David2 brings up a good point: It's possible a therapist might be able to discover whatever is causing the addictive behavior. Sometimes a past or childhood experience is so traumatic, that the only way to deal with it is with alcohol or even by blocking out the memory completely. I belong to an organization that supports victims/survivors of clergy abuse, the symptoms of which include drug or alcohol addiction, or other obsessive behavior - over-eating, over spending, promiscuity, depression, relationship problems, suicidal tendencies, denial of abuse, repressed memories, etc. I know this because my son was abused and sodomized by a Catholic priest when he was 11 years old. David (cpa), if your handyman friend is using alcohol as a way of coping with something traumatic in his past, I can sympathize with why he may be unable or not yet strong enough to give it up. And David2 is right, you do have a huge heart.

And when, because you've enabled him, he goes out and kills an innocent person or family in his car, then think again about your "big heart". Or when he starts stealing from you...

You "normies" are all missing the point - it's not because they "can't stop", it's because they WON'T stop. They know damn right well what they're doing and the effects and dangers, family destruction, incarceration, cirosis, diarrhea, hangovers, cancer, etc. They are UNWILLING to quit. Also, oftentimes mental illness if a component, as well as childhood abuse. I would bet that every single person on this forum has had experience with an alcoholic somewhere in their family.

The Big Book states very simply that "...you have to be willing to go to any lengths". True alcys are simply not willing. Many are also quite secretive about it.

Please GO TO ALANON and learn about this disease! You can also attend "open" AA meetings, if you want to see it from that perspective. Go to a speaker meeting.

Eric, I empathize with you "...an alcoholic is like a tornado roaring through the lives of others". Deal with your anger issues - it will set you free.

Gary,

I have dealt with my anger issues and put those demons behind me my friend. My brother and my biological father (another alchy)and I actually have a very good relationship today. I didn't do it with therapy though, I did it by learning to defend myself, empowering myself to deal with any physical threat that came my way.

I was a very good wrestler in high school and then in college and I really enjoyed grappling and self defense. I used this to help bring that self confidence to others as I helped train the WA State police in submission grappling in the 90's which led to teaching self defense classes to battered women, most of whom were beaten by their drunken husband/boyfriend. I used the negative experiences I had growing up to help others and that's what set me free.

Now, that doesn't mean that I'll ever have the patience to listen to the whining drivel of an addict...I hate excuses as to why they can't muster up the willpower to stop their destruction to themselves and others. I don't have time to listen to them carry on like they have a "disease" when I spend my time on these forums and in my life helping myself and others deal with a real disease.

I'll never be that guy that will be soft hearted to someone that's been bitten by their own choices. I'm the guy that will tell you straight out to stop being a f'n idiot and use the brain that God gave you...it works if you stop pumping it full of alcohol and other toxins.

I'm an @sshole, just not angry about it

David � Sometimes, people with huge hearts get their hearts stomped on by others. It does nothing towards helping the person with the �disease�. I have always struggled with accepting the term �disease� applied to so many things that people want to do, have fun with, or can�t help themselves from doing. But whether it is a disease or whether it�s the result of a deeper psychological problem manifesting itself in alcoholism; whether the alcoholic is unwilling or unable to stop himself, you do NOT �cure� it by enabling the person who is currently stomping on your huge heart. You can sympathize with him, feel sorry for him, and mourn the life experiences that brought him to the state he is in, but NONE of this will help him. On the contrary, as Gary points out, he could kill somebody someday. Then, where will you and your huge heart be?

Al �Anon helped me tremendously, and can help you, too, to understand and help your friend. It was at Al-Anon that I was introduced to the �Serenity Prayer� which says in part:

�God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.�

You don�t have to believe in God to know that those words do make a lot of sense.

Eric - Where were you and your self-defense classes when I needed you way back when? Love your straight talking posts!

David,

My late husband was a recovering alcoholic He passed away 11 years ago from Stage 4 Throat Cancer. I sat here thinking should I or shouldn't I write this, but I can see you're a good guy and you want to help him.

You're enabling him, I enabled my husband too. What I did to get his attention, one morning after his all night toot I called an attorney right in front of him. He heard, I want a divorce and take everything I can get. My thinking at that time I'm going to threaten him and make the call with him hearing everything. I told him I have an appointment at 1 today, your gone and the kids will never have to see this again. An hour later he said, don't do anything until I get back. He came back 2 hours later with an AA Sponsor. He said, give me 30 days to prove myself if I go back to drinking you and the kids can have everything. From that day until the day he passed 15 years later he was in the AA program.

What I'm trying to get at he needs a Sponsor and seeing you care for him a threat might be the way to go...No Cell phone, No Rent, No Utilities.

Seeing you've done everything possible give it a try see what happens. I know what you mean you don't want to give up on him, I didn't want to give up on my husband either so I thought doing everything in front of him might give him a real scare. It worked for me not sure if it will for you.

Anything is possible. Been there done that.

Best of luck,
Connie

Eric if you call yourself an a@@hole then maybe you are in denial about your anger management issues ;-)

Some people are addicted to anger.

