Something can be done about an alcoholic's drinking. Intervention is the process by which those close to the alcoholic—family, employer, friends, and coworkers—confront the alcoholic. The goal of the intervention is to force the alcoholic to seek treatment.
Widespread use of intervention today is responsible for many alcoholics' facing their alcoholism and now living happy lives. Though there is risk and the stakes are high, an intervention—guided by a trained professional—can be highly successful. Joan Pheney DeFer's message is: You don't have to live the way you are living anymore, and intervention is the loving thing to do for an alcoholic.
Joan Pheney DeFer, M.S.W., is an alcoholic. She is the former director of Counseling Services and of the Outpatient Department at Brighton Hospital, an alcoholism treatment facility in Brighton, Michigan. She now counsels recovering alcoholics and cocaine addicts, in private practice.
When alcoholics are confronted about their drinking, on a one-to-one basis, they react angrily or deny it or discount it.
Families tend to get very, very resentful of the alcoholic's behavior. They think alcoholics can quit if they want to, but most alcoholics cannot quit without some kind of intervention, without some kind of treatment, without some kind of realization of the problem.
Each individual who knows an alcoholic has a pearl of wisdom about that person's alcoholism that can really help get the alcoholic into treatment. One little pearl does not make a necklace, but you put all those together and you have to have something. And it is harder for an alcoholic to deny what you say when you have other people to back up your story.
Intervention is a group of concerned, caring people whose goal is to confront the alcoholic to get him or her to agree to go to treatment.
You confront the alcoholic with the reality of his or her situation. When you consider that this person can die from the disease—and will, if he or she doesn't go insane first—what you are saying is, "We love you. We care about you. You're sick and we want you to get help and we will help you. We don't want you to bomb out. We don't want you to end up losing your job, your spouse, all the things that alcoholics can lose." What we're doing in intervention is creating a situation in which, we hope, the alcoholic will feel there is too much to lose not to go into treatment.
I wouldn't even ask an alcoholic to admit he's alcoholic. I would ask him to be willing to go through a treatment, period. I'd say, "You're having trouble with alcohol. Go and see. Go and learn something about alcohol. See if you're an alcoholic. We think you are. Agree to go to treatment. Take three weeks out of your life."
A professional, like an alcoholism counselor or a therapist, really needs to run the intervention. It is a skill that takes coordination of the various players. It takes experience to be able to handle these situations, which can be very difficult, to make sure everything turns out the way you want and does not turn into a yelling match. Anything can happen when you get a nonobjective person at a very emotional time. You need someone who can have objectivity and conduct the intervention so the outcome is good for the family members and the alcoholic.
Usually what happens is that one person close to the alcoholic comes and says something like, "I'm very concerned about my husband. His drinking is getting out of control. He hit me for the first time." So the counselor asks that person to pick the key people in the alcoholic's life. That person will go to the key people and say, "I'd like you to come to a meeting about Bill's drinking. We're all concerned about him. I'd like you to come and get some education. There is a process we may do called intervention. Here are some things to read." So then that group comes in and we educate them about the disease of alcoholism. We tell them exactly what an intervention is like. Then we ask them to go home, saying, "This is your task. We would like you to write down specifically the last three times that Bill, our alcoholic, has hurt you or embarrassed you or caused you concern. Write down the date, the time, and how you felt about it." They come back after they have done their task and meet as many times as they need to to make sure that they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.
It's going to be a tense encounter. The alcoholic will be there. Each person is concerned about what the alcoholic is going to think about him or her, so their experiences are put in writing after being thought about at a calm time. That way the person doesn't have a chance to forget it. Sometimes people don't respond as well under pressure. It's also a good exercise for the person who's writing it to realize which alcoholic behavior bothers him or her. That starts to get the person used to the fact that this is alcoholic behavior. It's the beginning of the healing of the family. These issues and the hurt within the family need to be dealt with, but at a later date. An intervention should not open wounds and leave them open. The family also has to make a commitment in the intervention to seek further help themselves.
The key persons in the alcoholic's life include all the family members. We encourage all ages. Some people say, "My child is only five." That child is still part of the alcoholic system, even if he's just sitting there. He needs to be able to say his piece. It is also very important to have the employer in there. Some people hesitate about that. But the employer knows. I don't care what the alcoholic says, the employer knows that he's having a problem with alcohol.
If a clergyman is important to the alcoholic, invite him to participate. Remember, everyone has key people in their lives.
