Oh-Crap Sunday: Addiction, Family, and the Holidays

The treatment discussion revs up between Thanksgiving Thursday and Cyber Monday

Real talk: If you put off the substance use discussion until the New Year, you might not have a chance to have the discussion. Addiction is a disease. People die. And they only can dig themselves deeper into destruction during the Holidays without help.

That's news as ice cold as Wausau, Wisconsin or the turkey leftovers you stuffed into the back of the freezer. By the way, you're never going to eat that. It tasted dry on Thanksgiving... it won't get better by March by itself. Likewise, a drug user won't get better by March (or Christmas) by himself.

Oh-Crap Sunday means more than you blew through your entire holiday budget on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. It's more relevant than your favorite NCAA team getting crushed on Rivalry Saturday, or your NFL team being worse than the Bears on any given Sunday at the twilight of the calendar. Oh-Crap Sunday is the pause at the start of the Holiday Gauntlet where you have an a-ha moment after the first of the season's socializing, realizing that a loved one is in over his or her head with alcohol or other drugs. Oh. Crap.

Help starts at home

What does 'in over their head' mean? Noticing someone's drug use – alcohol is a drug – means it is a problem. You don't notice someone's consumption otherwise. The nodding off is more than turkey's tryptophan. The slurred speech telling the same joke loudly for the third time isn't just because Uncle Dan is mixing the drinks. The fragrance in the bathroom isn't potpourri. Wise up. Trust your instinct. You're probably right about a drug use problem. If you're wrong, what does it cost you?

We've normalized drug use in the U.S. as pointed out in Look What Dragged the Cat In. With it being normalized, the tendency is to blow it off until it gets obvious. Then it's time to get help.

In looking for help, there is no substitute for intervention at home. You can go to every slick treatment website Google throws at you. Nobody's going for an evaluation until the personal, charged conversation takes place at home. Work with your M.D. or a treatment professional to find the right path toward 'clean and sober' after the Oh-Crap conversation. The first step is the conversation.

Drugs alter the mind, talk to the heart

Consider that all drugs of abuse licit and illicit alter the mind. An altered mind isn't going to decide for itself that it needs help. People don't take drugs to feel good, they take drugs to feel less bad. If the brain's user is going to feel more bad, he or she is going to be messaged by that brain that the drug isn't a problem. A person first needs to hear from family and friends that the drug use is concerning.

The talk is harder than you think. But not harder than talking to a corpse. Alcohologist.com has resources like videos (see the New Year, New You series opener here) that help ease into the conversation. The three-question AUDIT is also an ice-breaker/resolve-breaker.

Quick: What's the next holiday? Will you spend it without him or her in your life?

Image by Roman Stetsyk, used with permission.

Overcome two objections to an alcoholism intervention over the Holidays

This is the time for holiday cheer and family memories and Norman Rockwell-esque Christmas scenes with smiling families gathered around a tree or a fire. Hopefully, not both. The reality for families of the 20 million adults in the U.S. challenged by addiction to alcohol or other drugs is more like the beginning of the Grinch tale, than the end. (Watch the YouTube video or see the online article)

Holidays are a stressful time in addition to being a time of joy. Alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike drink to ease stress. The alcoholic can't stop at one. Or six. Or on his own. And how many times, after a tear-filled holiday or blacked-out Christmas on the couch has the drinker vowed: Next holiday will be better, I promise? It's part of the way we alcoholics protect our drug. We shove the quit date off to buy one more day or week or season. We make promises. And sometimes it isn't even that we mean to break them. An alcohol abuser can quit but won't… an alcoholic wants to quit but can't. Not on his own anyway.

They quit with help. A family intervention is one way to get that help.

Two questions come up: First… Is it Grinchlike to confront the issue during the holiday? (And it's the alcohol, not the person, that's the issue.) Second… can't it wait til the New Year?

First, it's not cruel. On the contrary. It may be the best gift you ever give the person with the disease and the family around him or her. Inside every person sick with this disease is a trembling, sorry, sad person dying to feel well again. Invite him or her out onto the path to recovery. Professional interventionists are especially well-trained to do this with compassion and understanding.

Second, There's no better time than the present is the antiquated saying. In the case of the disease of alcoholism, there's no worse time than waiting for tomorrow, or the New Year. You wouldn't imagine postponing treatment for a chronic, fatal, progressive disease like cancer. Why postpone it for a chronic, fatal, progressive disease like alcoholism? If the worry is that it wouldn't be the holiday without that person near, what have the past few holidays told you about that… and what if there isn't a next holiday?

Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Host Ed Forteau led a discussion on risky myths of about "healthy" drinking.  Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature on Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud and the first for Adding Fire to the Fuel also can be found on www.alcohologist.com, plus the NEW book, Adding Fire to the Fuel, is now available. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today