A message for the wife/husband or partner of the alcoholic or addict

The Alcoholic obsesses about having the next drink, and his partner usually obsesses about stopping him having that next drink. Both therefore are obsessing about alcohol – and the poor children (if there are any) are floundering and trying to make ‘precarious and unhealthy adjustments’ to try and cope with the presence of alcohol in their lives – which naturally creates its own levels of stress and pain.

Too often I’ve heard of alcoholics accessing residential treatment far away and returning to their families – only to relapse soon afterwards, because families usually have a state to which they return if events knock them off balance, which is known as ‘homoeostasis’ – their system has been developed over many years to unwittingly “support” the still-drinking alcoholic and not the recovering alcoholic.

Imagine a mobile above a child’s cot – remove one part of it (the alcoholic) and the whole system collapses. The other family members, you see, have tended to use the alcoholic as a scapegoat, letting him/or her carry the can for all the family’s ills. These other members, not surprisingly, are just not used to looking at or dealing with their own issues. Therefore, when that part (the alcoholic) is duly returned to make the mobile whole again – it reverts to its old shape. Crazy isn’t it? But the family, unwittingly – unless the individual members of that family system change – will get the alcoholic drunk again.

At Living Room Cardiff, therefore, we encourage families (all family members) to view the ‘problem’ differently – not in isolation, but as part of the whole; and to help shift responsibility for change from the one individual (usually the alcohol and/or drug dependent person) to all involved in that system or family.

Contact us at Living Room Cardiff for further information regarding Family Groups. info@welshcouncil.org.uk or www.thelivingroom-cardiff.com or phone 029 2049 3895

Went out for a lovely meal last night with some Living Roomers. We had a great time. This was followed by a Welsh language meeting at our wonderful centre in Richmond Road.