Outwitting your Alcoholic

The world of alcoholism is strange, filled with half truths and whole lies. The journey out of that world can be confusing and difficult, but people just like you have made it. In this book, Ken Lucas provides a map of the alcoholic’s world. (He lived there once.) He talks about what you can do to get out, and bring the alcoholic you love with you.

Your alcoholic uses lots of excuses for his drinking. This book is full of ways to help you think straight and counter his excuses. So if you ever use the excuse, “I’m doing the best I can.” and it’s not good enough, this book will help you do better.

The first part of the book features an all-purpose chapter entitled Excuses, Excuses. Included in that chapter are every excuse you are likely to hear from your problem drinker as to why he or she can’t seem to stop drinking and enter recovery, along with suggestions on how to neutralize each one. Later chapters go through the issues you should be acquainted with if you’re disturbed about the way your loved one drinks. The final section answers many of the frequently asked questions that parents and spouses have regarding alcoholism. For those who are caught in an alcoholic relationship, this book points the way out.

FOREWARD TO THE REVISED EDITION OF OUTWITTING YOUR ALCOHOLIC

By Eric Newhouse, projects editor for the Great Falls (MT) Tribune and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for a yearlong series of stories, “Alcohol: Cradle to Grave.” A hardback version of this series was published by the Hazelden Foundation. A paperback version will soon be published by Idyll Arbor, Inc.

A RIVER IS A WONDERFUL, but a frightening thing. It can be gentle and seductive, but it’s also a powerful force of nature. It goes where it will, carving banks and felling trees. And its floodwaters can wash away everything.

Alcohol flows through our society like a river, but we’ve grown so accustomed to it that we don’t really notice it. It took me about three decades to realize that the things I wrote about as a reporter—broken marriages, domestic violence, car wrecks, crime and injury—could almost always be tracked back to excessive drinking. That we don’t recognize the power, strength and size of this river makes it only more dangerous.

About the time Outwitting Your Alcoholic was originally published in 1998, I was beginning to look at alcoholism as a serious social disease. Near the end of a yearlong series of stories on alcohol in the Great Falls Tribune, I concluded that the state of Montana spends more in a year treating the hidden costs of alcohol—things like prisons and medical treatment and welfare—than it does educating its college-aged youngsters.

And the social costs of alcoholism are even greater than the financial.

This book is a practical primer on how to deal with an alcoholic in your family. And it’s badly needed advice. Experts estimate that one family in four is affected by alcoholism.

For years, we’ve been asking ourselves whether alcoholism is nature or nurture. Is it a disease or is it learned behavior?

Most experts would say both. That’s why the American Medical Association has labeled alcoholism as a progressive, chronic illness. It’s clear that alcoholism runs in families, which strongly suggests a genetic component. Researchers are finding that alcohol can capture the dopamine system in some people, using the body’s own natural reward (or pleasure) system to make drinking doubly pleasurable. I suspect that’s true. Most of the serious alcoholics I’ve talked with remember vividly their first drink as an almost ecstatic experience, the time when a splash of color interrupted the somber browns and grays of their lives. That’s the “runners’ high” kicking in.

There’s also evidence that serotonin, the neurotransmitter in our brains that tells us when to stop eating or drinking, is lacking in some alcoholics. This could begin to explain the behavior of the guy who just can’t leave the bar after that first drink.

But it’s also clear there’s a behavioral component as well. As personal problems increase, the desire to self-medicate grows stronger. There have even been studies that show monkeys that were removed too early from their mothers turn increasingly to alcohol, if given the chance.

I came to see alcoholism as a huge arch—like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, if you will—that towers over all of us. One leg of that arch is genetic and the other is environmental. You can calculate your risk factors on either side to determine your personal danger of becoming alcoholic.

One of the reasons I like that image is that no one is immune. We all have risk factors, and they can change over time.

I advanced that theory to Dr. Steve Hyman, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health, one day over lunch at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York City.

Steve just smiled at me and told me my theory was a little simplistic. He explained that each leg of that arch must also interact with the other. If you have high genetic risk factors, that will probably affect your behavior, and you may end up with a failing relationship or problems at work.

Similarly, environmental trauma affects the way your brain works. We’re seeing that increasing with the posttraumatic stress disorder that our vets are bringing home from their military service in Iraq (and as they did from Vietnam, etc.)

Later, I tried to visualize an arch with interacting legs. All I could come up with was a double helix. Perhaps the DNA of our minds is truly made up of genes and experience.

Whatever its cause, alcoholism is a problem that has plagued humans for thousands of years. That’s why Outwitting Your Alcoholic is so important. It cuts through the excuses and enabling behavior to tell alcoholics and their families how they can again regain control of their lives.