Anyone who lives with an alcoholic can feel swallowed up. Detach and rediscover the real you!   When you live with an alcoholic, almost inevitably, you become caught up in their drinking behavior. You will find yourself trying to second guess how much they are going to drink, when they will be home, what condition they …

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Evaluate your Progress To know whether your strategies are working and if your circumstances are improving, you will need to carry out an evaluation. This will mean going back to the SHARE assessment and comparing where you are now with how you were when you made it. Possible outcomes are that things have improved, in …

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Promote Change In this part of the cycle you will start to promote change. The direct goal of the change is NOT to get him/her to stop drinking, or even to cut down their drinking.  However, it is entirely possible that these may be the indirect effects of your actions.

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Survey the Options For any problem there are a number of possible options that can be applied. The option chosen generally depends on a number of factors. It would obviously depend on the nature of the problem, the severity of the problem, the urgency for a resolution, what you are capable of doing and what …

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Assess The Harm Possibly you don’t think that you need to do an assessment of the harm that alcohol is doing in your life.  After all, you have lived with it and it has caused severe disruption, heartache and pain in your home. and you know the problems only too well.  We would certainly not suggest …

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Its holiday time again.  For all our american cousins Thanksgiving happens next week and for all of us Christmas is almost upon us.  Although, it actually feels that preparations for Christmas started during the summer holidays. For some people the holidays are a time for family, for celebration, for happiness.  Unfortunately for others it is …

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In this video Lou talks about LOVE and setting boundaries.  In Bottled Up we encourage a positive approach to the drinking situation - this is probably most represented in our tools, especially LOVE. There is, however, more scope than we realised for misunderstanding, that we are promoting a "grin and bear it" attitude to the …

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L is for letting the negatives happen. When an alcoholic drinks, negative things happen, the may get into arguments or fights, they may have an accident, they may fall asleep on the couch and never get to bed. There can be many negative outcomes.

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One of the issues that can hinder people forgiving someone that they feel has wronged them is the fear that they are just saying that "it was ok to hurt me" and that the wrong may be repeated. In this video we discuss some of the delicate issues that surround forgiveness in a relationship where …

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Secrecy is very often a feature of families when there is a problem drinker in the family.  The family often closes ranks because of the stigma and shame associated with alcoholism in the mistaken impression that they are protecting, or being loyal to, their drinker.

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