A best friend is real good, even if the best friend drinks. Even alcoholics can see in other people what they cannot see in themselves.
If the alcoholism counselor feels there is a person in the group who is so angry that he or she can't pull off the intervention, the counselor will ask that person not to be involved in the intervention, and explain why. Some people are so enraged by the alcoholic's behavior that they can't put that aside. Part of the assessment of the alcoholism counselor is to make sure the people are all set, so someone doesn't sabotage it or get angry. The alcoholic will pick up on that right away. Alcoholics are perceptive people. They are very sensitive. They can feel the mood of anybody in a room. If they walk into a room and it's hostile, they can feel it. The love has to be there. If we have a family so angry that they can't confront the alcoholic, we'll work with them around that so they can do it eventually.
We like people to come to the intervention with a plan of what they will do if the intervention is not successful, if the person refuses to go into treatment, remembering that this is done with love and caring. You must be willing to say what you are going to do and follow through on it. Sometimes that means a temporary marital separation. These things are very serious. We are talking about someone who could leave, go to a bar, get into an accident, and get killed. Even though this may sound a little heavy-handed, intervention works. A lot of people stay sober because of intervention.
The intervention is not done at home, not on the alcoholic's turf. The alcoholic is too comfortable there. If you don't think you can get the alcoholic to go to a treatment center, go to a doctor's office or someplace that's neutral. That's decided in your pre-intervention sessions with the therapist. You decide where you'll meet, what time you'll meet, and you actually do a rehearsal of the intervention. You have your little piece of paper with your facts and your dates and your feelings. It's one person's job to bring the alcoholic to the intervention. In the meantime, we have called the hospital. We have a bed ready for him, and his bag is packed. It's in the car. We don't want the alcoholic going home from the intervention to pack. We have met with his employer. His coworkers are helping out. Everything is all set. His options are closed. His reality is narrowed down. His employer is going to say to him, "Fine. Forget about that case. We've got someone taking care of it." The alcoholic is not going to be thrilled about this, you understand.
Bill, our alcoholic, walks in. He looks round. The alcoholism counselor is the first to speak. "Bill, we have all asked you to come here today. We have some things we'd like you to hear, and when we're through you may ask some questions. We'd like your cooperation right now. We like to ask you not to interrupt until we're through." If Bill does interrupt, the alcoholism counselor will intervene and say, "Bill, our agreement was that you can ask questions. You probably have a lot of legitimate questions right now, and I know that this is a real stressful time. We'll talk about it after everyone is through."
Then you systematically go around the room and each person tells his or her story about their concern for him and their love for him. Many times the alcoholic will say, "Well, what do you want me to do?" Then the alcoholism counselor, or whoever is coached to do this, will say, "We'd like you to agree to go to Hazelden or Brighton for three or four weeks." If the alcoholic says yes, that's it. The intervention is over. Then we say, "O.K., we've got your bed. Your bags are in the car." Boom—the alcoholic is in treatment before you know it. That doesn't mean that the alcoholism counselor won't come back and answer questions for him. We've had interventions where people walk into the room, look around, and say, "O.K., what's the deal?" They know. They start laughing. The counselor says, "We want you to go for treatment." The alcoholic agrees. Then the intervention is over. They can be that simple. We rarely have people stomping out.
You have that person's world sitting in the room. You have the most powerful people in that person's life, and all you ask the alcoholic to do, at least for the first ten minutes, is to listen. That's pretty hard for someone to turn down. Now, you take a middle-stage alcoholic with symptoms like marital discord, problems on the job, drinking in the morning, drinking before a party. He still has a lot to lose. He still has his wife and kids and dog and cat and job. Your chance of getting him into treatment is about 80 percent, which is very high.
The alcoholic can feel the caring in the room. That's why it's so important during the intervention process to make sure the family can set aside their anger and resentment. This must be dealt with in their own treatment, or while the alcoholic is in therapy, so they can do their own recovering. Alcoholism is a family disease, not one just affecting the alcoholic. The family has been wounded by the alcoholism, and they need to be repaired just as the alcoholic needs to be repaired.
Basically, an intervention would sound like this. The wife's best friend, Gloria: "Bill, on Saturday night you came over to our house for dinner. It was our anniversary and I was really looking forward to it. You fell and you broke a piece of my crystal. I asked you about it the next day, and you didn't even remember. I was very hurt because that crystal is something my mother gave me." That is an actual description of what happened. That's not judging it. Gloria is talking about her own feelings: "I felt hurt. I felt concerned about you."
