Alcoholism is as serious as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or any other disease/affliction that can cause suffering and death. For a successful outcome, it needs to be addressed with the same tenacity as we give these other diseases. If a person had lung cancer or heart disease and was told he could be symptom free by spending a few hours a week in heartfelt participation in a meeting, by taking an inexpensive drug for a few months, and by making some lifelong changes in how they viewed themselves and how they react to certain circumstances in their lives, and ultimately by just eliminating one type of beverage from their diet, I'm pretty sure most folks would jump at the chance to do these things. The fact that alcoholics find it very hard to do so tells a lot, IMO, about the way society views this disease, about our individual powers of denial, and (mostly) about the grip that alcohol (and other addictive substances) can have on the human mind.
+100. Alcoholism is a disease. For some reason the inherited gene follows the men in my family, even "paternal" male cousins. My mom didn't drink.
My Dad and my brother. My Dad quit drinking during his "career" and then started again. In his 70's, we did interventions, a couple of detox programs but nothing really worked again until he got lung cancer. He had neurological damage from the alcohol, dropped foot, etc. Then he passed at age 82.
My brother started young with both alcohol and drugs. It was a constant source of worry for my parents and us. Many interventions, detox programs and half way houses-all expensive. Yes, he was jailed-actually bailed out one Christmas morning. Yes there were DUI's. Yes there was stealing from my parents. Yes there were local banks that gave him credit cards or loans my parents had to pay off. I guess because the banks knew my family.
Finally, he hit bottom when he lost his license, his freedom and any semblance of life. Nothing worked until he hit absolute rock bottom. He chose to go to NA. He had a wonderful mentor and has been clean now for over 25 years. We are all so proud of him as he goes around the country giving speeches at NA conventions, has his own successful business, got married for the first time about 3 years ago, etc. I go to his "clean birthdays". The most important thing is he is alive. My parents got to see him clean. He put what I think was his 5 or 10 year clean medallion in mom's coffin.
But I will tell you Muir, all of this spanned probably 15 to 20 years before he joined NA, made a life changing commitment and basically made NA his family and worked the program all day every day. As I said, he started young. He had to change his social network, get new friends that didn't drink or do drugs, etc.
Lots of good advice in this thread. My brother will tell you, he will not help anyone that won't help themselves first and make a commitment to NA or AA.
One last comment I didn't see here is that if your son continues to drink, if he is in the throes of any bing, don't let him detox by himself or without medical supervision. I say this not knowing the extent of the alcoholism. With my Dad, if he was any without a drink for too long, we sometimes had to give him alcohol to prevent him from going into the DT's (delirium tremens) which are withdrawals symptoms from alcohol withdrawal. Am hoping your son's alcoholism has not developed to this extent yet.
Lastly, you are doing the rights things with Al-Anon support, being there for him but not allowing him to take advantage. Definitely easier said than done. While my parents did everything they could, enabling him in the process for so very many years towards the end they offered him food and shelter at their house and that was about it.
I am sorry you are having to deal with this. Alcoholism is a horrible disease.
Edit: My thoughts go out to all on this thread dealing with substance abuse and loved ones. Many posts were added that I had not read prior to posting mine.
