Wow, I wish people had made excuses for me back when I was a hopeless drunk. I wish they'd said i was mentally ill. I wish they'd coddled me and told me it wasn't my fault.
Wait...no, I don't. Because if they had, I would have continued on drinking until I WAS homeless, or sick, or dead.
I hated it back then, but nobody cut me any slack. They all kicked me in the butt and said they didn't want anything to do with me and that I was ruining my life. And they were right. Luckily they'd didn't enable any denial in me and I was able to pull myself up out of the mire.
And right now I'm having hard times, financially. My husband quit his job, went on unemployment and then got a job paying less than half of what he used to make. : ( My job is in question as someone is buying out the company I work for, and who knows...
But one thing I know for sure...I won't end up homeless because I DO NOT DRINK ANYMORE. So I WILL find a way through this. But if I was drinking...well, I probably would have been out on the streets long ago.
I would have taken you to an AA meeting
Ah...you are assuming I would consent to go. Actually, at one point I had been "out sick" from work for a couple of days (I missed a LOT of work) and I gave up and called my boss and told him I wasn't sick, I was drinking and that I had a drinking problem. Instead of firing me, the company gave me the option of attending an outpatient treatment program for 12 weeks, so I did in order to keep my job. One of the requirements of the program was that I attend AA meetings each week, so I did.
Didn't matter, once I finished the program and was out of trouble at work...I started drinking again, and eventually quit that very excellent job (at IBM) because of it. After almost 20 years at my current job, I still don't make as much as I did after working at IBM for 10 years. : (
I had to make the decision to quit for myself, not for others. But if they had enabled me, I would have continued to drink much longer, you see, because they would have helped me to justify my behavior. Alcoholics are great at deceiving themselves, they don't need other people to help them do it. So I would say that "just not enabling" drunks is about the best thing you can do for them, harsh as it may be sometimes.