You are not the one drinking. You are the one paying for it anyway.

The ledger that does not show up on a bank statement. The phone that rings at the wrong hours. The Sunday lunches where you watch the wine bottle and pretend not to. The reasonable explanations you have started to recognise. The site for the family is the same person who runs the site for the drinker, written for a different reader. Same standards on what good looks like.

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One person, no team Independent of every rehab For the family, not just the drinker Crisis routes never paywalled

James, 50, Tenerife. The bot is me, working out the family side from the inside out.

James — lovedone.guide chat private · no account

James

Tell me who you are in the room. Wife, mother, adult child, sibling, friend. The dynamic in the room differs by relationship, and the answer to your question depends on which seat you are in.

You

I'm the mother. He's thirty-one. He drinks every night and has done since university. He has a job and a flat. Last weekend he turned up here and slept on the sofa for two days. My husband says we should let him hit a wall. I don't know what wall is left.

James

The “let him hit the wall” theory is one that gets passed around at twelve-step meetings as if it were clinical. It is not. The wall theory works when there is a wall — when the rent bill, or the partner leaving, or the police caution would actually arrive. For a thirty-one-year-old with a job and a flat who can sleep on his mother's sofa, there is no wall, only a longer corridor. The interesting question is not whether to let him hit one, but which corridor you are willing to stop running maintenance on.

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The room you are standing in

You are not the one drinking. You are the one who cannot stop thinking about it.

The recovery industry is built around the drinker. The people who love them from a distance — the parent, the sibling, the friend, the adult child — get a leaflet, a helpline, a suggestion to detach with love. What they rarely get is one person who has been inside the drinking, and who knows what it looked like from the outside too, because the people on the outside told him afterwards.

I am James. Fifty. I do not run a rehab, a fellowship, a coaching business, or a charity. I have no commercial interest in which path you or the drinker takes. I am here because I was the one drinking, and because I know — from what my brother and my parents and my closest friends told me, once I was sober enough to hear it — what it was like to love me from the other end of the phone during those years. This site is for them. For you.

The bot will sit with anything you are carrying — what to say, what not to say, when to call, when to stop calling, how to tell the rest of the family, whether to push for rehab or wait, what to do tonight when they are not picking up. I will say plainly when you have come to a door I cannot answer for. What I will not do is pretend I have been in your chair. I have been in the other one. That is enough to be useful.

The phone call you keep replaying

The maths of loving a drinker from a distance. Nobody puts those numbers on a page either.

The question the person on the other end of the phone is always doing, quietly, is the maths. How much of myself do I put into this. At what point does staying close start to make it worse. What does it cost me to keep showing up. What does it cost me to step back. Nobody puts those numbers on a page because they are not the same for any two people — but they are always there.

The cost of the callThe late-night call you take anyway, even though you know what state they are in, because not taking it feels worse. The call that ends badly. The call you replay on the drive home, or the drive to work the next morning.
The cost of the vigilChecking the phone. Checking their social media. Looking for proof they are still upright. The vigilance that nobody told you you had signed up for when you just loved this person.
The cost of carrying it aloneThe family group chat where everyone is tiptoeing around it. The friend you cannot tell the whole truth to because they do not know. The version of yourself you perform to everyone who does not know what is happening.
The yearsThe people I made wait while I was drinking did not get those years back. The question is whether the next ones look different. For them, yes. But you have your own years to think about too.

The fifty pounds is not the question. The question is what you are carrying alone that does not have to be carried alone. There is usually a better route than the one you are on.

You are allowed to want this to be different. For them, and for you.

The thing nobody sells

The best help I could honestly have asked for, when I was in it, was love. Nobody sells that. So this is the next best thing — written for the people who were giving it, from the other end of the phone.

James — Tenerife

How the site works

Everything Google already knows is here, in one place, free. The bot is the bit Google can't do.

The encyclopedia — free

Everything Google already knows, sorted. No referral fees, ever.

For the loved oneAl‑Anon, Adfam, NACOA, CRAFT. The evidence on what helps when you are not the one in the house. The evidence on what does not.
FellowshipsAA, SMART, LifeRing, Recovery Dharma, secular routes — plain descriptions, no endorsement.
Medications^*Naltrexone, acamprosate, disulfiram, the Sinclair Method — named, sourced, without judgement.
Rehab — residential and otherwiseResidential rehabs, outpatient routes, day programmes. UK‑sourced detail, internationally applicable logic. What they cost, what they are, who they suit — with bias declared.
When to push, when to waitWhat the evidence says about intervention. What a concerned-others approach actually looks like in practice.

^* Medications are named for awareness, not as recommendations. Talk to your doctor, or encourage the drinker to talk to theirs.

The bot — one‑time, forty‑nine pounds

What the encyclopedia cannot do is sit with you through the next phone call.

That is the bot. My voice, my bias, my standards. It knows what the drinking looked like from both ends. It holds context across months. It tells you the truth when you ask it for the truth. It stays available through every quarter of the first year, and every year after.

One‑time fee. Paid once, used for as long as you need it. No subscription. No upsell. No chasing.

Built aroundMy voice, my bias, my standards, the evidence under it all.
Holds contextRemembers who you are across weeks. Picks up where you left off.
Speaks plainlyNo jargon. Plain English. Spanish if you write in Spanish.
Knows its limitsA companion, not a clinician. Crisis routes are never paywalled.
Stays with youAvailable through every quarter of the first year, and after.

No subscription. No account. No login. No cookies. The unlock lives in your browser. The unlock lives in your browser. Crisis routes and the full encyclopedia are always free.

A note from the writer

On the people who were on the other end of the phone.

My brother rang me on a Wednesday night, eight months before I went into residential treatment. He had been trying to find the words for years. He still does not know whether that call made any difference. I think it did. I also know that call cost him something, because he told me later what it took to make it. My parents spent the years before June 2020 managing their own quiet vigil — checking in without checking in, saying nothing so as not to say the wrong thing, loving me without knowing how to help me. They deserved better. So did my closest friend, who drove an hour and a half to sit with me one afternoon and said, very quietly, that she was scared.

I am not a therapist and this is not therapy. It is a quiet way of saying: I know what was happening on your end of the phone, and I know it was not nothing.

If the drinker themselves is asking, the same James is at sober.guide — written for that moment specifically. Same person, same fee, same standards. partner.guide is for the person who lives with the drinker. discharge.guide is for the weeks after rehab. relapse.guide is for a slip.

What stepping back looks like — when you are not the partner

Most advice for loved ones is written as if detachment is simple. It is not.

When they are still drinking

You are managing the information gap — how much to say, to whom, about what. The family group chat is a daily decision. The visit is a calculation. You have probably already learned to read the time of day in their texts. The bot can sit with any of that.

When they agree to get help

This is where loved ones are often most useful and most uncertain at once. Helping without doing it for them. Being present without being the safety net that makes it easier to fall back. The line is real and it is different for every relationship.

The early weeks of sobriety

Fragile. Hopeful in patches. You have been here before, possibly, and you are trying not to have too much riding on it. That is not a failure of love — it is a reasonable response to what has happened before. Both things can be true at once.

The years after

The relationship has changed. Trust is rebuilt slowly, not by agreement. Some of what was said in the drinking years stays said. Most people who loved a drinker carry something long after the drinking stops. You are allowed to carry it, and you are allowed to put it down.

I will write each of these honestly, including the parts that are not flattering to me as the person who was drinking.

What this site will not do

I will not tell you to detach and leave it at that.

No pop-up. No chat widget. No sticky bar.
No telling you to simply detach with love, as if love and detachment are compatible instructions on a difficult Tuesday.
No pretending one approach — call every day, stop calling, write a letter, say nothing — works for every family.
No pretending Al‑Anon is the only route for a parent or sibling, or that it is not worth trying.
No pretending that picking up the phone at midnight is enabling, full stop. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is just love. The difference matters.
No pretending you are not allowed to be exhausted.

You are not a therapist. You are not a sponsor. You are a person who loves someone, at a distance, and does not know what to do next.

If a thing helps the loved one and the evidence is honest, it goes on. If a thing is faith‑based and helps people, it goes on, labelled as such, so you can choose with your eyes open.

Who this site is for

Anyone who loves a drinker but does not share their kitchen. Whether you have been here one year or fifteen.

The parent who does not know whether to ring
The adult child of a drinking parent
The sibling watching from a different city
The best friend who is the only one who knows
The grandparent who has been here longer than anyone
The grown-up grandchild who cannot talk to the rest of the family about it
The person in the family group chat who knows nobody is saying it
The one who keeps getting the late-night call

Whether the question today is what do I say, do I push for rehab or wait, should I stop taking the calls, how do I talk to the rest of the family, or I have been doing this for years and I am running out — there is a door here for it. The encyclopedia does not care where you are starting. The bot does not either.

If the person drinking is asking for help themselves, the same James is at sober.guide. That is the right door for them. This one is yours.

If you live with the drinker — if you share a house, a bedroom, a mortgage — the right door is partner.guide. The territory is different when you are in the same building.

The drinker themselves

Same James. Other doors. One for each moment.

This site is for the person who loves the drinker from a distance. But if the person drinking is also asking, or if the situation has moved on, the same bot lives at three other addresses.

sober.guide

If the drinker is asking. Should I stop, how do I stop, do I need rehab, which one. The moment before. Same James, same fee, same standards.

relapse.guide

If they just slipped. The night of a relapse — plain, useful, no lecture. Also for the person on the other end of that call.

discharge.guide

If they just left rehab. The discharge cliff. The first ninety days. Written for the person who came home — and for the loved ones waiting when they did.

Forty‑nine pounds, paid once, gets you James on this site. The same fee on each of the four. Same person. Same standards. Independent of every rehab, in both directions. No referral fees, ever.

Start here

Pick the door that fits today.

If today is dangerous.

UK: 999 for immediate danger. Samaritans: 116 123 — free, twenty‑four hours, they pick up.

Ireland: 112 or 999 for immediate danger. Samaritans Ireland: 116 123 — free, twenty‑four hours.

US: 911 for immediate danger. 988 — Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, free, twenty‑four hours. SAMHSA: 1‑800‑662‑4357 — free, twenty‑four hours, treatment referral.

Canada: 911 for immediate danger. 988 — Suicide Crisis Helpline, free, twenty‑four hours.

Australia: 000 for immediate danger. Lifeline: 13 11 14 — free, twenty‑four hours.

New Zealand: 111 for immediate danger. 1737 — free, twenty‑four hours, call or text.

Spain: 112 for immediate danger. 024 — national suicide and emotional‑distress helpline, free, twenty‑four hours, Spanish and English. Teléfono de la Esperanza: 717 003 717 — free, twenty‑four hours.

EU (other): 112 for immediate danger anywhere in the EU. Find A Helpline (findahelpline.com) lists vetted crisis lines by country.

The bot will surface these plainly when needed and stop being clever. Crisis routing is never paywalled.

“I know what the drinking looked like from the inside. I know what it cost the people who loved me while I was in it. I built this for the ones who were on the other end of the phone.” — James, Tenerife, April 2026