Alcoholism is mainly suffering, pain and anxiety about the destiny of a dependent person, not the manifestation of demoralization and incarnate evil. The public is getting more and more knowledge, not only about alcoholism, but besides about another addictions, including the most widespread addictions to electronic devices, the Internet, social sites or computer games. Each addict inflicts suffering on his loved ones and usually poses a deadly threat to himself. It is simply a burden, but not Satanic possession or a manifestation of utmost demoralization," he says.Fr Marek Dziwiecki in conversation with PCh24.pl.
Priest Doctor, August – period of abstinence – passed, and alcohol problems remained. The alcoholic at home – for years – was treated exclusively as a “source of shame” ... and that is the end. Has that changed?
Fortunately, more and more it is not that alcoholism is treated as a origin of shame to the full household and as a fact that should be carefully hidden from neighbors. More and more Polish families realize that alcoholism is mainly suffering, pain and anxiety about the destiny of a dependent person, not the manifestation of demoralization and incarnate evil. The public is getting more and more knowledge, not only about alcoholism, but besides about another addictions, including the most widespread addictions to electronic devices, the Internet, social sites or computer games. Each addict inflicts suffering on his loved ones and usually poses a deadly threat to himself. It's a burden, but it's not Satanic possession or utmost demoralization.
How should an alcoholic’s wife and children behave? We already know that hiding the problem doesn't make any sense, but on the another hand it is adequate to perceive to any wives – like lionesses, defending their drunken husbands, besides justifying them erstwhile children are suffering enormously...
Such women confuse love with naivety. They do not perceive to Jesus and do not realize it. Whoever gets drunk breaks the Decalogue. He besides breaks his matrimony and parenting vows. He torments his loved ones alternatively of loving them. In this situation Jesus clearly tells us what to do: if your brother errs, go and exhort him! Jesus does not want us to sweep our problems under the carpet, but to solve these problems. God teaches us to show love wisely. Jesus supported the noble ones, the erring ones firmly reproved, and he defended himself equally firmly against the wrongdoers. We are all to do the same. Hiding the alcohol problems of our loved ones or justifying those who have become addicted is helping them to die on installments. This attitude has nothing to do with love, but it has much to do with ignorance, with a sense of powerlessness, with the tolerance of evil.
Sometimes women say they have vowed before God, and abandoning an alcoholic husband is not an option. So women gotta endure due to the fact that their husband cares more about alcohol than his family?
The task of wives whose husbands have fallen into alcoholism is not submission and suffering, but wise love. And wise love is that we do not halt loving an alcoholic, but that we show him love maturely, or in a way adapted to his conduct here and now.
What should a wife whose husband drinks do?
First, the wife’s occupation is to reprove a husband who gets drunk. If he does not respond to the reproofs and to the expanding suffering of his loved ones, the wife should give her husband an ultimatum: either he takes therapy and goes on the meetings of Anonymous Alcoholics, or she will effectively defend herself and the children—to call the police and to separate matrimony inclusive. Separation is liable love, expressed by necessity at a distance for now, alternatively than abandoning a drunk husband. He's abandoning his loved ones for alcohol.
After all, it is at home that we meet, celebrate birthdays, birthdays, friends and neighbors come... How do you treat an alcoholic at home?
Alcoholics – like those who endure from another addictions – request to be treated wisely, that is to say, with hard love. Dependents must experience on their own that they will now endure all the consequences of their addiction. For example, if individual is violently drunk, they must be reprimanded. If he doesn't respond to the warning, we gotta call the police. If it interferes with the celebration, you must ask specified a individual out of the room. It is besides worth informing our relatives, neighbors, or friends that our loved ones have a drinking problem. They must besides be assured that they have the right to stand firm in the face of improper behaviour of a dependent person.
Does surviving with an alcoholic even make sense?
The only thing that makes sense is simply a wise love for an alcoholic. If, under the influence of our admonition and our hard love, an alcoholic changes, then you should stay with him, but only then! If, on the another hand, he does not respond to our wise love and our reproofs, if he persists in addiction, then – I repeat – he must be effectively defended from specified a individual – until we are separated from each other. You can't make an alcoholic comfortable with his addiction!
Who is the most likely alcoholic problem?
Alcoholic problems and another addictions are frequently affected by people who find life increasingly a burden due to the fact that it involves a scope of failures, suffering, anxiety, anxiety. Sometimes all this is due to individual mistakes or sins of a person. Sometimes, however, this is mainly due to another people’s evil. This is the case, for example, erstwhile children have parents in crisis, erstwhile they do not experience love in the home, erstwhile they do not receive a solid upbringing from parents, or erstwhile they are subjected to the destructive influence of peers or demoralizers. In the face of life that torments alternatively of enjoying, each of us has 2 options: either we change ourselves and improve our life situation, or we effort to escape the fact about ourselves and we search temporary relief or "forgetfulness" through alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, escape into the virtual world.
Can you treat alcoholism at home on your own?
There is no reason why a individual who persists in addiction does not realize this. An addict doesn't know he's a drug addict. In his weakness, naivety, and unconsciousness, he does all he can to endure in this addiction. The only thing that can give a chance to save an addict is smart – and in this situation, highly hard – love from loved ones.
Which is what?
Love, which is to leave the alcoholic all the increasingly painful consequences of his addiction. The addict will not save our suffering due to the fact that he is not delicate enough. In this situation, he can only be saved by his own severe suffering. However, in order for loved ones to be able to show specified wise love, they request outside support.
Thank you for talking to me.
Marta Dybińska
