My H’s best friend is in a bad way with his drinking and prescription drug problems. We are getting worn out but want to do everything possible to try to help him overcome this. We know if we don’t he’s looking at more health issues and an early grave.
Any success stories out there that have worked or advice would be greatly appreciated.
So sorry. Unless the friend really wants to get out of this, there is nothing you can do, sadly - it has to come from within.
There is nothing you can do to help an addict until the addict is ready to deal with the addiction himself. Be careful that what you’re doing isn’t actually enabling.
Try tough love.
I would say have the discussion with him but only with his permission, briefly and just once, then drop it. Let him know he has your support either way.
Parroting the prior posts, the motivation has to come from him and the advice should come from his primary care provider. It’s tough to watch a loved one circling the drain but you are incapable of really helping at this time.
Not sure if we are enabling him. He and his GF seem to be on the way to the final end of their relationship. We feel she liked him being in a stupor so that she could control and take advantage of him. She used to pay his bills and they have been piling up for months so we thought we should go over and help him pay the bills and change bank account numbers. Housekeeper needs to be rehired too. We want to invest a lot of time with him if his relationship is over and hopefully get him into inpatient rehab. But should we just let everything collapse around him?
Yes. He needs to hit bottom by himself instead of people helping him to put off dealing with his addictions.
Don’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
You are going to help him hire a housekeeper?
Why?
Is he driving while using alcohol and drugs?
I will say he is very open to what we say and we are being very direct with him. He says he knows his mind is very sick right now and it takes months to heal. Last yr he quit the alcohol for 6 months and he could function again. He’s been at a new counselor the last few months and we have recommended he go back to his old one. It’s a vicious cycle with depression thrown in from his life being in disarray.
Yes, he does drive so that is another factor. We don’t want anyone injured or killed and I since I don’t live with him, I am unable to stop his driving. He told the housekeepers not to come back because he didn’t like picking up before they came. He’s capable of rehiring the housekeepers with me just mentioning it to him.
Just went through this with my brother; found out he has been drinking to the point where his skin is yellow. But he is widowed, has no kids and retired (after a very successful career, so he was obviously a high-functioning alcoholic) last December. I feel bad because there’s really no one there in his every day life to set some consequences for him. In fact, he knows he needs inpatient treatment (his doctor told him), and wouldn’t go; said he was looking into outpatient programs. But as everyone else has said, he has to decide he wants to get better; he has to want to get better for himself, and not because we said or did something. You do have to be very careful about enabling behaviors., but if he asks for help in finding treatment options, then that is something worth stepping in for, but with appropriate boundaries.
You say you want to invest a lot of time with him and get him into inpatient rehab. Sorry, he has to want to go, and no matter how much time you spend with him, it won’t work unless he’s committed to the process. Sounds like he isn’t there yet.
My husband was/ is an alcoholic, but he has not had alcohol for maybe 19 yrs? He stopped all at once after an outpatient program, and went to AA for several years.
There are many different groups and they are all different.
When external factors push him to change, ( was quitting for six months instigated by his soon to be ex girlfriend?), it does not necessarily take.
My FIL did quit smoking however after his Dr, made it clear that he must.
Was he going to AA or any other support group?
Are the drugs he is taking, dangerous to be used with alcohol?
It doesn’t have to actually take months to heal, but it does take time to retrain habits.
Have you tried attending one of the support groups for families/friends?
I personally didn’t have time with work/kids/school to find one that worked for me, but the right one could be very helpful.
http://www.recovery.org/topics/about-the-nar-anon-support-group-12-step-recovery-program/
My position was that I had kicked him out becaus he wouldn’t stop using, even though that was a hardship for me, but the group insisted I was " enabling".
Which, I still don’t understand.
It also isn’t enough to take something away, the void needs to be filled, but with something healthy, not harmful.
Volunteering? Running? Yoga?
What does he do with his spare time besides getting high?
Who is prescribing his medication?
Having been through this with a close family member, i will say that the advice of 'tough love" and “let him hit bottom” really didn’t work. In my sibling’s case, he kept finding new bottoms to hit. Doing nothing until he was ‘ready’ was not helpful. What did work is for me to go over there (and this is he had lost everything else) and saying , “get off your butt. I am your last lifeline. You’re in rehab starting monday or i’m out of here.” I then handed him the names of 3 places, he chose one, and he went. I had to do a lot of work to set up those places but he did not have the strength to do it himself.
Was that an inpatient facility?
Some workplaces have connections to treatment centers, I think that was the motivation for H. ( sorry, I don’t remember the details, Living with a high level of stress for years, obliterated my memories)
If he is drinking because he is depressed ( ironic, cause alcohol is a depressant), medication ( anti depressants) may
help with that “fix”. I never liked taking anti depressants, but they can help you get to a place where the therapy can be more effective. Has he gone to a psychiatrist?
A “counselor”, makes me wonder what sort of training they have.
If he is addicted to pain pills, he needs other ways to manage the pain.
Very dangerous to take with liquor.
I have fibromyalgia & arthritis, along with osteoporosis and I had a total knee replacement two years ago. I was on pain pills longer than my Dr was happy with, but just the fibromyalgia causes a lot of pain. However, I now use edible cannabis as well as rubs, and over the counter pain relievers. No other pain meds, but I do have to exercise everyday.
Natural endorphins!
You can OD on Tylenol, much easier than you can OD on marijuana.
Of course you may not be in a state with medical marijuana.
But really, it helps so much, and I am the **last **person I would have expected to use it regularly.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/25/health/medical-marijuana-overdose-deaths/
We think the current one is a counselor and former one we want him to go to is a psychiatrist.
What he takes in one day would kill most of us.
And yes the alcohol makes his depression worse. Depression is situational as far as I can tell. Very lonely and never really had to run his own life.