What to do when a friend is depressed, suicidal, and abusing alcohol?!
Question:
What to do when a friend is depressed, suicidal, and abusing alcohol?
She's a grown woman (in her mid 20's), so obviously no one can tell her what to do. She won't go to AA meetings, won't go to counseling (even though her parents offered to pay for it). She has already spent 3 days in an institution (which cost her parents 10 grand) and it didn't help. At what point does someone need an intervention? As a friend, is there anything you can do for a grown person who refuses help?
Answers:
Listen - but don't collude. Tell her honestly what impact her drinking is having on you and her family. Don't sympathise with her - say things like "yes, that may feel dreadful, but drinking only makes it worse in the long run". Don't spend time with her when she's been drinking - tell her you care for her as a friend, but the person you care about is the one who is actually fully present, not numbed out and stupid with alcohol. You cannot make her do any of the things that would help, and a horrifyingly large number of alcoholics don't have the desire to change until they have lost everything.
Any time you let her drink when she's with you, or agree to spend time with her or talk on the phone or e-mail or IM when she's drunk, any time you leave your own feelings out (your anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration), then you are colluding, and an alcoholic will experience this as tacit approval for her behaviour. So you need to be very careful - even brutal - in order to hold a clear boundary and try to bring some awareness into her befuddled mind.
If she gets upset about anything, including the things you say, DO NOT, under any circumstances, comfort her. You can say things like "I can see how upset you are, but until you choose to stop drinking, this will happen again and again" or "you don't have to do this - you can decide not to" etc.
It is hell doing all this - I know, from bitter experience - but it is the most loving thing you can do.