Expert: Rebos - 5/14/2007

Question
I have a friend of twenty years who's a self-proclaimed alcoholic and her on and off (mostly on again) drinking has gotten very bad over the past five years.  She's always been emotionally intense and troubled in life, even before a problem with alcohol developed.  She's a social worker and has lost her third job in two years.    During phone conversations she becomes argumentative, extremely defensive, not to mention offensive.  Whether she’s drunk or not she’s extremely angry, moody, and almost impossible to converse with.  She attacks you whether you agree with her or not on any subject.  She also calls when she’s drunk and becomes almost completely unintelligible.  She has become this way more and more over time and has lost most of her friendships over the past few years.  She claims that I am one of her few “true” friends because I haven’t abandoned her.  She goes on an on about people treating her “like crap” and blames her whole life circumstance on outside forces.

We used to have a mutually satisfying friendship and I don’t really want to join the ranks of the friends “who have abandoned her”.  However, I cringe when I think about picking up the phone and it’s very hard to talk to her anymore.  Last time we spoke I confronted her in a loving way about how I thought she needed to take responsibility for her own life and circumstance by changing her attitude and losing her victim identity.  I mentioned dealing with her alcoholism, but she says it’s no one’s business.  I could tell she was very taken aback by my confronting her and was very defensive about everything I brought up.

I haven’t heard from her and I think she’s mad because I haven’t called her since this conversation during which I also claimed that I care about her.  I don’t really want to talk with her, but I keep having this nagging feeling that I should continue trying at this friendship because she has a disease and everyone else has given up on her.  Is there a point when one just has to give up? What is your advice in such a situation?

Thank you,
Alice


Answer
Good afternoon Alice and thank you for your question.

Yes, alcoholism is a disease; the AMA says that it is. However, your friend must be held responsible for her unacceptable and irresponsible behavior. You have to ask your self, “What are you willing to do to help save her life”? If you answer “anything” then you may be doing her a favor to help raise her “bottom” before she kills herself or someone else while driving drunk. By whatever means you can tell her that you can’t stand by and watch her kill herself with alcohol, and for her to not contact you unless she has actually taken steps to get well. But what ever you do NEVER MAKE ANY THREAT TO HER THAT YOU ARE NOT WILLING 100% TO FOLLOW THROUGH WITH. If you make a threat to her and you don’t follow through with it, you are in a way giving her permission to continue drinking. She may have a disease, but she can do something about it to stop her downward spiral. That something is to get herself into a detox clinic and then go to Alcoholics Anonymous faithfully. What she is doing when she says, “That you are a “true friend” because you haven’t abandoned her” is setting you up for a guilt trip, because she somehow recognizes, what she thinks; that you are a pushover. It’s ironic that she denies doing anything about her alcoholism, but would tell one of her clients that had a drinking problem to get help.

An “enabler is the last thing that she needs. An enabler is a person who allows an alcoholic to continue drinking, primarily by their acceptance of the alcoholic's actions and not holding them accountable for their unacceptable behavior. An alcoholic can sense the ineptness and weakness of the enabler and they continue on drinking because they know that they will be “forgiven” and if necessary “rescued” time and time again. If you become an enabler in a backhanded way you are giving your friend “permission” to drink by your continued acceptance her unacceptable behavior and her lack of concern as to how you feel about her drinking. That should be a hint to you that she is faced with a serious drinking problem. What ever you decide to do it should be based upon your head talking and not your heart. Don’t let your actions appear to be allowing her to continue drinking if you do not want her to drink. If you continue on the road that you are on you haven’t seen anything yet. Alcoholism is a progressive disease it only gets worse it never gets better on its own.

You might want to suggest that she can get help at Alcoholics Anonymous, and that you will even go to an open meeting with her. Anything short of her going to AA will prove to you that she is not ready to stop… that she hasn’t hit her bottom yet. If she isn’t “sick and tired of being sick and tired” then there is little that you can to for her except to say “Sayonara”! If she needs to be detoxified, then a detox clinic should be sought out. She may be so far gone that she needs help to get some distance between her and her last drink. One always has to consider the possibility of what withdrawal from alcohol can do to a person!

Stopping drinking, for an alcoholic, is not a matter of willpower. Drinking alcoholically is a symptom of a deeper underlying problem that must be faced up to in order for your friend to recover. Without your friend learning what that problem is, trying to stay away from a drink is known as "white knuckle sobriety", or being on a “dry drunk”. It isn’t very long before she must drink again. For an alcoholic there is no such thing as cutting down, drinking only on weekends, changing to beer or wine, or even switching to the near beer with 0.05% alcohol. For an alcoholic nothing will work short of total and complete abstinence from any thing that contains alcohol or mind-altering substances (drugs).

There is so much that I could suggest to you that may help your friend, but it will be up to her when it comes right down to it. I could suggest that you, as a concerned friend, go to Alanon meetings to learn about the disease and what you can do to help your self and in turn maybe help her. You see, I don’t know how involved you have a right to get involved with your friend. Does she have a family that should be contacted? Is she indigent without any medical insurance? Etc.

To be a male alcoholic is bad enough, but to be a female alcoholic brings with it “special problems”. You have to be honest with your friend! Please let me know if there is any further information that I can provide you with. Thank you, Rebos