There are people who have known many individuals and while making an attempt to help the ones they love with alcohol addiction or alcoholism have acted as some type of amateur counselor, therapist or psychologist for a long time in the hope it would help the problem drinker arrive at his or her senses. Eventually and at some point, they find themselves in a dilemma or crisis or find themselves tired, exhausted and drained of energy and unable or unwilling to assist or help anymore and wonder and ask themselves where all this talk therapies ever got them.

Eventually after many years of beseeching, entreating, praying and pleading with someone to stop their drinking, the crisis they have always feared happens and their own life is damaged or sometimes ruined.

So a key message is for anyone who loves a problem drinker is get help for oneself first or they will not only end up as obsessive and as ill as the individual in addiction, they will also be engaging in actions and behavior which will enable and permit the addicted person they love to go much deeper into his or her drug addiction .

A failure to understand where drug and alcohol addiction comes from, how it works and how individuals with serious alcohol addictions end up prevents people who love a problem drinker from really going for a solution of the problem and issues. That’s the reason Al-Anon is an absolute must for an individual or anyone whose member of the family or loved one has a problem with alcohol or drugs. That is also the main reason Al-Anon is an absolutely essential (particularly in the early days) for anyone whose family member, or loved one has developed an addiction and dependency to alcohol.

Not only is loving someone with an dependence on alcohol all consuming, exhausting and stressful, it is also one of the final social or cultural taboos and acknowledging to someone else that they have got a problem drinker in the family or they are married to an alcoholic, for example, is not really what most people feel they are able to or want to confess to. This is often due to a feeling of perceived failure, weakness or shame or simply because most men and women who do not know or love an addict are extremely unkind and unknowing towards the addiction.

There has been a popular view over the years that it is due to an addict’s insufficient willpower that lay behind the problem. So for people who love the individual with an alcohol addiction it is a double whammy or curse. Their heart is breaking inside because from the negative effects drinking is doing to their loved one and on their own life but they feel an extra attack as they do not feel as free to discuss and focus on their problem and difficulty as they would for example if their family member had an illness like cancer.

Nevertheless, Al-Anon and other family counselling groups have had the experience as a support for many years for those affected by living with, or caring about or for somebody with an alcohol addiction or drug problem. They provide a refuge where problems and issues can be discussed and talked about with individuals who understand and who are compassionate and loving. And that is not the only advantage or benefit as Al-Anon helps and aids families and friends of problem drinkers to understand, accept and acknowledge that it is not their fault or wrong doing that the person they know and love is undoubtedly an alcohol addict and that while they cannot change the mind sets from the drinker they can change their own attitudes and see positives where they only have seen darkness and sorrow before.

Al-Anon also helps and assists families and friends of alcohol addicted loved ones to understand the art of disengagement and separation and to make certain they do not enable and allow the person they love to sink more deeply into their alcohol or drug addiction.