Gloria's husband, Fred: "When you drove us home after the hockey game in January, I was afraid we would all be killed."
John, the alcoholic's best friend: "You know, when we went on vacation, Bill, you drank an awful lot, especially the Saturday night that we planned to go out for dinner. We were going to surprise you and we went to pick you up in your room and no one could wake you up. We couldn't. We tried everything. We splashed water. You were like a dead man. I thought, What's happening to my friend? Where is my friend?"
The alcoholic's daughter, Sally, may say (and it can be very emotional): "You were supposed to come and see me in a school play, and you called and said you were going to be a few minutes late because you were having a drink with a friend, but you would be home, and you never came home. You stayed out all night and you missed the play. I wanted you to be there and you promised me you'd be there. I cried."
His twelve-year-old son, Dick, may be more aloof because he's had more years of this: "You asked me last Saturday night why I always stay over at Mike's house. The reason is, I won't bring any of my friends over to the house because you get drunk and you start saying real weird stuff about girls and I can't stand it. It makes me sick. I don't know why Mom doesn't leave you."
The wife, Jane, might say: "Bill, you used to be such an affectionate person when we first got married. Last Friday night you came home and you were so drunk. I was trying to help you upstairs and I went to put my arm around you and you turned around and called me a fucking whore. I'd never heard you call me something like that before. I was so hurt. I went to talk to you about it the next day, and you acted as though I was crazy, as though you had never said it."
The counselor keeps order, keeps things running smoothly. If someone gets too emotional, the counselor can go over and put a hand on that person. The counselor orchestrates the intervention.
The father of the alcoholic might say: "You know, Bill, I have always been so proud of the way you have been with your mother and me. You have always been such a good person. But when we hear you talk the way you do, like you did when you were over to our house for the birthday party, it was as though you were a different person. I was shocked at the language you used, calling your mother a dumb old broad. We had heard your wife say that you had been using some of that language, but we had never heard it. We were just shocked. You had been drinking."
The mother of the alcoholic might say: "The other night, when you stopped by, you'd obviously been drinking. And while you were at our house you drank four beers. I begged you not to take the fourth one, and when I wouldn't give it to you, you just took it and told me that I didn't know what I was talking about and that I had always been an interfering person. You hurt me a great deal."
The boss would say: "Bill, you have been an asset to our company. You are very talented. However, you have been missing a lot of work. The quality of your work has gone down. What projects we used to give you, you would finish a week early, with no help. Now we always give the junior partner part of your work because you are so erratic. We don't know if you are going to finish or not. These clients are important people. Our obligation is to them. We like you very much. We think you're outstanding. But if you don't get treatment and stay sober, we can't keep you on the staff anymore. We just can't do it. We've had complaints from our clients. You reek of alcohol and don't follow through on things. You're rude on the phone. We can't tolerate that. We want you to get help. We'll support you and let you take this time. We've got someone who will do your work for you while you're gone. When you come back, no problem; but if you drink again, you're out."
Some alcoholics become angry. Some are very relieved because they have been fighting this. Now the jig is up. When alcoholics come to treatment, they may be angry, but by the time they leave, they are so grateful to this group of people. People feel that the risk of participating in an intervention is enormous. They are afraid that the alcoholic isn't going to like them anymore. They are afraid they're going to lose their husband or their son or their best friend or a very good employee. But the alcoholic sees their love. I have very rarely seen an alcoholic leave treatment who hasn't come full circle.
Don't forget the family has been through the intervention training and they have decided what the consequences are if the alcoholic does not go into treatment. The commitment must be there. We will work with people for however long it takes to get some kind of commitment. If the alcoholic has nothing to lose, there is no point in having intervention because then you have no clout. You need the clout. You need the clout of people who love him. You need the employer. You need the wife. You need the kids. They have to be willing to follow through. All the key people ask the alcoholic to go into treatment. If the alcoholic refuses treatment, we ask him to go to AA and remain sober. If he is able to do that, God bless him. If he isn't, the agreement is that he'll go into treatment.
Intervention is a primary tool for helping alcoholics nowadays. The National Council on Alcoholism in your state can give you the names of people in your area who conduct interventions, or AA is in every phone book. Their people will know, or they'll find out for you, what treatment centers are available and who is doing intervention.
Millions of people are affected by the excessive drinking of someone close. The following twenty questions are designed to help you decide whether or not you need Al-Anon.
| 1 Do you worry about how much someone else drinks? | Yes | No |
| 2 Do you have money problems because of someone else's drinking? | Yes | No |
| 3 Do you tell lies to cover up for someone else's drinking? | Yes | No |
| 4 Do you feel that drinking is more important to your loved one than you are? | Yes | No |
| 5 Do you think that the drinker's behavior is caused by his or her companions? | Yes | No |
| 6 Are mealtimes frequently delayed because of the drinker? | Yes | No |
| 7 Do you make threats, such as, "If you don't stop drinking I'll leave you?" | Yes | No |
| 8 When you kiss the drinker hello, do you secretly try to smell his or her breath? | Yes | No |
| 9 Are you afraid to upset someone for fear it will set off a drinking bout? | Yes | No |
| 10 Have you been hurt or embarrassed by a drinker's behavior? | Yes | No |
| 11 Does it seem as if every holiday is spoiled because of drinking? | Yes | No |
| 12 Have you considered calling the police because of drinking behavior? | Yes | No |
| 13 Do you find yourself searching for hidden liquor? | Yes | No |
| 14 Do you feel that if the drinker loved you, he or she would stop drinking to please you? | Yes | No |
| 15 Have you refused social invitations out of fear or anxiety? | Yes | No |
| 16 Do you sometimes feel guilty when you think of the lengths you have gone to control the drinker? | Yes | No |
| 17 Do you think that if the drinker stopped drinking, your other problems would be solved? | Yes | No |
| 18 Do you ever threaten to hurt yourself to scare the drinker into saying, "I'm sorry" or "I love you"? | Yes | No |
| 19 Do you ever treat people (children, employees, parents, coworkers, etc.) unjustly because you are angry at someone else for drinking too much? | Yes | No |
| 20 Do you feel there is no one who understands your problems? | Yes | No |
If you have answered yes to three or more of these questions, Al-Anon or Alateen may help. You can contact Al-Anon or Alateen by looking in your local telephone directory.*
Many who have lived with alcoholism offer their advice to family members, friends, coworkers, and employers of alcoholics.
Alcohol is a drug. Most of us have been taught from childhood that a person who can't drink is a weak person, rather than that alcohol is a drug and if you use it you will act out drug behavior.
The word alcoholic doesn't mean anything unless you understand what you are saying. The alcoholic is a drug addict. One of the things about the addict is that he doesn't always have to use it, but he always has to have it available, just in case the urge comes up. Most people don't understand the alcoholic's relationship with the drug. It becomes the most important thing in his life, more important than his wife or his children.
In my case, my wife would say, "Your mother and dad are coming over and it's Steve's birthday, so be home at six o'clock." I wouldn't show up until midnight, drunker than a hoot. The folks had gone home, disgusted with me. She would say, "How could you possibly do that under those circumstances?" The most important thing to me at that time was my relationship with the drug. That is how it is with a drug addict. That's the mistake that people make. I was having a relationship with a chemical that surpassed any other thing. That's what drug addiction is all about.
When the alcoholic wants that fix and gets involved in it, nothing else has any importance.
One of our top entertainers is a very close friend of mine. He has tremendous success and tremendous love of the public, and I see him drinking more and more and more. He doesn't realize what he's doing. His wife said to me one day, "I know you had a problem with alcoholism. I'm having trouble with him. Maybe you can help."
Then we were all three having dinner, and she said, "Waiter, will you please bring my husband a double martini, two olives, and I'll have the same thing?" She had said to me, "He's getting crazy with this drinking and I don't know what to do about it."
But the minute they finished their drinks she said, "Waiter, would you bring my husband another one, double, two olives, and I'll have the same." Later I said, "You're doing this to him. You don't realize what you're doing. He didn't ask for the drinks. I was sitting here for an hour and a half and didn't hear him ask for a drink. You automatically think that when you sit with people, that's the thing to do, to drink. You're the one doing this. You have as much of a problem as he has."
The wife will call on Monday and say that her husband can't be in because he's going to the dentist's office to have a tooth pulled. You check back on the records and find that he's had seventy-six teeth pulled. She'll go to the liquor store to buy him something to drink because he can't go himself. She's doing it out of love. She thinks she's helping him. All she's doing is helping him to the grave.
You learn at Al-Anon not to do those things. You've got to give them tough love, rather than the kind you've been giving. Love is more caring. You want him to live; you don't want to love him into the grave. It's awfully hard—for a wife, particularly.
