What Happens If You Drink Every Day?

Drinking every day raises your risk of liver disease, heart problems, several cancers, depression, and alcohol dependence, and the risk climbs with the amount and the years.  Daily drinking is not automatically alcohol use disorder, but it is one of the clearest paths to it, because the body adapts to a constant supply of alcohol […]

How to Help an Alcoholic Family Member

The most effective thing you can do is change how you respond to the drinking, not try to control the drinking itself.  Decades of research point to a specific approach called CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training), which coaches families to reward sober behavior, stop shielding the person from consequences, communicate without blame, and take […]

Alcohol and Relationships

Alcohol and relationships come apart slowly, not all at once. The damage rarely shows up as one dramatic event. It builds through missed evenings, small broken promises, and one partner quietly becoming the household’s only reliable adult. By the time the drinking gets named as the problem, the relationship has usually already reorganized itself around […]

Once I Start Drinking, I Can’t Stop

If one drink turns into six almost every time, that’s not a willpower problem. It’s called loss of control, and it’s one of the clearest clinical signs of alcohol use disorder (AUD). The pull to keep drinking once you’ve started isn’t about weak character. It’s a change in how your brain responds to alcohol, and […]

Can You Get Fired for Going to Rehab?

In most cases, no. Two federal laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), protect eligible employees who seek treatment for a substance use disorder.  Your employer generally cannot fire you simply for going to rehab. These protections have real limits, though, and they don’t cover everything, so […]

High-Functioning Alcoholic Signs

A high-functioning alcoholic keeps the job, pays the bills, and shows up to family dinners. That is exactly why the drinking underneath goes unnoticed for years, sometimes decades.  The high-functioning alcoholic signs that matter most are rarely the dramatic ones, and job performance is never the test. It is often the reason the problem gets […]