The Truth About Alcoholics and Alcoholism

There is a lot of information available on the web for, and about, alcoholics. Titles of articles range from "Alcoholism and Alcohol Addiction" to "Zen Meditation in Treating Alcoholism". Though these articles are all helpful in their own way few of them seem willing to speak the frank and candid truth about active alcoholics. This article outlines the simple truths about people who drink too much, too often and to excess.

1. All Alcoholics are Liars

There isn't one actively drinking alcoholic in the world who isn't a liar. They lie to themselves about their drinking and they lie to everyone else about everything. You can't accept one thing that comes out of their mouth as the truth. They come home late and say they were working late. They have seven drinks and say they had three. They tell you they got a promotion at work and they got fired. They say they are looking for work and they aren't. Their lies twist and deceive and make the people around them doubt their own reality. Their lies are poison to relationships, friendships and work colleagues.

2. All Alcoholics Are Manipulators

Alcoholics use people to meet their own ends. They make people angry and in the process prove to themselves that people are cruel to them. They convince their lives to ring up the workplace and tell the boss they are sick. The make promises to their children and don't keep them, then manage to make the children feel bad for putting their parent under pressure. Their manipulations extend to every part of their lives. They will pitch one person against another, telling stories to their parents to make them believe that a brother or sister is against them. They manipulate every event in life to their own advantage and in so doing cause people to never know who they can trust.

3. All Alcoholics Are In Love with Drink

Nothing has more sex appeal to the alcoholic than drink. Drink is the scantily clad woman becoming them from a window or the half dressed stud lifting weights in the gym. People are objects to the alcoholic, objects to be used as a reason to drink. If someone praises the alcoholic it becomes either a reason to rejoice in drink or bury the reality they do not deserve praise in drink. It they get a raise or job promotion it is a reason to drink; if they lose a job it is a reason to drink. If they see someone they fancy they need a drink in order to approach them. If they are rejected they drink to drown the sting. Their wives and husbands exist to them only as a way to get to a drink. Their children are a reason to drink. Sport is a reason to drink. Family celebrations are a reason to drink. Holidays are a reason to drink. Everything in the life of an alcoholic is used as a means of getting to their one true love-drink.

4. All Alcoholics Know the Truth about Themselves

Alcoholics know their behaviour is reprehensible, that they are liars and manipulators. In order to protect themselves from the terrible truth they create a false front of superiority and put others down as a means to look good. The alcoholic husband will tell their wife they are the reason there is food on the table. The alcoholic wife will tell her husband if it weren't for her he wouldn't have a social life. This inflated sense of self-esteem, which masks their inner sense of worthlessness. Hiding this horrible truth from others necessitates making others feel inferior, foolish and stupid on a regular basis.

5. There is No Such Things as a Functional Alcoholic

They myth of the functional alcoholic is deeply embedded in society. So many people addicted to alcohol believe that if they go to work, do a day's work, contribute to the family income and show up at important family events they are functional. The truth is they are not functional in any sense at all. The vast majority of them, men and women alike, are emotionally regressed, socially inhibited, psychological cripples individuals. They are unable to function without their daily fix of alcohol, unable to do a days work with the reward of a good drinking session at its end and unable to express any sincere emotion to those closest to them.

You and the Alcoholic

If you are the partner or spouse of an alcoholic it is time to realise these simple truths and not believe the lies, the promises never kept, the manipulations and the self-inflation. It is time to realise that any alcoholic who is actively drinking isn't worth staying with under any circumstances. What do you do? Deliver a simple truth of your own, "Stop drinking and I say; keep drinking and I leave or you leave. You have a month to show me what decision you have made."