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Addiction to Alcohol/girlfriend in treatment
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Question
My girlfriend of 6 months, after hiding her disease very well, has recently hit rock bottom and entered a treatment center. I think she is a fantastic person, but now (in light of finding out about her condition and multiple lies told to me to cover up her drinking) I am confused on how much value I should put into my impression of her. Here are my questions. 1. Am I setting myself for a fall if continue with the relation?, consideringthe fact that my impression of her was “influenced. 2. Even if I don’t continue with the personal relationship, what can I do as a friend to aid in her recovery? 3. What is the right approach(attitude) in interacting with a person with alcoholism, and is in recovery? Thank you in advance for your opinion.
Greetings to you, John.
The first thing I would suggest here is that you get a copy of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, and carefully read at least its primary text (up to page 164). If this female friend of yours is a real alcoholic, and regardless of what your relationship with her might be in the future, she is going to need someone to introduce her to the actual content of that book and to help her understand and pursue the *real* solution contained therein and that she is not very likely to hear much at all about in any of today’s treatment centers.
Now for a bit of perspective ...
You have written, “I think she is a fantastic person, but now (in light of finding out about her condition and multiple lies told to me to cover up her drinking) I am confused on how much value I should put into my impression of her.”
Just for a moment or two, suppose you have just found out this young woman has some kind of cancer or other deadly illness, and suppose she had been “covering it up” or in some way hiding it for just as long as she could and out of fear or whatever else ... but then her overall condition became so bad that she could no longer hide its symptoms from anyone, including herself. If that were the case here today, would you now be thinking of abandoning her simply because you had not been aware of the problem and/or had not realized what had been going on?
You have asked, “Am I setting myself for a fall if continue with the relation?” Not unless you continue in it without first fully understanding chronic alcoholism and permanent recovery.
You have asked, “Even if I don’t continue with the personal relationship, what can I do as a friend to aid in her recovery?”
The things I have already shared: Put her in touch with and try to help her with the experience shared in “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book.
You have asked, “What is the right approach (attitude) in interacting with a person with alcoholism ...?”
Essentially the same as when interacting with someone who has nearly any other kind of terminal illness: Help him or her understand what is wrong and what must be done!
You have asked, “What is the right approach (attitude) in interacting with a person ... [who] is [allegedly] ‘in recovery’?”
Again, do your homework so that when her being “in recovery” ultimately fails, you might then be able to help her actually find “recovered” and “permanent recovery” in place of the “recovering-ing-ing” and “in recovery” stuff presently being imposed upon her. And of course, and for your own sake as well as for hers, I would gladly help you learn to do that. What I am suggesting here is that you be neither the first nor the next to just walk away from a suffering alcoholic. Rather, be possibly the one and only person in her life that will ever really take the time to understand her illness and to help her accept the real help she truly needs and is not going to get from any treatment center.
Blessings to you,
Yoseph Lee O.
Email: leejosepho@hotmail.com
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Answers by Expert:
Joseph Lee O.
Expertise
Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.
Experience
The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken.
Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along.
At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ...
... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.
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