Hi just found your website after going through one of the worst experiences of my life. My partner has a serious alcohol problem, he's stolen, lied, denied and got us into so much debt, it's unreal. The problem he has is a dependency, if he doesn't get the alcohol that he needs, he has fits - then hallucinations. He's been de-toxed about 5 times in the last 2 years. After having two fits last Saturday, he finally broke down on the Sunday and begged me to help him.
Anyhow, after seeing him yesterday drinking over 14 pints of strong cider and being verbally abusive to me (he's never violent) I knew if I kept turning a blind eye he would never help himself - and at the end of the day he is killing himself. I made a few `phone calls this morning and got advised to go to the council to register him homeless. This was done, even though it really cut me up, I felt guilty as hell. He was referred to the Salvation Army, they have taken him in. I was sat here crying my eyes out, and I'm not a kid, I'm a grown woman with 2 kids. I found your website and feel loads better. Yes I do love him, yes, he can come back when he's sorted, no, I am not going to weaken - know why? found two words on your website . . . .
TOUGH LOVING - thank you very much,
hello there. just wanted to say thanks to your website i have realised my
substance problem is something i can no longer ignore and now is the time
for me too make some positive changes in my life. its also refreshing to know
i am not the only one struggling with feelings of guilt and depression over
this. i hope i can email you back in a year or so with a success story with
this being my first step to a long recovery.thanks again.
I have just been into your web-site and found it was extremely informative to me for help with my brother who has an alcohol problem. Diolch yn fawr so very much.
My daughter is 40 years old and is now an alcoholic after years of taking various drugs. She is living with another alcoholic and meets her friends on park benches. Her daughter has decided to live with her father (who also has drug problems) rather than face the embarrassment of having a mother like this.
You are absolutely right - there is no way that 'lending' money or bailing out fines furnishing houses etc helps. The counselling for drug and alcohol abuse that she received made me feel it was all my fault too. I was then trying to help her due to the guilt this produced in me.
I still see her from time to time but I will follow your detachment advice for which I am very grateful.
I have only recently realised how my other daughter's needs were overlooked because I was trying to present a 'normal' facade and this has been so painful for me.
Just wanted to say how brilliant I think your website is; incredibly
informative, easy to use, well laid out and has everything you need to know
- first class.
Hi everyone my name is *****
Unfortunately my 17year old brother is a drink and drug abuser and as a family it is destroying us!
I have printed off all the information on this web site to show to the rest of my family. Hopefully ALL of us will start to understand the problems related to drug and drink abuse and I feel we will really get some comfort from your web page. We are at the stage where my brother has been dependant for years and is in total denial. My brother will steal from anyone! (including any member of the family and home) to create money for his addiction.
However frightened you are to confront other family members about the abuser's problems, trust me it is the best thing you can do! You can deal with the problem as a family and not individually - however be prepared for a few family arguments!
Thank You.
I am a social worker who was trying to find some easy to understand and useful and honest facts about alcohol addiction to help me in my work with the children of a family I work with. I found your web-site and was surprised at the easy and friendly lay out. Well done for trying to involve the young people themselves as this gives them a chance to participate and feel included. I will pass your site on to many of my colleagues.
Thank you so much for your excellent advice to parents on your web page. I was in tears, but so relieved that what I had been thinking and doing was reinforced from your pages and that I was not acting cruel or insensitive to my son's problems.
Just reading the reassurances was a great comfort and gave renewed determination in tackling the problems at home.
Your web site is exceptionally well put together. It is very informative and easy to understand. Your no messing, telling straight like it is style is briliant, keep it up.
Your site has helped me understand my girlfriends eating disorder much better. I hope this will help me support her now and in the future.
Where do I begin? Today, my 37 year old!!!!!!!!!!son staggered up the road after collecting his 3 Diazepam from the local chemist! Prescribed VERY Cautiously (Thank God) by our local GP - since we know there is a trade in them!
My youngest son and his stepbrother brought him back from London last July to try and get him back on track after 6 years down there ducking and diving. So here I am one year on and although I've taken the guy out of London, I haven't taken the London out of HIM! No need, the drugs scene here is just as bad! He is a polyuser and although I have tried to support him, I feel that my health is suffering!
As much as I have tried to be supportive, it is wearing thin tonight. EVERYTHING is somebody else's fault...NEVER his! All he has done for me is push up my council tax and bleed me dry. I put 2,000 pounds into his account last May to allow him to travel to see his son who is in Tasmania - and what did he do? Blew it! And revisited old haunts in London! Learned MY lesson! I have read your pages on DETACHMENT and that's my next step! I am at my wit's end to do 'the right thing' I've printed out all the pages that might help. But finally, on a POSITIVE note, I am SO grateful that I found your site this afternoon. You are obviously doing a wonderful job in supporting us all, so many thanks folks.
