Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading, and Threatening

by Robert J. Meyers, Brenda L. Wolfe Narrated by Lynch Travis

Overview

Historically there have been few options available for individuals seeking help for treatment-resistant loved ones suffering from substance abuse. Co-author Dr. Robert Meyers spent ten years developing a treatment program that helps concerned significant others both improve the quality of their lives and learn how to make treatment an attractive option for their partners who are substance abusers. Get Your Loved One Sober describes this multi-faceted program that uses supportive, non-confrontational methods to engage substance abusers into treatment. Called Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT), the program uses scientifically validated behavioral principles to reduce the loved one's substance use and to encourage him or her to seek treatment. Equally important, CRAFT also helps loved ones reduce personal stress and introduce meaningful, new sources of satisfaction into their life.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940174937024
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	11/22/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,029,155

Read an Excerpt

Can This Book Help You?

If you live with or love someone who drinks or drugs too much, this book can
help you. This book offers you a program that has been proven to help people
whose lives are affected by a problem drinker, a drug user, or someone who does
both. If you feel stuck in a hopeless, substance-ruled life, this book can help
you. If you have ever called, or wanted to call, a crisis line, clinic, or hospital
and said, "Help, my husband is drinking himself to death" or "Help,
my kid stays out all night getting high, and I'm scared to death," this
book can help. You will also find help here if alcohol or drugs are destroying
your marriage or scaring your children. Whether you are the wife, husband, lover,
parent, son, daughter, or friend of an alcoholic or drug user, this book offers
you the tools both to help you help your loved one find the path to sobriety
and to improve your own life.

Throughout the book you will notice that we primarily illustrate our points
with alcohol abusers. The program, however, has been proven to be effective
with loved ones who abuse a wide variety of substances ranging from alcohol
and marijuana to heroin and crack. Thus, you can effectively apply the program
to your loved one regardless of the substance of abuse.

If you have "tried everything" and nothing has worked, but you
are not ready to give up, then you are in the right place. The scientifically
validated program on which this book is based has been designed specifically
for people who feel they have "tried it all."They have scolded,
nagged, begged, bribed, detached, and tried a few tricks not fit to print. Just
like you, they love their drinkers enough to keep trying and trying. What they
have not done (and what we will teach you to do) is use that love to change
the way they and their drinkers interact so that they spend less time feeling
miserable and their loved ones discover the pleasure in being sober. From where
we sit, that's an awfully good deal. We are confident that you will also
find it to be so.

Of course, we cannot guarantee that every single problem will be solved. What
we can promise is that we will teach you skills to regain control of your life
and to offer your drinker the best help available. In some cases, applying these
skills does not result in complete abstinence and happily-ever-after—but
in most cases, it does result in a better life for you and in sobriety for your
drinker. The happily-ever-after is up to you and your loved one to create.

To keep their discussion uncluttered, the authors primarily refer to drinkers
for the rest of the book, rather than to drinkers and drug users. The material
is equally applicable to both groups, although extra caution should be taken
in cases where the user's lifestyle is centered around violence and
criminal activity.

from Chapter 1

The Program

The subtitle for this book, Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading,
and Threatening, was chosen deliberately to emphasize that our program
offers a positive alternative to the usual tactics people use to try to get
their loved ones sober. If your loved one is still abusing alcohol or other
drugs, in spite of your repeated efforts to get her to quit, then it is time
to try something different. It is time to try the Alternatives.

Learning the alternatives to nagging, pleading, and threatening
is fairly straightforward. It will not take years of study for you to master
these tools. You simply need to work your way through this program and give
some serious thought to what you want and to the choices you make. Whether you
do that quickly and decisively or slowly and deliberately is entirely up to
you. Although the concepts are not complex, your life is, and change will happen
at variable speeds despite your consistent efforts. Just keep in mind that if
you do not try at all, it is likely nothing will change (at least not for the
better). On the other hand, if you use the Alternatives, there is the
very strong likelihood that your life will improve. Hence, dig in!

