by Lisa Frederiksen
“Why? – Why, if he loves me – why won’t he stop the drinking that is ruining our lives?”
I was sure that if I could just find the answer, if I could just leverage his love for me, I could make him stop – at least limit his drinking to a level I considered acceptable. I didn’t understand that I was dealing with a disease – a progressive disease – because that’s what it is, no matter what some “experts” may say. And so I spent years trying to roll back the present to a time past – a time that had started out so happily – until I was consumed with anger and frustration, as each “last time” became the new next.
I believed, like tens of millions of other wives, husbands, parents, children and siblings (yes, tens of millions Americans, alone!) who love someone who drinks too much, that I had the power to help him get a grip on his drinking and in so doing, return our lives to normal. In the end, I learned that he couldn’t stop drinking as long as he consumed any amount of alcohol. I learned that as long as he even thought he could drink successfully at some time in the future, there was no amount of willpower nor good intentions in the world that could help him avoid a “next time.” It took me a while and a lot of research, therapy and recovery work to finally understand this simple fact and unravel the consequences of my having lived with family alcohol abuse and alcoholism for the past 40 years.
I invite you to explore this website to learn what I’ve learned and hear from others (maybe even add your own thoughts and comments). This website will provide you with the most current brain research on alcoholism and addiction, as well as the latest research on the issues surrounding the disease of alcoholism and the condition of alcohol abuse. [Alcohol abuse, by the way, is the term used to describe the various forms of excessive drinking that cause significant risk, harm and distress to the excessive drinker and to his or her family and friends - risk, harm and distress that equals that associated with the disease of alcoholism.(1)]
I hope that by sharing what I have learned, others – whether a parent, friend, sibling, spouse or child – will find the tools they need to live their lives. I share this information because I wish I had known it, that it had been openly and freely talked about, long before I’d reached my breaking point in May 2003. I know, myself, that when I first started looking for information, I was overwhelmed with the variety and depth of the books and research on what I was striving to understand – why my loved ones drank too much and why I couldn’t make them stop. I also found similar quantities of information on the related subjects, such as excessive drinking (alcohol abuse), adult children of alcoholics, codependency, how to help the alcoholic stop drinking, how to heal the family, how to talk to your children, family in recovery – and the list went on and on.
So sharing information is what this site is all about … I found that once I learned what was (and had been) happening and why all of my efforts to help my loved ones stop drinking had not worked and instead left me angry, frustrated and overwhelmed, things began to change. In addition to information, you’ll find suggestions for changing your behavior – something you can’t imagine needing to do right now – after all, he (or she) has the problem! Yet, it will likely be these suggestions that will make your life more tolerable, whether your loved one stops drinking or not.
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(1) Babor, Thomas F., John C. Higgins-Biddle, JOhn B. Saunders and Maristela G. Monteiro, AUDIT (The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test), World Health Organization (WHO), page 5, <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2001/WHO_MSD_MSB_01.6a.pdf>
