Alcohol is Evil

20 November 2025

Most people have experienced the side effects of alcohol, be it directly or by being a victim of someone who drank too much. I have multi-year experience in dealing with an alcoholic family member so I thought I would share some methods that have helped me.

Treat it as an illness

Because alcohol is socially accepted, most people fail to disconnect the alcoholic from the person underneath. If you skip this step, you are in for a world of hurt because you will register all emotional and physical blows as if they were coming from the person you care about. This will cause you to:

1. not last as long as you need to help the person, and/or
2. regress into rage that will make you want to hurt the person back.

Treat the addiction as an illness and separate the alcoholic from the patient.

Make a choice

Decide if the person is worth saving. I believe that, given enough resources, every addict can be cured, but if you need to give up your entire life to help someone you do not care all that much about, it's not worth it. Do not blindly give up everything you are and you could be. If you are going to help an alcoholic, it is going to take a lot of time and energy - make sure the person behind the alcoholic facade is worth it.

Specify the amount of time and energy you are willing to give and make peace with the fact that if it will not be enough to help the individual, you have tried your best given the circumstances.

Seek professional help

In addition to your personal effort to spend the time with the person, you will need professional assistance. This is especially important for the first, Additionally,

Stay strong

Naturally, you will get pushback from the person you are trying to help since the draw of the addiction is intense. You will hear statements with the following messages:

I am not hurting anyone by drinking.

I would like to leave my family so that I could drink in peace.

These are all fallacies. No sane person would ever say that - do not give any ground since it is the alcoholic speaking, not the person you care for.

You will also get pushback from other people. Some of your peers will treat you like a weirdo that is opposed to fun. In my part of the world, alcohol is so engrained into the culture that I was being perceived as a modern man that does not respect his roots.

More seriously, you will encounter resistance from other family members that are scared of that perception. This is unfortunate because, instead of receiving support, you will waste energy persuading them that you are doing a good thing.

You have already decided that you are doing this and that this is a good thing. Do not break under pressure!

Do not become delusional

The problem will not go away by itself. It will not go away once you get married, nor once you get a child, nor once you move to a different place - no one event will fix it! Continuous effort from the addict and yourself is required.

Furthermore, be honest with yourself. A couple good days do not mean that the addict is putting in the effort - they are likely a cooldown period just so that they can feel that proper kick again. You will become exhausted and that is the time when wishful thinking will start creeping in. Be wary of it!

Focus on the individual

If you decide to help the person, do not waste your energy on fighting their social circle. While some of that circle is likely to blame for the severity of the addiction, you will not achieve much by having emotional outbursts. In an extreme case, you could blame the entire problem on the environment and become vengeful. This is a dangerous and unproductive road.

Conclusion

Alcohol is the worst thing that has happened to mankind. It kills more people than wars, homicides, terrorism and traffic combined (WHO on alcohol, Causes of death globally). In my opinion, the raw death toll is not even the worst part - it is the sinister way that it destroys families. It makes people around the addict complicit and afraid of any action. Many even glorify the addiction.

Oh, and... if you decide to help the person, it will be one of the most difficult things you'll ever do in your life.