How can a person really help a struggling alcoholic to get well? Historically, recovery programs have attempted to answer this question but without a lot of success at it. Perhaps you have encouraged an alcoholic in your life to get sober without much success. If it has come to this point then perhaps you should consider the best way to help an alcoholic.

Part of the issue here is that most treatment paths do not really tailor to the individual – they are set up to treat anyone and everyone. They are basically a general program that is supposed to work for everyone but obviously this is not the case as many will fail to achieve success. For example, 12 step programs, which typically dominate the recovery scene, have remained unchanged for decades.

When a person needs to sober up or get clean from drugs, our usual answer is to have them attend group therapy or 12 step meetings. When that fails to produce decent results, instead of blaming the program we always blame the individual, saying that “they just didn’t want it enough,” or that “they just did not get into the spiritual side of the program.” These types of excuses point to a failing in our quest for better recovery and we can do better then just blaming the failed alcoholic. I would suggest:

1) Push alcoholics to use treatment for early recovery. This is critical because early recovery is very trying and it can be hard for the alcoholic to get even a small amount of clean time in some cases.” In a safe setting such as rehab it is much smoother when trying to get a hold on early recovery.

2) Encourage the struggling alcoholic to set goals and create a better life. This is important because it is not enough to merely quit drinking. When an alcoholic drinks they do it with passion and it becomes a huge part of their life. In their recovery journey, an alcoholic must find new meaning and depth in their life or they risk sliding back into a relapse of destruction and despair.

3) Encourage alcoholics to make holistic growth a priority in their life. If you can get someone to grow in one area of their life, that is good. But if you can convince them to grow in several areas of their life, this is even better. Holistic growth is indicating that the person is treating their disease as a whole, not simply as a spiritual problem (as some treatments deal with it).

Beating alcohol addiction is a process that occurs in 2 stages. Early recovery and long term sobriety (the rest of your life) are the stages that make up your recovery journey.

The first part of recovery is the initial shocking experience of sobriety where you are overwhelmed because you are suddenly sober and no longer self medicating. This is basically what we might call early recovery. There is no specific amount of time that someone might take in this stage of their sobriety; some alcoholics are going to be in it for a few months and for others it might take a lot longer. But regardless, there is certainly a rough period in early recovery when the best you can do is cling to your new sobriety and simply not drink each day. This part of your sobriety is quite different from when you were first getting into your recovery.

One key in terms of recovering from alcohol addiction is the drive to learn new things about how to live successfully. You have to relearn how to do the most basic things in your life without alcohol. This might not sound like much but in reality it can be quite trying. Recovery is all about getting a new education as far as living sober and so you have to stay humble if you’re going to make it. This means that you have to be open to new knowledge about how to live as you go about your new life. If you are arrogant when it comes to learning you will not succeed in early recovery.

Another key to early sobriety is in connecting with other people who are also recovering. This is why AA meetings are so useful and prevelant in traditional recovery. We need other recovering addicts and alcoholics in our lives so that we can learn and gain support from them. This is a piece of your learning journey also…it is hard to learn new things if there is nobody to instruct you. In early sobriety, our peer group is how we learn new things based on their experience, strength, and hope that they share.

The third key to overcoming alcohol addiction is the pursuit of personal growth. You’re realize that this also compares well with learning and they two are actually very similar. But personal growth is more than just learning, it is applied life; applied habits and positive energy. One example of this might be daily exercise that might become a crucial part of someone’s growth in recovery. This isn’t just about learning new stuff but is also just a good habit in general that can be a crucial part of sobriety.

How can you determine if you have an addiction to alcohol?

To anyone who is not struggling with alcoholism, such a question might seem bizarre because they think the answer should be obvious. This can really be a tricky situation for some people, especially if you are still in the phase of drinking where you still have fun with it but at the same time you get into trouble sometimes.

In some cases, there are alcoholics who will go weeks or months at a time without drinking, but when they do drink, they tend to binge. So this could be tricky to diagnose by yourself, because the binge drinker often goes for long periods of time without having any problems at all.  In such cases the person might not realize that they should in fact stop drinking.

So how can you know for sure? Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Try some controlled drinking. Set a limit on yourself that you can only have 1 drink per day, max. Keep this up for at least 12 months continuous.

2) Self diagnosis. This is the only way. Others cannot diagnose you with an alcohol problem. You must accept this reality for your own self. Admitting it is not enough. You will need to come to full acceptance of your condition without any reservation about it.

3) Consider this statement: “I didn’t get into trouble every time I drank, but every time I got into trouble, I had been drinking.” Is that true for you? If so then that is a huge indicator that you might be alcoholic.

4) Consider this statement: “When I control my drinking, I don’t have any fun. When I have fun with my drinking, I tend to lose control.” Another large indication if this sounds true for you.

