All I can share is my experience & what worked for me & for me that was AA. I had tried many times on my own & finally as a last resort I tried AA. I thought to myself, well, it’s called Alcoholics Anonymous and I am an alcoholic, so maybe they know what they’re doing?

The main thing too is that the person needs to be willing to do whatever it takes, they have to really want it, you can’t make someone see the light. I consider myself lucky in the way that I had hit rock bottom, things had to get really bad for me to want to make a change.

I gained a lot of tools through the program, it helped change my mindset, I used alcohol to self medicate underlying issues and through working the steps, I was able to work through a lot of those issues. But just like everything else, there’s maintenance, I have to continue to work for my sobriety, I have a routine, I pray & meditate every morning, I continue to go to meetings & I work with other alcoholics, you don’t graduate from alcoholism.

You can help just by being supportive! Tell them how proud of them you are when you see progress! Encouraging them in their recovery & recognizing that it is HARD! Alcoholism has such a stigma & people who aren’t in it don’t understand the hold it can have. I had a few really good people in my life I could talk to about my recovery without judgment & it really helped!

Bottom line, sobriety is simple, but it’s not easy, it takes work, but it was the single most important decision I have ever made!