My father has a drug addiction and I didn’t know how to react and thought I was alone but this site gave me great insight and really helped.
Well I feel better for reading through your site this morning. I still feel pretty unhappy about the situation with my son but at least now I have some support to help me deal with my feelings. I have added you to my favourites and there’s no doubt I will be popping in and out for guidance and a helping hand on the bad days especially.
Thank you for reminding me that I too have ‘rights’ it’s all too easy to be enveloped completely by the drama of living with someone who abuses themselves (and the family indirectly) with drugs. The suggestion to detach is particularly well timed, thank you very much.
I was so amazed by how 'real' your website is. I've been on lots of websites for help and yours is the most down to earth one I've found so far. I am a single parent with 3 kids, I'm addicted to marijuana and I have to use it daily to get by. I'm so scared of all the feelings that come rushing the next day after stopping, that I always continue again. After 10 years of this I know I have to stop, or I will die. Thanks for all the info, and I will look into attending an NA group.
I am a 35 year old alcoholic and valium user. I have found your site excellent, especially to realise how my partner must be feeling - who I have neglected for years . . .
I have just read the 'Help for You' section of your website. I am living with a partner with alcohol problems and it made me cry. After 11 years, I have finally decided no more - thank you
I am a 32 year old recovering heroin addict . I am currently on a methodone course and have recently started reducing. I thought my life was over until I stumbled on people like yourselves . just a note to let you know you are appreciated. thanks x
Thank you for your help and advice - it was very informative. I am trying.
I have just found this site. I live with an alcoholic and found this site really interesting. At the moment he is passed out in the chair. He will argue later that he hasn't been drinking. I was very interested in the section about looking after me. I am going to do this more, I can't keep covering up for him. He is in total denial.
I am 17 years old and 31 weeks pregnant, my boyfriend is 18 and the dad of my unborn child. My boyfriend has a drinking problem and never knows when to stop just recently he has started to do drugs again. The last time he touched drugs was some 2 years ago, so why has he turned to them. Don't get me wrong, we love each other and we are dead close - you cant get any closer. He lives with me and my parents as his mam and dad didnt like him drinking so they threw him out. What shall i do? I want to tell my boyfriend just actually how I feel but I cant find the words to tell him, and I want this sorted before our child is here in 9 weeks.
I've just read the pages about alcohol abuse. it really has opened my eyes to what i've known for some time. thank you.
I have looked at your website for information on drug use & abuse. At this moment in time my 23 year old daughter is lying in a mortuary while they try to find out her cause of death, but it is suspected to be drugs related. I have been left with all these feelings of guilt because i couldn't do anything to help her, I knew she smoked weed but not anything else. This is the bottom line for her & us, our family is in limbo at the moment because we can't have her body for a funeral until the tests are complete. If you have or know anyone who has a problem with drugs, please don't let this happen to you, the hurt, guilt & feelings of failure are very hard to cope with, I hope this will help people seek the help they need, try try and try again. - Thanks
Thankyou for the encouragement and support you put into your website to help us addicts.
I made the decision to quit last night and feel ready and prepared for the journey which awaits me. Keep up the good work
Thank you. From my background (former operational head of the Metropolitan Police Drug Squad) and my beliefs (that prohibition provides no answer to drug use and abuse) it could be assumed that our views would clash. I've worked my way thought the site and found I am totally supportive of almost everything you publish. These last few years have shown me that my contribition to the 'policy' debate may be fully justified but, behind the argument, lies a lot of hurt within families and within individual users. We all have to deal with the 'here and now' whilst looking forward to better support for the majority of the victims of drug use, commonly not the user or abuser but the friends and family.
Thank you for providing a 'step by step' guide to common sense support for those often least considered in the debate.
My son is 34 and in prison again. He has stolen from everyone for his addiction and been made an outcast within the family due to his actions. I have begged for help for 8 yrs. He has been on various drug programmes and it hasn't worked, because he loves it too much. He is in prison again and this time I have written to the judge asking for help in putting him in a rehab, also probation are this time trying to help . . . but as usual its up to him - and of course, the funding.
HEROIN destroys life, I hope I get my son back soon.
Your site is excellent and good luck to everybody who needs help, the abuser but more so, the carers.