"Denial is NOT a river in Egypt"

Very nicely put Connie but remember that the Big Book doesn't refer to that as the "miracle of reconciliation" lightly (in the chapter on The Family Afterwards). You were blessed to have that miracle and also healthy boundaries.

Co-dependancy is it's own disease.

IMHO Davids chances of influencing this guy to turn himself around are under 10% (and that's being very generous/optomistic). I've just seen just too many failures - and that in AA. There are also CODA meetings out there.

Maybe Gary, anything is possible. I firmly believe in personality types however and consider myself a direct personality. I call things as I see them and usually will not sugar coat much. Passive folks mistake that as anger where it's just being direct and to the point without emotion.

Now on the West Coast, people are more relaxed and less direct so they will usually take affront to that kind of communication. East coasters are very much direct personality types and I think as a Californian you may view everyone in the Boston or NY area as needing anger management classes. As a young man I made a good living in B2B tech sales by developing a respectable client base in NY, NJ and Boston and I did that by relating to them.

Personally I think the people that need anger management are the ones that can't stop from hitting women, beating their children, committing assault, battery, shooting people and so on and so forth...they don't have control. Myself, I'm all about control and it's amazing how much controlled anger can be used as a motivator.

The things that one can accomplish because they are fueled by anger, focused and directed by it. The obstacles that can be hurdled, the trials and tribulations overcome by that fuel. The energy that can be generated by it. It's OK to be angry, I think more people on these forums should be pissed off myself, just controlled. That's what a good anger management class should teach you... how to be angry, just control it...keep it "managed". I think if everyone was in a Zen state of "peace" totally void of anger, nothing would ever be accomplished.



Love ya Gary...

Eric

Interesting discussion with its meanderings on Anger. I've always been intrigued by the actual life of Bill W with its full human messiness, even when he was sober and exploring LSD and infidelity to his deathbed wish for some whiskey and channeling the monk Boniface, not the hagiography of AA. Then I read that Gary worked personally with him for over a decade. What a small world. Of course AA should be judged on its works, not its founder's quirks. It has saved many.
I'm going to "abstain" from this particular discussion except to note that Gary's line that most of us have had some experience with an alcoholic shows just how serious this problem still remains. My feelings are very complex on this issue having lost my little brother to alcoholic behavior over twenty years ago as well as my own excessive indulgence in my late twenties. Eric's "man Up" approach worked just fine for me, but apparently it does not for the majority. I wish I had the answer. DavidCPA continues to amaze me with the depth of his kindness and goodness.
Keep the Faith
Charm

I "manned up" when I was 48 and realized that alcohol was causing me to have anger issues. I never took a drink after that and I play in bars and am around alcohol all of the time. There are constant bar fights, brawls and stabbings in some of the dives I play in (typical blues bars). But I am a anomaly. Very few people walk in off the street and stay. I even got a temporaru sponsor at my first meeting although it took another 4 years to work the steps. Now it's an ongoing process of working the steps in all of the other areas of my flawed life.

IMHO we have as much rage here as any other locality, it just seems to manifest itself differently and geographic location would lend itself to that equation as much as the microclimates we have in the Bay Area.

As far as the rest of Bill W.'s life I can't comment on that as I have not studied beyond the Big Book - Noah ended up an alcoholic (after the Ark thing) but they don't put that in the childrens bible story books.

Also the Apostle Paul had a "thorn" in his side that he asked God to remove and He wouldn't stating "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 COR 12:9). The moral of the story is we all have a "thorn" of some sort. It never specified what that thorn was either...

Not trying to get off on a religious tangent here, but recovery programs are spiritually based (most anyway). And your "Higher Power" can be what you define it to be.

At the risk of losing my anonymity, "being a friend of Bill W." is AA speak for "I am in the program". I never met or worked with Bill W. (I did see the movie though ;-) He died in 1971 when I was 24 and long before I got into the program. LSD was tried for all sorts of psychological maladies and even as a warfare weapon so don't take too much of that Wikipedia crap too literally.

Gary

Gee, you have me "falling off the wagon already" when I just posted I'd abstain. Not up on all the AA euphemisms so I took it literally that you actually knew him. I've been reading stories of his life for over thirty years and I found the Wikipedia article pretty accurate. As for Bill W and LSD, even the Central Texas AA website acknowledges it
Texas AA and Bill W LSD It's also detailed in Susan Cheever's book My Name is Bill: Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the words of Timothy Leary, set and setting are essential elements of benefiting from LSD. Bill W was friends with Aldous Huxley, author of a Brave New World who also wrote the Doors of Perception about psychedelics
One writer summed it up nicely
[quote]Both men believed that the drugs might be used to treat addiction. But beyond LSD, both Bill and Huxley were interested in how change is possible, both on the level of the individual person and society in general. Huxley called Bill "the greatest social architect of the 20th century," according to Cheever.[/quote]
You are right that effective recovery periods are spiritually based because IMO alcoholism is not a disease of the body but of the soul.
CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING AND STAYING SOBER one day at a time.
Charm