How To Help Your Alcoholic Wife

Part of being in a couple is helping your partner grow and thrive in life. When they become sick, it’s hard to watch, and your first inclination is to do whatever you can to help. Are you at a loss for “How to help my alcoholic wife”? Tampa Bay Recovery Center can help you to help her. We understand how to get a person to understand they are sick and then guide them through the steps to becoming sober. Our outpatient programs allow your wife to receive valuable, life-saving care during the day while still living at home.

Signs Your Wife Has An Alcohol Addiction

Love can make it difficult to see some hard facts, like if your wife has an alcohol addiction. While not everyone is the same, certain signs happen for many when they have become an alcoholic. Signs to look for include:

• Hangovers
• Drinking to try to “cure” a hangover
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Headaches
• Tremors
• Bloodshot eyes or redness of the nose or face
• Slurred speech
• Trouble with coordination
• Blackouts 

Alcohol addictions often increase a person’s mental illness symptoms or contribute to developing a mental health disorder, such as anxiety or depression. Alcoholism can also contribute to behavioral problems such as a negative impact on a person’s career or schooling.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Helping Your Alcoholic Wife

When you are in the midst of worrying about “how to help my alcoholic wife”, it may be hard to know what to do and what not to do. How you approach someone can help determine their comfort level in opening up and accepting help. Try using the following methods when talking to your wife about her drinking:

Do Educate Yourself: Addiction to alcohol is a medical disease that affects a person’s brain. No amount of pleading or trying to bribe a person to get better ends in permanent results. You need to understand that alcoholism is a progressive disease that impacts all areas of a person’s life, and they need professional addiction treatment to improve. 

Do Learn Your Treatment Options: Overcoming alcoholism usually starts with a detox program. From there a person can progress to residential or outpatient care. Contact your insurance company and find out what options are available to your wife. This makes it easier to approach her with information about the specific help she needs. 

Do Not Excuse Alcohol-Related Behavior: Too often, partners want to save embarrassment for themselves and their wives, leading them to offer excuses related to drinking behavior. The partner may also help cover up what’s going on. Both of these short-term approaches only prolong getting help. Each person struggling with alcoholism needs to take responsibility and accept help for their condition. 

Do Not Avoid Self-Care: Regardless of your wife’s status, you have to take care of yourself. In fact, the better off your own physical and mental health are, the more you are equipped to stay strong and help your partner when she is ready. Al-Anon provides free support groups for the loved ones of those dealing with alcoholism. You might also consider seeing a therapist to help you practice self-care and weigh your options for yourself and your family. 

How To Start a Conversation With Your Alcoholic Wife

You may have tried to talk to your wife about her drinking before and it didn’t go well or the good results were only temporary. Things to consider when you think about how to help my alcoholic wife start with making sure she is sober and you are both calm when beginning a conversation. Explain to her that you understand she is sick and needs help, and that help needs to happen now. 

Arm yourself with information so you can let your wife know what treatment options you learned about and how quickly she can enter a program. Feeling she is being offered a helping hand rather than being accused of something can result in her not feeling attacked. Remember that you may have to have a conversation more than once. If possible, engage someone else in your approach to your wife, like another family member or close friend. 

Treatment for Alcohol Addiction

Once a person decides to seek treatment for their alcohol addiction, several steps come into play. The first step is going to a professional detox in Tampa, which usually takes from five to ten days to complete. From there, many people transition into a program such as an alcohol rehab in Tampa. This requires them to live in a treatment program facility for a month or more.

Either after residential treatment or as an alternative to it, many people take advantage of what outpatient programs have to offer. Outpatient care takes place during the day and allows the person to still live at home. Outpatient programs usually include individual, group, and family therapy. Holistic therapy also provides an effective way to address alcoholism and may include EMDR therapy and red light therapy.

Each candidate will be assessed to determine which program best fits their needs. