As an alcoholic, you cannot help someone who doesn’t want help. It’s a disease that grabs ahold of your mind and tells you to do things you actively don’t want to do. It’s hard to explain how you can just NOT want to be drunk today but then do it anyways. How you can know you’re hurting the people around you and still do it anyways. Both of my parents were violent alcoholics, but as I’ve grown and dealt with the issues of addiction myself, I’ve learned to have empathy for them.

Whatever you do, don’t marry this person unless you’re 100% sure you can deal with this disease. It may get better but it will definitely get worse for a time. There is no “former alcoholic”. There are only alcoholics who choose not to take the first drink.

I hate to say something so harsh but it’s the truth. I’m glad my girlfriend has endured me but I’m trying. There was a time I was downing 2 pints of bacardi gold every day, waking up and filling my coffee cup with it and drinking all day, sometimes passing out, waking up and drinking some more. I’ve cut back but I made.the decision myself. My girlfriend definitely pushed me in that direction and I’m not trying to take credit away from her trying, but everyday I make that decision myself.

You can push your fiance, but they have to make that decision. Everyday.

This book This Naked Mind helped me a lot to quit alcohol.

But it was my own decision, not coming from someone else.

Sadly, the stop drinking community on Lemmy is non existent or dead so you have to check the original r/stopdrinking on Reddit. Even if we left that place, this sub is just awesome, packed with useful resources and is something really hard to find elsewhere, you won’t even have to post, just start by reading the sidebar and wiki.

Good luck, my problem with alcohol cost me my 13 years marriage but I got out of it mostly thanks to that subreddit, so anything is possible.

Former alcoholic here, although I abhor the term, Ill use it for simplicity. Imo, excess drinking is a symptom of other problems. I quit because I didnt want to die like that which is the inevitable outcome. But I had to get my other problems dealt with in order to quit, because for a while, like 10 years, I don’t think I cared, so I needed my doctors help with that. Mainly, I didnt want my grandkids to remember me like that, dying of alcohol-related problems, nor did I want my spouse to die like that, bc we were drinking partners. So I had to get her to quit too, which eventually came down to alcohol or me, so she chose me.

Another secular alternative is SMART recovery. They have group meetings in-person and online as well as a Family & Friends program. https://www.smartrecovery.org/

The only thing that one human being can do for another human being with an addiction is to love them as honestly and as consistently as possible.

It’s really about focusing on the self, more than focusing on the other person. Basically, you need to give them some hope that the world might be a worthwhile place to be. And you do that by being your best self.

I know it sounds vague, so I’ll try to be more specific. You need to make your side of the interface with that person as clean and as healthy as possible.

Specifically:

• Tell them the truth (including bad news)
• Keep your promises to them
• Don’t make promises to them you can’t keep

People get addicted because their moment to moment awareness is too full of pain to withstand.

For some people, the pain is simple. Their back is in agony, or the withdrawal from their last hit is grinding at them. For these people you can do nothing.

For others, the pain is harder to see and understand: the world is meaningless, their life is hopeless, they are surrounded by a world of shit, they can’t trust, etc. For these people you can’t do much. All you can do is make your little part of the world functional, so that in you they find reason to trust, evidence of meaning, a possibility of a world that isn’t shit.

99% of the work is still hers to do, not yours. But that 1% consists of being consistent and healthy in your dealings with her.

Now here comes the hard part. This is where you face your own real demons, for your sake and for hers. And I think the place to start that journey is:

What is it that you have to heal within yourself, so that you are no longer the kind of person to accept abuse?

Is there any way that you simultaneously stop accepting her abuse of you and give her greater hope of a world worth living in? I think there is. I think, in fact, it might be the same thing.

But it’s going to have to start with a serious, deep look into your own darkness, into the stinky, rotten parts of your own soul that are so scary to you that you’d rather accept abuse than look directly at them.