Living with an Alcoholic: What You Need to Know

Living With an Alcoholic Spouse

However, you can provide information and support to make it a bit easier for your partner to seek out their own recovery. Supporting your loved one with AUD can be extremely beneficial to their recovery. This may involve keeping them safe while they’re drinking or offering to help find a treatment that suits them.

In other words, their behavior, rather than your reaction to their behavior, becomes the focus. It is only when they experience their own pain that they will feel a need to change. If family members try to “help” by covering up for their drinking and making excuses for them, they are playing right into their loved one’s denial game. For those who love someone living with an addiction, it is very difficult to sit back and let the crisis play out to its fullest extent. When they reach the point in their substance use when they get a DUI, lose their job, or go to jail, for example, it can be difficult to accept that the best thing they can do in the situation is nothing. If your loved one is truly dependent on alcohol, they are going to drink no matter what you do or say.

Substance use disorder is a primary, chronic, and progressive disease that sometimes can be fatal. No matter your background or expertise, your loved one will likely need outside help. If your loved one has become addicted to alcohol, however, their brain chemistry may have changed to the point that they are completely surprised by some of the choices they make. This means you can’t take care of them when they’re hungover, make excuses for their behavior, or bail them out of jail if they are arrested for drunk driving. This could be in a one-on-one conversation or an intervention with others who are concerned about the person. If you never tell them how their actions affect you, they will likely never know.

Codependency is a psychological condition or relationship where a person has an unhealthy attachment to another person, who is often controlling or manipulative. The person who is codependent may have low self-esteem and a strong desire for approval from others. Ultimately, someone with alcohol use disorder must accept help if they want to recover.

Lasting Effects of Living With an Alcoholic

However, recovery often requires professional treatment and ongoing support. Encourage your spouse to seek help from a qualified healthcare provider or addiction specialist. An alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a chronic medical condition characterized by an inability to stop or control drinking despite health, social, or professional consequences. The impact of an AUD isn’t always limited to the one suffering from this chronic medical condition.

It is a program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous and provides peer support to adults. People participating in Al-Anon understand the challenges and devastation of living and loving someone with a problem with alcohol. In a study by The Recovery Village involving 2,000 respondents, those who chose support groups for their alcohol use had a higher than average reliance on friends and family members (45%) when it came to seeking help. You are probably suffering a great deal of mental stress and are using healthcare services more often. When you’re married to someone with an AUD, your relationship will often come second to their relationship with alcohol.

  1. If your spouse fits any of these criteria, that may help you to understand why an alcohol use disorder is affecting your family.
  2. If the alcoholic is a parent, the effects of the situation will be lasting.
  3. Depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are all common in people with AUDs.

If you live with someone with alcohol use disorder, you know addiction doesn’t just impact one person. The staff is comprised of physicians, nurses, therapists, mental health counselors, psychiatrists, behavioral health technicians and many others. There are various differing treatment options available to someone who is looking to get help for their alcohol use disorder. Depending on what is available in your area, inpatient and outpatient options can be considered.

Let’s talk about your recovery

Sometimes, this high level of support, like dropping everything to help, results in an unhealthy relationship pattern called codependency. Partners of those with AUD may find themselves blaming themselves or making excuses for their partner. All of these common experiences might what does sponsor mean leave you feeling a greater sense of instability for yourself and your children.

Living With an Alcoholic Spouse

How to Cope with an Alcoholic Spouse

Spouses of alcoholics may suffer emotional harm, be victims of violence and domestic abuse, develop health problems, or even develop their own addictions. The consequences of living this way and doing nothing to try to make a change can be long-lasting and may include mental illnesses, chronic health problems, permanent injuries, and damaged relationships. Living with an alcoholic spouse is a difficult and emotionally charged situation. It is important to remember that you are not alone and that there are resources available to help you cope. Remember to take care of yourself, set boundaries, and seek support when you need it. With time, patience, and the right resources, it is possible to navigate this challenging situation and come out stronger on the other side.

What it’s like to live with someone with alcohol use disorder

By actively supporting your spouse’s sobriety journey, celebrating their progress, and acknowledging setbacks with compassion, you can contribute to their recovery process. Remember, recovery takes time, and every step forward is a step towards a healthier and happier future for both you and your spouse. By engaging in couples therapy and family counseling, families can work together to rebuild trust, strengthen relationships, and create a supportive network to aid the recovery process. If you’ve been covering up for your loved one and not talking about their addiction openly for a long time, it may seem daunting to reach out for help. However, it’s important to make sure you’re getting the support you need as well. Lean on the people around you, alcohol and acutane and, if you need to, reach out to a mental health professional to speak about your stress and what you’re going through.

But it’s likely that you haven’t thought much about yourself other than to ask, “What can I do? ” There are ways to help your spouse while also helping yourself so that you both can be healthy and happy. By Buddy TBuddy T is a writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website.

But, these can also lead to lasting issues that a person has to cope with indefinitely. Trauma, for instance, may be caused by an assault by a partner, watching a child being abused, emotional abuse, or other factors. Recovery from alcoholism is a challenging and ongoing process that requires perseverance and support.

If your husband or wife is open to getting help, their first step is to go to a therapist or doctor who can best diagnose them and recommend a course of treatment. There are also many types of meetings your partner can attend (Alcoholics Anonymous, SMART Recovery, or Women for Sobriety). If you don’t feel like you can come to your spouse with this mindset, you think someone else in their life could do it better or that your spouse may be open to listening to someone else, that’s okay.

This can be helpful for families who want a more in depth understanding of addiction. If you prefer a more individual and private approach to getting support for coping with an alcoholic in your life, individualized therapy is a great option. The Nobu App also has many free resources to help you cope with an alcoholic family member. Al-Anon is sober house boston a support group for people with an alcohol use disorder, and for those who are affected by someone else’s drinking. Al-Anon meetings are encouraged for people who have a family member who is an alcoholic and use the bond of a collective experience to help support one another. It can be difficult to parent a child who is struggling with an alcohol use disorder, and it can become even more complicated if the child is over the age of 18.

The key to dealing with alcohol dependency in the family is staying focused on the situation as it exists today. It doesn’t reach a certain level and remain there for very long; it continues to get worse until the person with an alcohol problem seeks help. Protect your children, and don’t hesitate to keep them away from someone who drinks and does not respect your boundaries.

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