Encyclopedia · For the loved one

Loving a drinker from a distance — what actually helps.

Written by the drinker, for the people who loved me while I was still in it. Most of the recovery industry is built around the drinker. The people on the other end of the phone — the parent, the sibling, the best friend, the adult child — get a leaflet, a helpline, a suggestion to try Al-Anon. This entry is the longer answer.

Start here: this is not your fault, and it is not your job to fix it.

Those two facts are both true. The first is straightforward: addiction is not caused by the people who love the addict. Not by how you raised them, how you treated them, what you said ten years ago, or what you are saying now. The research is clear on this, and so is any honest clinician. You did not cause this.

The second fact is harder and more important: it is not your job to fix it. That is not indifference. It is the thing that distinguishes loving someone from trying to control an outcome you cannot control. The drinker has to want it. They have to be the one who goes. Nothing you say, no amount of phone calls, no letter, no ultimatum, no threat, no intervention will reliably produce a different outcome unless the drinker has reached the point where they want help more than they want to drink. Your job is to be there when that moment comes — not to manufacture it on a timeline that fits your grief.

That said: what you say and do matters. CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) has the best evidence base for what family members can do to increase the probability that the drinker enters treatment. It is not magic, but it is better than waiting. It is described below.

What actually helps — the evidence

CRAFT — Community Reinforcement and Family Training

CRAFT is the best-evidenced approach for concerned family members and friends. It was developed by Robert J. Meyers and has been tested in trials with better results than Al-Anon and traditional confrontational intervention (the kind you see on television). It works by:

• Helping the loved one improve their own life regardless of whether the drinker changes
• Teaching specific communication skills that reduce confrontation and increase the chance the drinker will consider treatment
• Identifying the right moments to make a treatment suggestion (when the drinker is sober, not in crisis, and the conversation is calm)
• Strengthening the loved one's own support network and wellbeing

CRAFT does not ask you to detach. It asks you to engage more skilfully. Around two-thirds of drinkers whose families used CRAFT subsequently entered some form of treatment. That is not guaranteed. But it is significantly better than the alternatives.

To find a CRAFT-trained therapist in the UK: search the BABCP directory or ask your GP for a referral to an addiction-specialist therapist. The book Get Your Loved One Sober by Meyers and Wolfe is the accessible text.

Al-Anon and Nar-Anon

Al-Anon is a twelve-step fellowship for families and friends of alcoholics. It has helped a large number of people by providing a community of people who understand the position, reducing isolation, and offering the concept of detachment (accepting what you cannot change). It is not the right fit for everyone. The twelve-step framework is God-language-adjacent, and many people cannot engage with it. If that is not you, it is worth trying at least two or three different meetings — groups vary enormously in quality and register. It is free and anonymous. The phone is 0800 0086 811.

If the drinker uses drugs as well as alcohol: Nar-Anon is the equivalent for families of people with drug problems. Same structure, slightly different language.

Adfam

Adfam is a UK charity that works with families affected by drugs and alcohol. They have online groups, local services (postcode-dependent), and a good information base. Less structured than Al-Anon, more practical. Worth trying if Al-Anon's meeting format does not appeal. adfam.org.uk.

NACOA — National Association for Children of Alcoholics

If you are an adult child of a drinking parent, NACOA is the specific resource. They run a helpline (0800 358 3456, free) and an online forum. The specific pain of being the child who had to parent the parent is not something all general services understand. NACOA does. nacoa.org.uk.

Your GP

You can ring your own GP and talk about what you are going through — this is not a referral for the drinker. A GP can refer you for counselling, advise on your own mental health, and in some cases help with a concerned-others referral route into local alcohol services for the drinker. You do not need the drinker's permission to ask for help for yourself.

You can also ring the drinker's GP (if you know who they are) and pass on a concern. The GP cannot tell you anything about the patient (confidentiality). But they can receive information. That information goes into the clinical record. It can make a difference when the drinker themselves next makes contact. Say: "I am ringing as a concerned family member. I am not asking you to tell me anything. I just want to tell you that [name]'s drinking is a serious concern and I am worried about their health."

What does not help (however understandable)

• Confrontation while they are drinking. The conversation you need to have cannot happen when they are drunk. It is not just ineffective — it often hardens the pattern. The conversation has to happen when they are sober, in a calm moment, without ultimatum language unless you mean it and are ready to follow through.
• Covering for them. Ringing in sick to their employer, making excuses to family, managing the fallout. This is understandable and it comes from love. It also removes some of the natural consequences that might motivate change. This does not mean being cruel. It means deciding, each time, whether the cover is protecting them or protecting the pattern.
• Ultimatums you will not follow through on. An ultimatum is only useful if it is real. "If you drink again I will stop calling" — and then you keep calling — teaches the drinker that the boundary is performative. If you make a boundary, make one you can hold. If you cannot hold it, do not make it. That is not weakness; it is honesty.
• Googling at midnight. Three hours of forum threads, contradictory advice, recovery content, and alcohol-industry-funded information. Some of it is good. Most of it is not calibrated to your specific person. The bot can sit with you at midnight instead. That is part of what the £49 is for.

Practical questions

Should I push for rehab?

When the drinker is physically dependent (daily drinking, morning shakes, unable to go three days without shaking), residential rehab with proper medical detox is a real option. The question is timing and motivation. A person who has been forced into rehab by their family before they are ready has a significantly higher probability of leaving early. The right moment is when they want it — or when the alternative has become untenable to them. Your job is to make the alternative progressively less comfortable and the option of help progressively more visible. CRAFT is the framework for doing that deliberately rather than by accident.

If the drinker is physically dependent and you are concerned about their safety, call their GP and say so. A GP can do a safety assessment and refer for a medicated detox.

What if they will not go to rehab?

Residential rehab is not the only route. The GP route (assessment, community detox with medication, onward referral) works for many people and costs nothing on the NHS. SMART Recovery is free and secular and does not require the drinker to call themselves an alcoholic. Naltrexone via the Sinclair Method is available on the NHS with a willing GP and has strong evidence. The drinker does not have to want residential rehab to get help. The question is what they will accept.

What do I do if I think they are in danger tonight?

999 for immediate danger. 111 if you are worried but it is not acute — they will tell you what to do. A&E if they are unconscious or you cannot get through to them and you are local. If they are a long way away and you cannot reach them, call 111 and explain the situation — they can sometimes do a welfare check via local services.

A note from the writer

I am James. I went to Delamere in June 2020 and have been sober since. I was the drinker. My brother rang me eight months before I went. My parents had been managing their vigil quietly for years. My closest friend drove an hour and a half one afternoon and told me, plainly, that she was scared. None of them knew exactly what they were doing. None of them were following a CRAFT protocol. They were just doing the best they could with love and not much else. This site is the resource I wish I could have given them. I owe them that.

If the drinker in your life is asking for help themselves, the same James is at sober.guide. That is the right door for them. If you live with the drinker, partner.guide is for you. This article — and this site — is for the one on the other end of the phone.