Alcohol Collateral damage

Al-anon in Israel

Studies have found that when actively drinking, an alcoholic affects at least four people around him or her.

According to members of Alanon (a 12-step support group for relatives and friends of alcoholics), spouses and children of alcoholics often suffer from depression, mood swings, anger, guilt, and resentment of their situation and a feeling of isolation.

Ariel S., a long-time member of Alanon, said, “My husband was addicted to alcohol and I was addicted to him.” She said that after she went to her first Alanon meeting, she learned what is called the “3 Cs.”

• I didn’t cause alcoholism,
• I can’t control it and
• I can’t cure it,’” she said.

Learning that alcoholism was a disease helped her understand her husband’s situation, relieved her guilt and helped her improve her life.

“Only people who have lived with alcoholism understand how terrible and hopeless you feel,” she said. “But going to meetings gave me a new sense of hope.”

Full story and links at The Jerusalem Post

See also;

• Al-Anon May be able to help
• A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
• Address the drinking problem directly

12-Step Programs Offer Broad Benefits

12-Step Programs Offer Broad Benefits, Study Says

A study of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step oriented self-help programs finds that they can help most people recover from alcoholism, even those who are not religious or have mental-health problems.

The Pacific Institute on Research and Education (PIRE) reported that researchers tracked a group of 227 alcoholics over three years and found that those who had attended AA or other self-help programs after treatment had higher rates of abstinence, and drank less if they did relapse. The results cut across gender and religious lines and held regardless of psychiatric history or whether the patient had previously attended AA or other similar programs.

“Here’s a widespread, chronic disorder that seems to respond well to an inexpensive resource — mutual-help groups such as AA,” said study co-author Robert Stout, Ph.D., director of the Decision Sciences Institute at PIRE. “Not only do we need to get more addicts engaged in these groups, but we also need to gather evidence on this issue and make sure that the public, policy-makers and practitioners know about it.”

Added co-author John F. Kelly: “There is a clear dose-response relationship: If you don’t go to any meetings, you have the worst outcomes. If you go to a few, you have a little bit better outcome, and if you go to a lot, you have an even better outcome.” Kelly is the associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Addiction Research Program.

The study was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

From Join Together

See also;

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• AA and Treatment Work Better Together
• AA Offers Recovery Not Religion
• Al-Anon May be able to help
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Quitting drinking, with help from friends

New Delhi: Alcoholics who want to quit drinking have only place where they can meet with like-minded people: Alcoholics Anonymous.

At an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting in Delhi, people will tell you that they have been “sober” for six months, or six years and even 16 years but it would take is just one drink to set them back on a path to disaster.

Alcoholics Anonymous gives the courage and willpower not to drink again, they say. “One alcoholic talking to another—that’s what works. That’s what happened in 1935 when our two co-founders met. When one alcoholic talks to another, he stays sober. The guy who’s ripe and ready will come and stay with AA,” says one member.

There are around 2 million AA members worldwide but the numbers in India are shockingly low. AA has been in the country for 26 years but it has just 5,000 to 8,000 thousand members in the country, most of them men.

There is a reason for that: alcoholism is largely under-detected in urban India and rarely even acknowledged as a disease.

AA doesn’t recruit members but provides support and survival strategies to people who walk in and want to quit drinking. “AA taught me to start loving myself and taking care of myself. Their programmes help me become aware of my own problems,” says a member.

Unfortunately, not everyone is ready for help. “I have seen lots of people die even after coming to AA, as they were not able to do what it takes to stop drinking. I know somebody who died two weeks ago,” says a recovering alcoholic.

Full story at IBN Live, India

See also;

• 12 Step Sponsor
• 12-Step Treatment More Effective than Alternative
• A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

10 Ways to Help an Alcoholic

Alcoholics need help and these ‘affirmative love’ suggestions may help you.

It is important to put the responsibility for dealing with the alcohol problem squarely on the person in question while continuing to love them.

Doing the “right” thing can depend on how severe the alcohol problem is and on how much real understanding the person has. What works for someone who is highly functional in daily life and who knows that alcohol is causing trouble may not be the solution for someone who denies that there is a problem.

These suggestions are distilled from many years of experience, both mine and others. Helping an alcoholic works, it really works.

1. Don’t make it easy for the drinker to keep on drinking
2. Don’t stop loving them
3. Don’t nag, criticize, preach, or complain
4. Address the drinking problem directly
5. Seek help
6. Detach, separate, walk away
7. Set a good example
8. Take care of yourself
9. Be there for them when they’re ready
10. Learn about the disease

See also;

• A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
• Al-Anon May be able to help
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Alcoholic Family Roles
• Brief-TSF can assist people cease alcohol consumption.

Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Find Your Stretch Zone

Learn new habits, change your brain.

At the core of recovery from addiction, alcoholism and codependency is the ability to learn new ways of thinking, new habits to replace the old. This story confirms, what many in recovery know that;

1. New ways and spiritual change can occur, and
2. Old habits are just waiting to be activated - if we allow them.

The Alcoholics Anonymous book says “we deal with alcohol-cunning, baffling, powerful!”, and many have added ‘very patient’ (p 58).

The New York Times story says;

HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

Full story at The New York Times

See also;

• ABC’s of Recovery
• Chalk Talk on Addiction Video
• Developing Spirituality
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News