Fifteen million Americans over the age of 12 suffer from alcohol use disorder, and for alcoholics in particular, the disorder can lead to a variety of losses ranging from health, employment, and family, all the way to the 88,000 people who die from alcohol-related causes each year. Their friends and family members who care about them suffer also. While Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) offers help to alcoholics who wish to become sober, the Al-Anon Family Groups offer help to the friends and family who seek recovery from the effects of living, or having lived, with an alcoholic.
For family and friends, efforts to control alcoholic drinking are seldom successful. As one of the Al-Anon publications titled Understanding Ourselves— Families and Friends Are Affected says, “Friendships, employment, childhood, parenthood, love affairs, and marriages all suffer from the effects of alcoholism. Those special relationships in which a person is really close to an alcoholic are affected most, and the people who care are the most caught up in the behavior of another person. We react to an alcoholic's behavior. Seeing that the drinking is out of hand, we try to control it. We are ashamed of the public scenes but try to handle it in private. It isn't long before we feel we are to blame and take on the hurts, the fears, the guilt of an alcoholic. We, too, can become ill.”
People who find Al-Anon are often in despair with anxiety, anger, denial, and guilt. They often have lost themselves, and their lives have become unmanageable. Through regular Al-Anon meetings, they can learn that alcoholism is a disease recognized by the American Medical Association and that they alone cannot cure the alcoholic. They realize that their well-meant aid is actually keeping the alcoholic from finding recovery. The program helps them focus back on themselves, even if their loved one is still drinking.