The alternative to nagging, pleading, and threatening can be
found in a simple system of behavior that has two goals and one central procedure.
The goals are (1) to improve the quality of your life and (2) to make sobriety
more attractive to your loved one than drinking. The central procedure is something
we call "behavioral mapping." It is a way of figuring out how you
and your drinker affect each other and how that pattern may be modified to achieve
different results. For example, Ruth found it very upsetting that Paul would
open a beer as soon as he came home from work every day. In fact, she found
it so upsetting that each day she would bitterly complain about it, and they
would fight. After mapping out their typical after-work scenario, Ruth realized
that her complaints actually made it more likely that Paul would drink. He used
the arguments as an excuse to justify his "needing" a relaxing drink.
Her nagging also gave him a reason to "punish" her by drinking.
Using the same Alternatives you will learn, Ruth was able to change her reaction
to Paul's after-work beer. Further, by doing so, she eventually made it
more enjoyable for him to skip the beer than to drink it. End of beer. End of
complaints. End of arguments and punishment. Beginning of a better quality of
life for Ruth and a shift toward sobriety for Paul.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well it is both simple and difficult.
The techniques are not difficult to learn. What can be difficult, however, is
applying them in your current life. The way you and your loved one interact
is a well-rehearsed routine born of your natural style, his natural style, the
impact of alcohol on your loved one's brain and behavior, and the interaction
of all of the above. If you think of the changes you want to achieve as a journey,
you can draw a parallel between the simple lines on a road map and the techniques
you will learn, and then draw a parallel between the actual roads you travel
and the life context in which you implement them. Real roads, unlike their clean
counterparts on a map, have potholes, detours, and traffic jams. Your life has
hard-to-break habits, unforeseen crises, and just plain discouragement that
you will need to overcome. However, just as you wouldn't give up a desirable
journey simply because some of the roads are bumpy, you won't give up
on changing life with your drinker just because it is not always easy. Change
is almost never easy; but change for the better is always worth the effort.
After months and years of nagging, pleading, and threatening your loved one,
you are ready for a change.

A Look Ahead

As we have already said, there are two simple objectives to this
program. One is to improve the quality of your life. That means not only getting
your loved one to stop abusing alcohol, but more importantly, putting the sanity
back into your own life regardless of whether she ever gives up drinking.
That's right. It is time for your quality of life to become less dependent
on whether your loved one is drunk or sober, in a good mood or bad, home or
out. To this end, we will help you create a safety plan to ensure that regardless
of your drinker's mood, you and those dependent on you do not become victims
of violence. (We cover this in chapter 3.) On a happier note, chapter 4 offers
you a glimpse of the future you will create. In other words, as you work your
way through that chapter, you will figure out what you want your life to look
like and begin to translate those dreams into attainable goals. Chapter 5 addresses
the guilt that gets in the way of moving forward and helps you feel good about
finally being in the driver's seat. Part of moving forward, of course,
means rebuilding your emotional and social life. Chapter 6 shows you how.

The objective of moving your loved one toward sobriety, believe
it or not, is also helped by improving the quality of your life independent
of his behavior. As your stress level decreases, you will be able to deal
with your drinker in a calmer, less reactive manner, and your relationship will
improve. This in turn will help you motivate your drinker toward sobriety. Unfortunately,
your improved attitude, while necessary, is not sufficient to accomplish this
second goal. Thus, we also give you a tool kit of techniques that are effective
alternatives to nagging, pleading, and threatening. To begin with, the behavioral
map we mentioned earlier forms the foundation of almost every strategy. Thus,
an entire chapter is devoted to teaching you how to use this important technique.
Chapter 2 will explain the behavioral map, provide lots of examples, show you
how to use it in your own situations, and help you practice until you can map
your interactions and be confident that you really are getting at what triggers
your difficulties. Combining this awareness with the other techniques you learn
will empower you in a way that nagging, pleading, and threatening never could.
Moving on to these other techniques, you will find chapters devoted to disabling
your enabling behaviors (chapter 7) as well as useful problem-solving and communication
techniques (chapters 8 and 9). "Behavior Basics" (chapter 10) will
equip you with the core tools of behavior change so that you can more easily
modify your behavior and that of your drinker. (Lest you shudder at the thought
of "modifying" anyone, stay calm. The section on page 7 called "A
New Angle on Control" will explain what this really means. We are not
pushing anything so devilish as mind control!)

