Safety
If tonight is dangerous rather than difficult.
This page is never counted against any allowance and is never behind anything. It names routes rather than numbers, because numbers differ by country and change.
If somebody may die tonight
Contact your local emergency services. Wherever you are, there is a number for that, and it is not this site.
- Somebody who cannot be woken, or can only be half woken
- Breathing that is slow, noisy, or stopping and starting
- A fit or a seizure
- A head injury, or a fall from any height
- Vomiting blood, or passing black stools
- Alcohol taken with other drugs or with medication, in any amount
- Any deliberate overdose
Do not let somebody “sleep it off” if you cannot wake them. Put them on their side while you wait.
If you are frightened of him
A domestic-abuse service is the right route, and the police are the right route if it is happening now. Both are used to being contacted by people who are not certain, who have no proof, who have not decided anything, and who intend to stay.
You do not have to call it abuse to use them. You do not have to be sure. What sits on that line is set out plainly on its own page.
If you are planning to leave at some point, that is the one thing worth preparing quietly rather than announcing: documents, a bag somewhere else, money that is yours, and one person who knows. A domestic-abuse service will help you do it in an order that is safer than the obvious one.
If a child is not safe
A child who is being hurt, or left with somebody too drunk to look after them, is an emergency-services matter in the moment and a children’s services or child-protection matter after it. A teacher, a health visitor or a doctor can also start that route, and are used to being asked.
If he is physically dependent
If he drinks heavily every day and shakes in the morning, sweats, retches, is feverish, badly confused, or sees or hears things that are not there, then stopping suddenly on his own can kill him. That is a doctor or urgent medical care today.
It is also not yours to manage. Do not pour it away as a plan, do not ration it for him, and do not agree a taper between the two of you. Those are clinical decisions made with sight of him.
If you are the one who cannot go on
If you are having thoughts of ending your life, or you have stopped being able to see a way through, a local crisis line or your own doctor can help faster than anything written here. If you can, tell one person who is nearby.
This is more common in this position than anybody says, and it is not a sign that you are the unstable one in the house.
Why there are no telephone numbers on this site
Emergency and crisis numbers differ by country and they change. A wrong number costs minutes at the exact moment minutes matter, so this network names the route and leaves the number to be the one where you are.
Nothing on this site is monitored by a person. The guide is an SI (super intelligence) and cannot contact anybody on your behalf. Safety routes are never counted against an allowance and are never behind anything.