1. Comment 14 is spot on. She needs Jesus. But give her Jesus with the humble attitude that we all need Jesus, so that’s no condemnation of her specifically.
2. Redirect her addiction to something else that’s either positive or at least not harmful. Alcoholics are sometimes people with addictive tendencies in general who can sometimes get off alcohol only if they can satisfy their addictive need to be addicted to something even if the something is not a chemical substance.
3. The best thing to be addicted to is the Lord.
4. This has to be her baby. As long as it’s just your obsession and not hers she won’t come off alcohol. You have to come to terms with the fact that you’re limited with being only a source of love and advice and prayer, but not be the problem solver. Only she and the Lord have the power to get off alcohol . So take her burden off of your shoulders even if you still hold her by the hand.
5. If you still have the need to do something, anything, then talk to her kids about it. Not from a condemnation perspective but from a viewpoint as a life lesson to not get drunk themselves and wind up where she is. I do this with my kids and have done it all their lives. I can’t bring back my late alcoholic father who died from lung cancer (smoking was another addiction). But I can increase the probability that his positive traits continue into perpetuity without the negative ones. I remind my grown kids that my father is the reason I’ve never been drunk or smoked a joint or anything like that, while at the same time he’s worth imitating with his patience, his drive to start a business, and his ability to tackle any intellectual challenge. The Lord gave my father, me, and my kids somewhat high IQ’s (120’s), so family, or we gonna use it or waste it? I’m sure the poster’s alcoholic friend also has positive traits that her offspring should focus on imitating while not imitating the alcoholism.
6. Don’t be afraid to work this with your spouse. I tell my wife every now and then that the best way to keep me from winding up with my father’s substance addiction is if I stay “addicted” to her “substance”. lol
Good info; and thank you.
My perspective, speaking for Livers Ubiquitous (”LU”), is that all people are in varying degrees, alcohol consumers.
Because there are so many “foods” in the human imagination as something other than “an alcoholic beverage,” that are - from the view of LU - in some part, alcohols when processed.
Many “vegetables,” for example.
Another way of looking at “alcoholism,” is that it is a sugar addiction.
But inside at LU, an allowance by a consumer, for an abundance of a certain alcohol, carb, starch, sugar . . . tends to cause LU to develop an *expectation* for future, like consumption - ie nudging the consumer into habitual intake that satisfies ol’ LU.
IMHO