An Alcohol Problem at Home

What to do when a family member has a drinking problem

Is drinking a problem in your home?

When a loved one abuses alcohol, you can make changes that will help your family be safer and healthier.

You may want to ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you feel safer when the problem drinker isn't home?
• Does the problem drinker drive while drunk with family members in the car?
• Do you sometimes make excuses for the problem drinker to other family members or employers?
• Is the problem drinker physically or emotionally abusive?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, alcohol is creating problems in your home. Here are some ideas to help you lessen its impact.

Maybe you’re reading this because there’s an alcohol problem in your family. If so, you’ve taken the first step in helping yourself. Let’s look at what can happen in a family when one member of the family has a drinking problem.

Alcohol problems often create a lot of stress in the home. The family may have lost income because of drinking. The person with the alcohol problem may not do their share of taking care of children or paying bills. Maybe they've gotten in some legal trouble because of their drinking or, when drunk, they’ve embarrassed you. Any or all of these things can be happening.

Your family is coping with this stress as best it can. Relationships change and are often strained as each family member copes in their own way. One member of the family might become a peacemaker, always trying to resolve conflicts between other family members. Another person might try to cover up for the problem drinker by phoning in sick for them at work and lying about the problem to employers and friends. Perhaps a son or daughter is getting into trouble or even overachieving, giving the family something else to focus on. Some people in the family might just withdraw into their own world.

All of these roles are just ways to cope with a really stressful situation. But, in the long run, they’re not really helpful because they avoid the real problem and, in some cases, allow the problem to continue. Everyone in your family, including you, may be having a lot of feelings—shame, embarrassment, anger, sadness, hopelessness, and guilt. These feelings are normal. But in families where alcohol is a problem, these feelings are often not talked about. In fact, family members might go out of their way not to show these feelings.

One person who’s an expert on alcohol-troubled families says that there are three unspoken rules in these kinds of homes:

• Don't talk—families learn not to talk at all about what’s really going on or to call the problem something else: maybe calling a hangover "the flu" or calling a drinking binge "stress release."
• Don't trust—children and other family members learn to be always on guard for the next crisis or “scene.” Promises are broken and responsibilities abandoned, e.g., meals aren’t made for children, bills aren’t paid, or promises to stop drinking are not kept. Family members, especially children, learn to “look out for themselves” and don’t trust that anyone will “be there” for them.
• Don't feel—in order to survive what’s going on, family members often “turn off” their feelings. Sometimes, people in the family don’t believe their feelings are real and are afraid they will be made fun of if they share their feelings. Often, they don’t trust that anyone will listen or care about how they feel.

Living by these three rules is harmful to everyone, especially children.

People in your family probably spend a lot of energy focusing on the person with the drinking problem. The family constantly adjusts its behaviour to try and control, or cover up for, the behaviour of the problem drinker. So, people in the family learn to ignore their own needs in favour of someone else’s. For example, you stopped seeing your friends because you don’t want them to know that your husband or wife, son or daughter has a drinking problem.

Maybe you’ve stopped saying anything about the drinking because you’re afraid of making the problem worse. Maybe you’ve taken a second job to make up for the money lost because of drinking. All of these things do nothing to help you; they only make it easier for the problem drinker to drink.

I know all of this—what can I do?

If there’s an alcohol problem in your family, some of what you’ve read here might sound familiar. But you want to know what to do. It’s very important that you’re asking this question. Your decision to ask questions and read this brochure—to get help—means that you want to start doing things differently. And that’s the only way to begin recovery—for you and your family.

Get information.

Getting more information is a good place to start. Reading this is one way to understand an alcohol problem in the family. Other sources of information include videos, books and other brochures. You might want to visit your local AHS office for information and resources.
Talking to other people who are in or have been in your situation can also help. There are 12-step support groups, like Al-Anon, Alateen, Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) and Codependents Anonymous (CODA) that welcome anyone who has a spouse, parent or child with an alcohol problem. As well, group and one-to-one counselling is available from Alberta Health Services (AHS).

Remember, you can get help even if the person with the drinking problem isn’t getting any help for his or her own problem.