that for an alcoholic there is no argument stronger than his desire to drink. That is why it is so difficult to speak to the sense of an addict.
Only a strong person can help an alcoholic. Family members with an alcohol problem should also benefit from professional therapeutic support. Private addiction therapy centers offer them. Specialists also help people who are in a state of co-alcoholism, i.e. co-addiction. It is a state in which the relatives of the addicted person, out of shame and out of concern for the good of the family, do everything they can to mask the problem from those around them. Unfortunately, this does not bring positive results and can harm the well-being of the whole family.
