Home/Family & friends
Help for someone else
Worried about somebody’s drinking?
Living with it is exhausting, frightening and lonely, and most people carry it far longer than they should before asking anyone. You can phone us too — the KZN helpline is not only for the drinker.
The hardest thing first
You cannot make another person stop drinking. Nothing you say, threaten, hide, pour away or pay for will do it, and it is not because you have not tried hard enough. The decision has to be theirs. That is a bitter thing to be told, and it is also the beginning of getting your own life back.
What you can do is stop protecting them from the consequences, be clear and calm about what you will and will not live with, make sure help is easy to reach when they want it — and get support for yourself, starting now rather than later.
What usually helps
- Raising it when they are sober, in private, without an audience.
- Talking about what you have seen and how it affects you, rather than about what they are.
- Keeping the A.A. helpline number where they can find it, and leaving the choice with them.
- Offering to go along to an open meeting with them — many people manage the first one only with somebody beside them.
- Being consistent about the boundaries you set, especially the small ones.
- Looking after your own health, sleep, work and friendships. You are no use to anybody empty.
What usually makes it worse
- Arguing with somebody who has been drinking. Nothing said then will be remembered or honoured.
- Covering up — phoning in sick for them, paying the fine, smoothing it over at the family lunch. It removes exactly the consequences that eventually change minds.
- Threats you will not carry out. They teach the other person that nothing you say is real.
- Searching, counting, measuring and policing the supply. It becomes your full-time job and it does not work.
- Waiting for a rock bottom. There is no fixed depth at which people become ready, and some do not survive the wait.
What A.A. can do
A.A. is a fellowship of alcoholics helping each other stay sober. If the person you are worried about reaches out, a member will talk to them, meet them, and take them to a meeting. In KZN, members do this every week.
You are also welcome yourself at any meeting marked open on our meeting list. Sitting in an open meeting is the single best way to understand what your person is up against — and to hear from people whose families once felt exactly as yours does.
What A.A. cannot do
We cannot go and fetch anybody, stage an intervention, provide detox or treatment, or make a diagnosis. We cannot pass on messages to a member or tell you whether somebody attends — anonymity applies to families too. And we cannot supply the willingness; that part only ever comes from the drinker.
Support for you
A.A. is for the drinker. There are separate fellowships for the people around them — Al-Anon for family and friends, and Alateen for younger people living with someone else’s drinking — and both have groups in KwaZulu-Natal. They are not part of A.A., but many families find them as valuable as A.A. is to the drinker. Our helpline can point you toward the current KZN contacts.
If it is an emergency
If someone is in immediate danger — unconscious, having a seizure, badly injured, threatening harm to themselves or anyone else — phone emergency services on 10177 (ambulance) or 112 from a mobile, or go to your nearest hospital. A.A. is not an emergency service.