Should You Drink Around An Alcoholic?
Love Over Addiction
Michelle Anderson
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2017
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you love someone suffering from addiction is it ok to drink around them?
Sometimes it's easy to say "no, thank you" when we're asked if we would like a glass of wine or pretty beverage since we have grown to hate the very substance that's tearing our family apart.
But other times, we wonder… am I enabling him if I drink around him? If I'm telling him not to drink should I avoid people drinking too?
These are great questions.
Here's what I always recommend: try not to drink in front of your loved one. I did not drink in front of mine for 10 years. It had no effect on his drinking (he still drank and used drugs) but it helped me know that I was not a stumbling block.
If I had a drinking problem (and thank God I don't), I think it would bother me to be around other people who drink. That's why a lot of non-drinkers stick together - it takes away the pressure. If they were trying to quit smoking - would we light up a cigarette in front of them? I would hope not.
You're not going to be able to avoid social situations where people don't drink and your loved one needs to learn how to handle it, but I would personally, as his wife, support him when you're at home or out by ordering a coke, tea or water.
Refraining from drinking in front of an alcoholic is one of the most loving acts of kindness we can do for the ones who struggle with this disease.
If you found this tip helpful there are plenty more practical ways we can help ourselves and the ones we love. We don't need to stay stuck and unhappy. There are better answers. Click here to take a look at one of our programs and payment plans.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Wife of an Alcoholic Podcast. Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well and had a good weekend. I wanted to, before we started off with our helpful tip, I wanted to tell |
| 0:26.2 | you about a woman who wrote me the other day and she said I am a perfectionist and I have an extreme need for control. |
| 0:37.0 | And so I started, when I discovered your podcast, I started listening from the very first episode. |
| 0:45.0 | And because I have a need to follow structure, |
| 0:49.0 | I started listening from one episode, number two to number three. I was afraid to go out of |
| 0:55.0 | afraid to go out of order. |
| 0:57.3 | And she said some of the titles |
| 0:59.7 | I didn't think really pertained to me. I didn't think I would gain a lot out of them or |
| 1:04.8 | needed to hear them. But there was one particular episode for her where she said |
| 1:11.2 | she listened to it and literally fell down on the kitchen floor crying and |
| 1:20.4 | tears weeping and she said that was the episode I didn't think that applied to me but it was |
| 1:27.5 | provided me such a huge breakthrough moment in my life and I'm so glad I listened to it. And of course I'm not saying |
| 1:36.1 | this to brag, I'm saying this to you because a lot of times when I do these podcasts I debate for you know quite a while on what I should |
| 1:46.8 | title them and sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes the title doesn't do the content justice. |
| 1:55.6 | So as you're going through the podcast, |
| 1:59.2 | don't judge the podcast by the title. |
| 2:02.4 | Maybe you do take a listen to something that you think |
| 2:05.4 | doesn't apply to you and you'll be like my friend who just found a secret |
| 2:11.2 | delicious bit of information that really helped her. |
| 2:16.0 | So with that being said this week we're going to talk about a subject that I should you drink around an alcoholic? |
| 2:28.7 | And if you've been listening to me for a while, |
| 2:31.3 | or if you've joined one of my programs love over addiction or |
... |
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