[Andy]

Alcoholics CAN stop drinking, and many do stop drinking. However, addictions including alcoholism are a serious disease which is progressive in nature and characterized by denial of the problem and a tendency to relapse. I’m an alcoholic who has not had a drink in more than 20 years, but has had some problems with other substances in the interim. It is very difficult to break through the denial of the addict who is using; they will want to minimize the painful costs of their disease and discount the comments of others. Also, alcoholics can only recover when they themselves decide to do so; no one can ‘make’ the alcoholic stop drinking! (This also means that those around the alcoholic are not to blame for the drinking, anymore than they would be to blame for a loved one’s cancer or heart disease.) Alcoholics generally need continuing support to begin and maintain their recovery. The most successful tool for recovery is Alcoholics Anonymous, and I recommend it very highly. Many people find parts of AA not to their liking, but for sheer success in helping alcoholics to recover, no other program comes close. There are also resources available in many communities and on the ‘net to help families with INTERVENTIONS, which is where the family basically — and in a loving, rehearsed way — confronts the alcoholic about how his or her drinking is impacting THEIR lives, and how painful it is for them to see the alcoholic stuck in addiction. (This is not about blaming the alcoholic. It is about expressing one’s own experience and feelings and love and, often, anger, in a way that reaffirms to the alcoholic that his loved ones are concerned, perhaps upset, and supportive of the alcoholic’s recovery.) Intervention is something that is carefully planned, and often works best when it is coordinated by a healthcare professional, therapist or perhaps a clergy. It is often a wake-up call that ‘works,’ though. Former First Lady Betty Ford’s family did an intervention with her, and her famous recovery was a direct result. Finally, if your brother does not choose recovery, you can still help yourself, by contacting Al-Anon Family Groups in your community (white pages) or on the internet. Sometimes you need to establish healthy boundaries with addicts in your lives, and this is the basis for the concept of ‘detachment’ which Al-Anon and codependency literature discusses. As they say, ‘Detach with love, and when you can’t do that, just detach.’

User Detail :  

Name : Andy, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Disability : Hard of hearing, AIDS, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Unitarian, Age : 46, City : Oakland, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : Retired lawyer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[Andy]

I am so with you on this. I am hard-of-hearing enough to be really grateful for captioning on television. Most people think of it as irrelevant or annoying (or don’t even know it’s on their own television), but I find it extremely helpful and tend not to watch uncaptioned programming when captioning is available elsewhere on the dial. Why CAN’T movies be captioned? The technological hurdles don’t seem that big. Assistive listening devices are often available in theaters, but for the many people like me with word discrimination problems they don’t solve the problem. Thus in movies, when the sound is a voice-over or for some other reason you can’t see the person’s mouth, what they’re saying remains a mystery. (Just like real life!) For this I’m paying ten bucks?

User Detail :  

Name : Andy, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Disability : Hard of hearing, AIDS, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Unitarian, Age : 46, City : Oakland, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : Retired lawyer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

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