On one occasion, a woman called me and asked me to come see her husband. He didn't call me. I don't normally do that, but I did. He was not there. She wanted to know what to do about him. He would get drunk at home and then go across the street to an apartment where he had a drinking buddy. When he had run out of liquor himself, he went over there to drink the buddy's liquor. He wouldn't listen to her. He wouldn't do anything about it. She wanted to know what to do. I said, "Call the police and have him arrested for drunkenness." "Oh, I wouldn't think of that," she said. "They'd throw my poor husband in jail." I said that closing the jail door sometimes awakens a man to the fact that he's got a problem. "Something has got to happen to your husband to cause him to want to be sober, to recognize he's got a problem." She did, finally.
The Arlington police picked him up. He identified himself as a District policeman. So they got the District police and told them that they had one of their men over in jail. They sent over to get him and put him in a facility. They got him sober. He wouldn't have gotten sober otherwise, frankly; he couldn't take the coddling. He probably would have died.
Sometimes you have to be tough. They live longer if you're tougher with them. I would recommend that any wife living with a drunk husband, or a husband living with a drunk wife, go to Al-Anon. Learn how to cope with life and living in the environment of a drunk. Your own happiness and your own life are what you learn to preserve under those circumstances. It's tough.
The hard thing for the family is not to be a helper, not to love an alcoholic into the grave. It's just hard not to do it. You are going to do it either because you love him or because of the embarrassment of somebody's finding out his true condition. Members of the family are the last people in the world who are going to influence a drunk to quit drinking. A stranger could do more with a drunk than the family could do. The family is too close to him.
I would probably have quit drinking a year or so before I did if I hadn't been protected so much by my friends. I think Sybil will admit that if she had to do it over again she wouldn't have protected me for the last year or so of my drinking, which she did. I was overly protected. Lord, when I was on the road I had two people with me, keeping me sober enough to do what I was supposed to do. Everybody has a tendency to be overprotective.
Today, if I saw somebody drinking on the job, I would immediately report him or go to him and talk to him and say, "All right, straighten up your act. Go get treatment or your ass is gone." In both industry and business we have a tendency to refuse to try to make them face it. I wouldn't face it. I think if Sybil had said, "The hell with it, I'm not going to protect you anymore, get out," I'd probably have quit earlier.
Personally, I have no sympathy for somebody who gets caught driving drunk the first time. I used to go out of my way to help such people keep their drivers' licenses. I've made a complete turnaround. I think a bastard can kill somebody when he's drunk. If he does, he ought to go to the electric chair, like somebody who murders somebody with a damn gun. We just overprotect the alcoholic. The drunk-driving laws should be a lot heavier.
If you love them and you think they are worth it, stay with them, stick by them, help them when you can, but tear them loose. Let them go with love. Let them make their own mistakes and take the responsibility for it, as badly as it hurts. In some ways alcoholics are very capable of taking care of themselves. They are not helpless and they are not weaklings. I didn't know this back then, before I had treatment. I know now that you must let them fall flat on their faces. You have to let them go. You can do it with love or you can cut the strings completely and say, "O.K., I have had enough. I'm through. Go to hell. I don't care what happens to you. Die." Or you can let them go and still be with them, love them all the time. But if they fall, they have to pick themselves up. They have to be responsible for what they do and what they say, and it's the hardest thing to watch.
You have to take yourself away from the situation and think about yourself first. It sounds selfish, but it's not. If the ship is going to go down and you can save yourself, why not try to? Why should you go down with it? That's two lives gone. If you are a husband or wife and there are children involved, you have an obligation and responsibility to those children, especially if they are younger, to be the best person you can for them. Above all, you have a responsibility to yourself to be the person that you want and need to be.
You don't really want to admit you need help, but you do.
My wife, Karen, told me she didn't want me to be that way, and she was right. The best thing of all that she did was to tell me to get the fuck out. If there was an alcoholic who worked for me, and he wouldn't stop drinking after I had asked him politely a few times, I would fire him. If he was working with me, I would refuse to go on, even if it was a great humanitarian work we were involved in. I think you have to stop being complicitous in an alcoholic's demise. It's the old lifeboat adage. Don't drag somebody into the lifeboat who's already sinking. Let him finish it off. If he wants to swim, he'll swim.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is in a new band. One of the guys has a drinking problem. The boy is worried about him and said to me, "I really want to help him. The band is about to get a record deal, but he drinks too much. He knows he's got a problem, but only the other day I saw him come in and he had a bottle of vodka. He didn't think I saw it, but I did." I said, "No, he knew you saw him. He put that bottle of vodka there for you. You are an accomplice in his alcoholism. Now he can drink more because of you. You will be there when he falls down the stairs, to take him to hospital. Leave him. Kick him out. Regroup. Wait. Be there when he comes out, or let him know you are waiting, but don't be complicitous. Don't be a part of it."