Chapter 11 is devoted exclusively to helping you select and support
the best treatment approach for your loved one. Chances are you have been down
the treatment road before—telling your drinker that treatment will help,
begging her to consider it, even getting an agreement to try it, only to have
your drinker not keep the appointment or drop out after only one or two visits.
In fact, the unhappy reality is that the majority of drinkers who enter treatment
seldom remain for more than one or two sessions. However, individuals whose
partners, parents, children, and lovers have learned the Alternatives
stay in treatment six or seven times as long as other drinkers do (Ellis et
al. 1992). We attribute this to the fact that our clients learn how to suggest
and how to support treatment. There is more to successfully engaging someone
in treatment than guilting or goading this person into it (as you well know).
We will teach you how. You will also learn what to do to make staying in treatment
as attractive for your loved one as possible.

Finally, chapter 12 addresses the important issues of relapse
prevention and what happens after you have done everything you can. As you move
through this journey of change, you will experience successes and face obstacles,
some minor, others not. However, one of the key advantages of the Alternatives
approach is that it prepares you to deal with obstacles, potholes, detours—whatever
falls in your path. Thus, difficulties become opportunities for you to gain
control over your life. Ultimately, whether or not your drinker achieves lasting
sobriety, your journey with us will give you the skills and tools to enhance
your own quality of life. Hence, in a best-case scenario, the two of you will
achieve peace together and worst-case scenario is that you will have done everything
possible and be able to move on and take care of your own life. In either case,
your future looks brighter.

About Change

As you read this book, keep in mind one important truth. Change
is not an event. It is a process—a slow process. No matter what behavior
you want to change—a nail-biting habit, overeating, or how you relate
to someone—it does not happen in one big jump. Making change is no different
than taking a long car trip. You may decide on Monday morning to drive from
New York to Los Angeles, but it will take longer than the moment of decision
to get you there. You need to pack your bags, figure out what roads to follow,
and so on. What's more, once you start driving, you will find that some
of the roads you had planned to travel are closed or in poor repair. You will
need to find detours, tolerate potholes, and otherwise adjust your plans as
you go. You will also find that if you drive for shorter rather than longer
periods each day, the trip will be more enjoyable, and you will feel more rested
and in control. The same goes for your change journey.

The improvements you are after will take time and are best achieved
in small steps with careful planning. Given how long you have already lived
with your drinker under the present circumstances, you can tolerate it a little
longer as you make small, controllable changes. Rather than whipping through
this book and making a mile-long list of things to "fix," work through
the Alternatives with the plan of making one small change at a time. As these
changes begin to feel natural, go back and add more. What you learn here is
yours forever, so you need not hurry up and get through them quickly! Take your
time, go slow, and enjoy the knowledge that you are on a life-enhancing journey.

Keep the journey in mind as you move forward. When things don't
go smoothly, remind yourself that every road trip has its snags. A highway detour
between Albuquerque and Phoenix would not send you scurrying back to New York,
so don't give up on your hopes for your drinker just because one or two
or more attempts at change hit a wall. Each time you try a new technique and
it does not work, sit down and think through what happened. Review your original
plan, review what you did, get a clear picture of how your drinker responded,
and think about how you might improve your approach. Use the same motivated
problem-solving skills you would use if your highway of choice had a detour
and you needed an alternate road to Los Angeles. These detours might be a nuisance,
but they are a natural part of the journey. Expect them and you will master
them.

2004. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Get Your Loved
One Sober by Robert J. Meyers Ph.D., Brenda L. Wolfe, Ph.D. No part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher.
Publisher: Hazelden, Center City, MN 55012-0176.

Videos