I have been looking for advice on how to help an alcoholic and at last I have found it. Your advice is so helpful and practical, thankyou. I have looked at many sites and none of them tell you how to help .Well done!
I learned my husband was addicted to cocaine a little over a year ago. We were having financial problems and he had become verbally abusive. I didn't realize he had an addiction until one of his relatives had contacted me to let me know. I confronted him and of course he denied it. I believed him until I had caught him using in our home. I let him know that it was not something I approved of and that he needed to get help because it was not something I wanted our son to grow up with. That I would stay with him and support him as long as he got help, but if he didn't get clean that I couldn't stay married to him anymore. He went to counseling and I thought he was getting clean. I learned recently that he had been lying to me about money and was still using. I filed for divorce. Since then he has been telling me it is my fault he used because I didn't do this, this or this right, and that if I truly loved him I would have stood by him instead of leaving him because of his addiction. Your site has really helped me to know that I am doing the right thing.. not only for me and my son but for him by helping him to realize that his drug use comes with consequences. I no longer feel guilty about my decision. I visit your site often and read the HELP FOR YOU section when I need reassurance..... THANK YOU!
hi there. Ive just had a look at your website after being told about it by a friend. I had a heroin problem but now take subutex as well as sleeping tablets. I am pretty mixed up at the moment but I found your site very sympathetic and caring. Congratulations to the author, your words certainly struck several chords. Thanks for caring in an uncaring world.
A brilliant site and lots of information for me. I will also keep it in mind for other parents.
Looked on this site for information in relation to a project of a friend, but a lot of it relevant to my own situation. Thank you for such a brilliant site.
Tonight I really really needed this help and I have been trying to figure out what to do for so long. I just cannot do it any longer I cannot take this person in my life with all of this craziness. It is making me sick and my children are tired of it all as well, thank
you for this information.
Thank you. Thank you. At 48 I thought that I had found the girlfriend of my dreams. Then the truth slowly sank in, it wasn't just a few drinks and a laugh on the first date. It was drinking every evening. A bottle of wine, then more. I thought something was odd, and after a few questions discovered that she had been like this for ten years. She had been to AA but 'I am not like them' so she didn't return again. She can't cope with the problems she encounters in life. In fact they are all unresolved, they will remain so until she stops drinking - considerable though they are.
I have today moved back to my own house, scanned the web and found this site. It explains what is going on in very simple, easy to digest terms. I deeply love my sober girlfriend, but I am unable to cope with the drunken one. Reading through the feedback I may have to make a decision that will break my heart, but I will do all that I can to help her until I can't help her any more. Only one person can kick the habit and that is her, I can't do it for her and I can't continue to watch a gorgeous girl destroy her own life. I am just hoping that my efforts will not be in vain, but at least I now understand what I have been experiencing. It has helped a great deal.
I was sat smoking a spliff looking on the internet and I came along ur site. I am a 21 year old male who has abused all types of drugs since I was 11 yrs old. I was not from a rich family - both mum and dad in prison. My sister took care of me and she introuduced me to my 1st drug - hash. So life has gone downhill since then. But then I come to ur site read what u had to say and I whould just like to say thank you very much - u have given me strength. thank u
A friend of mine mailed me your web-site address. As I write to you I have tears streaming down my face. My fiance is in prison on remand for burgalry and handling stolen goods. I don't do drugs. The lies that he has told me are unbelievable but I believed them. I had my house searched for two days for stolen goods while my young children looked on. He's a heroin addict and I didn't know. I know I can't save him and he will get sentenced for a long time. I got arrested and questioned and released. I am trying to carry on - good friends invite me out and I go some times - but then theres people who make my life hell because of what he has done. My motto is one day at a time. I have told him he is not coming back to live in my house. Fell deeply in love with him and only been with him for 6 months. Through it all I will always love him but my life goes on and I dont want to see my children suffer the way they have because their mum is 'green'.
Thanks for you web-site. In my depths of despair and clairity its good to know with one click of the button you are there.
Thank you
After quite a few years of denying there was anything wrong with my drinking habits, I have finally admitted to myself - within the last few days - that I do have a problem. This admission has made me feel so low and so full of self-loathing. I'd been looking for something to help me get moving in the right direction instead of the direction of another bottle to make me feel 'better' Your site has really helped, especially the personal touch. I'm scared of what will happen if I fail and ashamed of myself, as yet don't have the courage to admit to anyone else, though I would think there will be those about me who would already know. However your site has shown me a way forward and I can't thank you enough.
Danfonwch eich sylwadau aton ni! Ry'n ni angen eich adborth.