So go through those suggestions and give them some thought. Try to control your drinking for a set period of time (the longer the better) and pay attention to how it makes you feel when you limit your alcohol intake.  If you come to the conclusion that something needs to change then you might want to start exploring how to stop drinking.

Knowing how to help an alcoholic is a difficult thing to do. Perhaps the best we can do is offer a system of recovery that works for them and encourage them to find out what that system is.

Part of the problem with traditional recovery is that it usually seeks to fit the alcoholic into the program instead of fitting a program to the alcoholic. This is not good and if you consider the current success rates of most recovery programs then you will determine that these methods are not very effective overall. The rate at which most alcoholics tend to relapse are quite low on average and this can be discouraging for those in recovery.

The solution to this is in customization. It is outrageous to cling to the idea that one program can universally apply to everyone and help them all equally. This is just silly. Many recovering alcoholics have found unique paths to sobriety over the years by using different strategies and tactics. No single solution will apply to every individual. This becomes clear to people who take a step backwards and take in the whole picture. Unfortunately, most in recovery do not believe this idea and they cling to the belief that there is only one way to overcome addiction. This normally means 12 step recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous that basically make up most of the recovery industry today.” These programs are widely available and even though they seem to help a ton of people they actually have very poor rates of recovery.

For many alcoholics, only giving them one of option of 12 step meetings can be extremely discouraging if they do not feel drawn to that solution. It is just a poor fit for some people and they would actually do much better with an alternative program of recovery. What usually happens in this case is that we point our finger at the alcoholic and say that they “did not want it bad enough to stay sober” or they surely would have been able to make the 12 steps work for them. This is not a helpful way to view things as far as making growth and progress in recovery is concerned.

So what is the answer? For some the solution will be in the customization of a recovery program to their own unique life. This can perhaps be done through having a sponsor or by using life coaching services, for example. Other times a person can push themselves to grow in different ways in order to achieve a successful life in recovery.

Living a sober life is really more about attitude and mindset rather than a physical state of abstinence. Of course, when you are living sober you technically are not going to be getting drunk. But for most any real alcoholic, how can they ever sustain this method of living if in actuality they are yearning to be drunk again? But they can not realy sustain this, as usually an alcoholic will go back to the booze before they reach such a level of desperation. And please understand that for a true alcoholic, suicidal desperation can be a very real thing.

Alcoholics are people who are filled with passion. They love to get wasted and it makes them feel at peace with their life and therefore it becomes their reason for being. The problem is that at some point the booze doesn’t work anymore and they have to drink larger and larger amounts in order to get properly sauced. Because they are passionate people, they need a passionate solution for recovery. If you simply strip away the booze and the drugs then an alcoholic is left with a hollow shell of a life; they cannot elicit any passion or excitement about themselves without returning to the bottle.

Because of this enthusiasm, it goes to show that any drunk who has achieved sobriety must be doing so with passion. This is the answer. Not one on one counseling or group therapy sessions or even AA meetings, but passion.

Passion is what makes the sober life a success. Passion is the key to living sober.

Realize that 12 step fellowships do work really well for some people, but only if they have a real passion for the program and for their life in general.

Run this little test: ask any person who has been sober for a few years if they have passion in their life today like they did back in their drinking days. They will inevitably tell you that they are. Otherwise they would not be living in recovery. They would have relapsed.

Most people get confused when it comes to quitting drugs and alcohol, because they see it as a process of elimination. They think that the primary focus is on eliminating drug use and then on avoiding all of those triggers and urges that might pop up in our lives that might make us relapse.

If recovery were that easy then we would likely see many more people find success with it. Unfortunately we don’t, as getting good outcomes in sobriety takes a ton of motivation and work.

One the difficult truths about overcoming addiction is that you have to put forth a tremendous effort at the start of your journey. If you want to achieve a successful life of sobriety then you have to put forth a huge initial effort. Many of us have learned that we can enjoy success in life by taking a more modest approach with most things, but this will not work in recovery. If you approach early sobriety with anything less than a 100 percent effort, you are going to relapse.

Now this can be particularly confusing because we often times will look to the seasoned veterans of recovery who have multiple years of sobriety and try to emulate their life. This will not work for the newcomer and it will cause them to relapse. If your sponsor has 10 years of sobriety and as a newcomer you try to copy his lifestyle exactly then you are going to relapse. Why? Because we change and evolve and grow in our recovery. What got us clean and sober will not keep us clean and sober….we have to keep changing as we go along. If we want to understand how to stop drinking then we need to realize that we will change as we progress in recovery.

Not only this, but the level of dedication and hard work you must put forth as a new person in recovery is extremely large. Don’t imagine that you can find some magic loophole to get to the serenity and peace that your sponsor has. That peace and serenity was not easy to come by, it was earned. It is not a magic gift that you can claim without putting in the footwork.