Everyone knows your relationship with anyone should be well looked after and nurtured all the time, but when alcohol gets thrown into the mix it’s a different ball game. It will and it does seriously jeopardize your healthy relationship with your family. Recent studies have shown that 95% of families who bring alcohol into a family relationship always end up with a dysfunctional family. Does this apply to you?

You see once someone starts to bring alcohol into a family and they become dependant on it, no one really has spotted the problem because it’s slowly crept up on them. Then when the problem has been spotted they don’t really take it seriously enough and that’s why you have alcoholic dysfunctional families.

In fact many dysfunctional families will just become blind to alcoholic related problems. The alcoholic will behave in such a way that they too become blind to the effects that they are having on their family. At this stage the amount of lies and excuses would have increased greatly as they need to spend more time down the pub or where ever they can get a drink.

Most partners/spouses will even lie or make some excuse up for the drinking partner just because they have got a hangover and they can’t make an appointment. Another way you can tell there is a problem at home is children tend to perform poorly at school or even miss it.

The only way for an alcoholic and his family to get out of this delicate situation, is by the alcoholic admitting to his problem. Denying the problem will just make things worse, so the sooner an alcoholic starts to come to terms with their problem, the sooner they can stop hurting those whom they love the most. Denying the problem any further will just worsen the alcohol dependency symptoms.

You must also remember if you are protecting or covering up for an alcoholic you’re preventing that person from seeking help which will see them have a better life for the future. It’s a funny thought but if the tides were turned and you were the alcoholic, would you want help?

There is plenty of help and support on the internet and you’ll find most of it is really helpful, I have come across some awesome sites which have great support, they are stopdrinkingadvice.org (they have helped over two thousand people conquer their alcoholism), plus they also have a great newsletter which is well worth signing up for. The other sites are AA and Talk To Frank, but remember that you’re not alone!