Tag: Living With An Alcoholic

Life with an Alcoholic May Not be Possible

If you have lived with an alcoholic for years and feel despair, you may need a change. No one should live without love and happiness. Sometimes it is not possible to stay with the alcoholic because you feel alone and helpless. You need something more in your life and the person is not able to give you what you need. Everyone needs to feel love and sometimes the person that you thought was the love of your life turns out to be your worst nightmare, literally. Sometimes life with an alcoholic is not possible and you may have to leave.

Sometimes, you just have to leave and try to get over him or her. This can be hard, but after the years of living the way you have been makes it a little easier. You may move out temporarily or permanently. Maybe you think that the person will change if you leave and they have to live on their own. You think that they do not need you anyways so they will probably not even care. This is the hardest feeling to live with for anyone. You may still care, but you do not believe that the person you are leaving does.

They want the alcohol more than they want you. This is hard to accept. You wonder why they would choose drinking over you. The truth hurts and you have to accept that you cannot help the person. No matter what you do, they always seem to find their way back to a bottle. You have to move on if you want a loving relationship. Then they do something that makes you feel all warm inside. They stop drinking for a while and things are wonderful until it starts again. Now, you have to start thinking about leaving all over again.

The hardest thing to do is leave someone that you love, but you have to sometimes. Even if they are wonderful for a time to keep you there with them, you still have to make a change. You have to think about yourself and make decisions that can be hard. The hardest part of living with an alcoholic is leaving them for their own good and yours. Sometimes it is hard to be strong, but you need all the courage you can find to say good-bye. You have to stand tall and have confidence in yourself, which you lost somewhere down the line.

You have to think about yourself. You cannot continue to live in fear or without a partner. You need love. You need companionship. You need to be free from the alcoholism. Even if you are not a drinker, you are affected by the drinking. Sometimes an alcoholic affects you more than the alcohol affects him or her. Even if you are not battered or abused, you are because the alcohol wins. You feel defeated by a bottle.

You lose years of being loved. However, you need to grow old with someone that can love you and cuddle you. You need someone that turns to you and not to a bottle. Living with an alcoholic is not easy and you grow tired of being the only one in the relationship that tries. The only choice you have is to leave and start new. You have to break free of the alcoholic and start a new life with someone that does not need alcohol to live. You need stability in your life for the first time in a long time.

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Join Al-Anon When You Live With an Alcoholic

Living with an alcoholic can be trying and unnerving, but you can join a group for support. Al-non is a great help to family members of the alcoholic. There are people in the group that are in the same situations as you are and they are there for support. Everyone supports each other. In some cases, you find out that some of the members have the exact same problems as you do. You learn how they are handling their loved one. They can offer guidance and advice that everyone can use if they live with an alcoholic. This is important to survive.

Guest speakers make appearances at Al-Anon group meetings. Family members and even alcohol counselor take time to visit the Al-Anon meetings to discuss issues that the group has with anything. They can explain things to you that may help you understand why this is happening to you. They are supportive and will not tell you that this is not about you. They know this is about you as well as the alcoholic. They tell stories and share everything they know about the disease with the group. They can help you cope with living with someone you love that has a drinking problem.

Survivors of alcohol disease speak to you. This can be a sad group meeting. Sometimes life does not work out the way you want it to, no matter how hard you try. Survivors of alcoholism tell you there stories. They share with you stories about their families and how they hurt their families and how they feel now. You will here stories about how they loss their families because of the disease. It can be a saddening story, but it helps you understand. They are honest and speak the truth to you. This is something that you might not be used to hearing from the alcoholic in your life.

You learn from each other. When you join Al-Anon, you have the opportunity to talk about your life living with a person that drinks too much. You can hear others talk about things that happen in their lives. This lets you know that you are not alone. Each person in the group has a chance to talk if they want. You are not pressured to talk, but the option is always there. At first, you might just listen, but then you will want to tell your story and people will listen. It will not be like talking to the alcoholic that never hears you.

Support groups are the only way to make it. If you try to go it alone, you can create your own health issues. Al-Anon is confidential and no one is going to say anything outside of the group. You can ask for help. You need help. You cannot live with an alcoholic without support. It is not healthy for yourself or any children you may have. You need to hear what others do to survive an alcoholic friend or family member. You are not alone and you have to remember that.

You learn how to handle the alcoholic. Some people that drink can become violent or disruptive. You need to have an outlet and Al-Anon gives you that outlet. You can talk about the problems and ask others for ways to handle the situation. You can try to go without a group to help you, but if you have nowhere to vent, you maybe inclined to vent to the alcoholic, which could aggravate any already bad situation. The group can help you. They can make suggestions that might help you.

If you are living with an alcoholic, you need some support that cannot come from family and friends. You need a group such as Al-Anon, where everyone there is has a friend or family member that is just like yours. They can offer you support and advice, which will be positive and not negative. The group has guest speakers that might even include reformed alcoholics and their families. This is where you hear about the other side of the spectrum. You hear how an alcoholic feels after he or she has received help and quit drinking. You hear what their families have to say. This helps you.

