brian – tough love. Nothing you can do, really. Perhaps try an intervention w/other family and friends. But pretty much you have no control over them. They have to hit bottom and realize on their own they have a problem. Telling them won’t help. They probably know and don’t care or don’t want to accept that they have a problem. Some functional alcoholics never hit bottom.
It has little to do w/will power. I remember reading that some alcoholics lack a certain enzyme or some such thing that allows them to process alcohol like most people do. I could have half a glass of wine and stop. Alcoholics just keep drinking until they pass out. It is a horrible disease. Drinking is a social thing, but alcoholics either can never drink or just keep drinking. Physically, it is addicting, also. Perhaps not as bad as nicotine or heroin. But the effects of alcohol withdrawal on the liver are also horrible, delirium tremens.
I always say alcoholics are good people w/a bad problem.