Stop whatever you're doing. It doesn't matter how important it seems. Stop using the excuses you come up with: Well, we can't do it now because the kids are in the middle of exams. Fuck the exams. It's better that the children have two parents who love one another than a few passing grades. You've got to get your priorities right. Talk to people. Talk to everybody. Make it public. Let the world know. So much absurd pride is caught up in this. There is so much shame attached to it. Save the shame for later, for when we've got this guy or this woman straight.
Families should get treatment for their own disease before they start worrying about the alcoholic. They are contributing to the alcoholic's disease by covering and protecting him or her. They furnish him or her all the things needed to continue the sickness. As a result, they are suffering from the sickness more than the alcoholic is.
If you have an alcoholic wife or husband, you ought to learn something about alcoholism by going to Al-Anon meetings or getting involved in a treatment modality. Learn something about alcoholism, then use the information you get in your own treatment with the alcoholic whom you love and care about. As long as you condone his drinking, as long as a wife protects her husband from the boss on the job, lies for him, cheats for him, protects him, he's going to keep on drinking. He's not going to stop. He's going to keep on lying to the boss and he's going to keep on lying to his wife. He's going to keep doing all the things that alcoholics do because we're devious people when we're drinking.
Stop protecting that alcoholic. You know the alcoholic is sick, but you're not a professional. You're not a doctor. You're not an alcoholic yourself, and I don't know anyone who can diagnose alcoholism besides an alcoholic or a medical person. If you're not one of those, how are you going to diagnose it? How do you know? Are you going to deal with it by constantly telling a person that he's a "goddamned drunk" or she's a "goddamned alcoholic"? Find out about it. Learn what this person is suffering from. You'd be amazed at the transformation that takes place when families learn something about the sickness. It's a very insidious sickness, a sickness that even we alcoholics don't fully understand.
One of the most important things is not to criticize alcoholics, because they are really no different from someone who is suffering from pneumonia, has a high fever, or is very ill. Try to look at it that way. It's very difficult because they are functioning human beings and you think it's just their lack of will. It isn't that easy. Do not malign their character. Always keep an attitude of respect for the person as a human being.
It is very difficult, under trying circumstances, not to say, "You are a no-good son of a bitch. You are unworthy of the love I have given." If you have truly given it, they must have it. You've got to remember that no matter how bad it gets, even if your lives are going to be apart and separated because of the alcohol, you musn't hurt the alcoholic by what you say because of the pain you are suffering. That will never help him. I really believe that. I think that's probably the one thing that helped Jason and me in our relationship. It just so happened that I loved him very much, and I think he knew that in the end.
The one who suffers the most is the child who lives in the home with an alcoholic parent. We have spent time, money, research, and done volumes on the fetal alcohol syndrome and the effects of alcohol on the unborn child. This is very important and it's all true. But that does not compare one percent to the damage that is done to children who live in a home with an alcoholic mother or father.
I knew one child who committed suicide because his father was an alcoholic. He hung himself in the high school gym. Couldn't live with his father being an alcoholic.
Al-Anon will teach you how to live as a human being even if you have an alcoholic in the family who won't do anything about it. There is lots of good help available. Look under Alcoholism in the Yellow Pages—now.
You can't do it by yourself. Contact Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon; contact your local counseling centers. Let them guide you to a place where there are people who are trained to help the person who is a victim of alcohol and let them help you. Let them help strengthen the glue of your relationship by giving you the correct knowledge, not friendly advice from neighbors. Above all, do not lose your self-respect or respect for the person who has the problem because that person is dealing with and fighting a disease. You can always put a dime into a telephone and call the psychology department of any university, and they will tell you places to go. Call your religious center if you are a religious person. Get your information from people who are informed about alcoholism. That's a very cheap and rewarding phone call to make.
Knowledge gives you strength. Knowledge gives you courage. Without courage there can be no progress; without progress there is no solution.