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Join a Co-Dependency Group When You Live With an Alcoholic

Join a Co-Dependency Group When You Live With an Alcoholic

If you are co-dependent on an alcoholic, you may need to join a co-dependency group for help. Living with an alcoholic can be hard, but when you feel that you need to stay for one reason or another, it makes things even harder than they already are for you. There are groups for co-dependent friends or family members. These groups can help you understand why you need this person and what you might be able to do about it. If you think you are co-dependent, you will want to find a group that can help you so that you understand why you need this person.

They offer you the support you need. It is easier to sit in a group and hear others talk. When you do, you might learn a few things about yourself. You may find out that you really care about this person or you might find out that this person has control over you in a way that is not healthy to you. If you have kids or even if you don’t, you will want to find out why you stay and if it for a good reason or a bad reason. No one makes you do anything you do not want to do. They are there to help and listen.

If you want to leave the alcoholic, you need to learn why you stay first. Before you can get up and leave an alcoholic, you need to know why you stay. It might be that you stay because you deeply care about this person and want to help them. Living with an alcoholic can be hard, but if you have love for that person, it can be harder to live with. If you want to leave that person, you have to know why you stayed or hooked up with that person in the first place.

You need to understand why the person has control over you. If you stay with an alcoholic and you have no reason why or it is because you are afraid to be on your own, you need to know how this happened. Is this person controlling you? Is this person verbally abusing you and lowering your self-esteem? Is this person physically abusing you? Do you stay because you are afraid to leave for fear of what will happen? The co-dependency group can help you understand. You need to understand why you stay before you can understand yourself.

When you understand why you stay, you can then begin to help yourself. This is the only way to either live with an alcoholic or leave that person. The co-dependency group offers the support you need to talk about why you stay and what your own fears are. This group is a good way to find yourself. If you have been abused, this group can offer support and advice. You need to have someone to talk to about the problems that you live with every day.

The co-dependency group can help you in more ways that you think. When you attend a group, you will hear other people’s stories. You may even hear your story from someone else’s mouth. You are not alone. There is help for those that live with alcoholics. There are ways to take control of your life and help the other person as well. If you have children, it is especially important that you understand if you have a co-dependency issue.

If you are living with an alcoholic and you do not understand why you stay, you may need to attend a support group for co-dependency. You may not even realize why you stay. You have to understand yourself before you can understand what is happening to you. If you have children, you have to think about them as well as yourself. Maybe you need to take time away from the alcoholic to figure out what keeps you with that person. The co-dependency group can help you resolve any issues you might have before it is to late. Then again, you have to think about everyone concerned.

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How to Help the Alcoholic Join AA

If you live with an alcoholic, chances are good that you want him or her to quit drinking. This is not something that you can just mention in casual conversation when you are talking to someone that thinks that they do not have a problem. If you do, it could cause an argument because most alcoholics do not think that they have a problem. They usually retaliate that you are the one with the problem. You want the person to get help, but it is not easy to do. Most alcoholics do not receive any help until something bad happens. You can do a few things to try to help the person join AA.

Never be forceful or the person is not going to do it. Telling the person that they have to attend AA is not the answer. Even most judges that order a criminal to attend the group are just fooling themselves if they think the person is really trying to quit drinking. A person has to want to help him or herself. You can try to force the person, but this is going to cause more problems than you have already. You may mention it is casual conversation, but if the person does not see what they are doing, chances are, they will resist any conversation.

Offer your support when they need it. If you offer to give the person support and be there when they need you, they will see that you want to help. Often, this does not work as well as you want. Never support their drinking, but support them in the job and if they have any other good points. You have to compliment their good points to get the trust that you need to help them. This can be very hard to especially if you are fed up with the drinking.

Join a group such as Al-Anon so that he or she knows that you are there for them. Tell them that you joined the group because you need help understanding. There is nothing wrong with joining a group and letting them know that you are serious and worried about your life together. Living with an alcoholic is not all rosy, as some would think. The alcoholic does not just drink and pass out. They can be abusive without even knowing what they are doing. This is the saddest part of living with the alcoholic.

Introduce the alcoholic to a member of AA that they might get along with and talk. This one-step can work. If the person gets involved with someone that does not drink and they find something they both like to do, this could curb the drinking. It is not going to stop it, but as you see the difference, you can mention that is so nice to see him or her having fun or enjoying something. This is the first step to maybe getting the person to join AA and meet other people that also have drinking problems and want help.

Threats will not work. If you threaten to leave or take the kids and divorce the alcoholic, you are going to lose. Most alcoholics do not care what you do as long as they have the money to drink and a place to sleep. Then again, threatening to kick the person out will not work either. There is always someone that will allow him to drink. You will lose the battle if you use threats that the person does not care about anyways. Calling the authorities only works for so long as well. After a while the alcoholic will get more upset or leave and never return.

Volunteer to accompany them to the first meeting. If you are lucky enough to get a little cooperation, you can accompany him or her to a meeting. This will show that you do care and want the person to at least give it a try. You can be nonchalant about it because making a big deal will backfire. You have to be careful how you talk and what you sat when you live with an alcoholic. The mood can change in a second and you may never know why.

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