Helping an Alcoholic to Recover

How can we help alcoholics recover? Traditional recovery programs have tried to answer this question for decades now, and typically without much success. You might have tried to get someone to sober up that you knew but had a hard time with it. If it has come to this point then perhaps you should consider the best way to help alcoholics.

Part of the problem is that existing recovery programs lack customization. They are one size fits all and that ends up not really helping anyone as much as they could if they were tailored to individuals. For instance, programs such as AA or NA, which make up the bulk of treatment options today, have basically not changed for a long time.

When a person needs to sober up or get clean from drugs, our usual answer is to have them attend group therapy or 12 step meetings. When this does not give us great success rates, we often will fault the individual instead of the program itself, citing excuses such as “the person just did not want to get sober”.” These excuses are unacceptable and we should be pushing ourselves to come up with a better solution, instead of simply blaming the individual. I would suggest:

1) Push alcoholics to use treatment for early recovery. This is important because early recovery is so incredibly difficult; it can be a struggle just to string together a few days sober on “the outside.” In a safe setting such as rehab it is much smoother when trying to get a hold on early recovery.

2) Try to push the newcomer into taking action and making a better life for themselves. This is critical as just stopping the booze will not really help much. When an alcoholic drinks they do it with passion and it becomes a huge part of their life. In their recovery journey, an alcoholic must find new meaning and depth in their life or they risk sliding back into a relapse of destruction and despair.

3) Encourage alcoholics to make holistic growth a priority in their life. If you can get someone to grow in one area of their life, that is good. But if you can convince them to grow in several areas of their life, this is even better. Holistic growth means that they are treating the alcoholism as a whole, not just as a spiritual malady (as some programs treat it).