I have recently been dealing with a client who is very depressed and indulging in huge amounts of alcohol. He has not been my client for long and was refered to me by his family. As with most cases of alcohol and depression, which came first. They often go hand in hand and they feed off each other. The more alcohol you drink, the more depressed you get. The more depressed you are, the more alcohol you drink. You get the idea.
The problem is that when you get to that point, you are so depressed that you cannot see a way out. You keep burying the problem. You start to affect your health. You hurt everyone around you.
Unfortunately, if you are reading this, then you must be worrying about someone in this situation. And if you are worrying about them, there is nothing you can do until they are ready to take the next step. This is usually a result of an incident. They tend to need to lose their job, have a medical issue or trouble with the police.
In the case of the client, he is not there yet. This is family intervention. Hopefully family intervention will be his trigger to getting help. If you can create an intervention, it may be the first step to recovery but it is a long road ahead. I will go into more detail in a future post. In the meantime, a well organised intervention can go a long way and seek professional help.