Talk it through with the SI guide

James drank every day from eighteen to forty-five. Four weeks in treatment in June 2020, and sober since. He has been the partner someone else was living with. This guide speaks in his words. It is not James, and it is not a person. Read more about James

Nobody taught most of us what to do when the person we live with is drinking. We were assumed to know.

Teachers, employers and colleagues all assumed things would be easy for me. Every one of those assumptions was wrong. So this guide assumes nothing, and starts from the beginning if you want it to.

For what tonight needs, what to say and when, and what the children have been left to work out. It will not diagnose him.

Living with someone's drinking is rarely one problem. It is the money, the children, your sleep and your own health. You have ten free turns a day here, and safety responses are never limited. Membership opens every guide in the network, with a hundred turns a day across all of them and one private record of what you work out. See what membership includes

You are speaking with an SI guide, not James replying live. It is here for the version of this you have not said out loud: what tonight needs, what to say and when, and what the children have been left to work out for themselves. It is not a counsellor, a domestic-abuse adviser, a social worker, a solicitor or an emergency service. It cannot see him, cannot contact anybody on your behalf, and nobody is reading this.

It will not diagnose him from your description, will not tell you whether he is an alcoholic, and will not tell you to leave or to stay — that decision is yours, and you are the one who carries it. It will not give you doses, a taper or a way to manage his withdrawal at home. If you are frightened of him, if you have been hurt, or if a child is not safe, this has stopped being a question about drinking: stop here and use the safety page, and your local emergency services if it is now. Do not name him, his employer, his clinic or your solicitor here — nothing written in a chat window is confidential or privileged.

The safety page lists where to go.