Category: Living with an alcoholic

Since we opened Bottled Up over 15 years ago, our website has been visited almost 1 million times looking for information and support, thousands have joined the website and 10s of thousands have joined our mailing list.  So, we know that there is a huge need for help.  In that time, we have continually tried …

Continue reading “Accelerated Series”

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In this post we are continuing the theme of mistakes that families and friends can make that are unproductive to change in the drinking situation.

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There are many things that people who live with a drinker tend to do that do not help their situation.  Most of these behaviours are well meaning and are just the normal way that families act and react with the people that they care about.

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A term that seems to be very common at the moment is Gaslighting - which basically means that one person is trying to make the other believe that things are different from what they seem. In this video Lou and John discuss the relevance of the term in relation to problem drinking. Read More >

This is an issue that we found in the Forum and felt that we really needed to address it as it could be a hindrance to getting help and support. While we can easily understand, and even sympathise, with this point of view, we disagree with it. Of course we want to be loyal to …

Continue reading "Is talking to someone about the drinking being disloyal to my drinker"

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We are approaching a time of celebrations, eg the Queen’s Jubilee in the UK, 4th July in US. Some of you may be looking forward to it others may be dreading it. Lou and John offer a few tips on how to survive this time.

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One of the old chestnuts of addiction recovery is this question - Do drinkers need to deal with their past before they can stop drinking?  In this video Lou and John discuss the issue and their different approaches to helping clients. Also Lou talks about deprivation and abuse and differentiates between them and how she …

Continue reading "Do drinkers need to deal with their past before they can stop drinking?"

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You are living in the same house, you are seeing the same issues and consequences, and YET!!  When you talk about the drinking, the problems, the solutions it feels like you. not only don't live in the same house, in fact you live on different planets.  How can this possibly happen?? In this video about …

Continue reading "Living with a drinker – Why can’t we agree?"

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In this video Lou discusses how we adjust to change. At first it can be very strange and incomprehensible but slowly we start to accept and recognise what is happening. Lou compares it to learning a new language, that at first we struggle, ten we translate from our native language and eventually we think in …

Continue reading "Help Change Feels Impossible"

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Sometimes, when we are in the midst of change, it can feel like little is happening or, worse, that we are going backwards. Lou describes the journey of change as more like a journey through a city than one through the countryside. In the latter we can usually see quite far ahead and have a …

Continue reading "What the Journey of Change Looks Like"

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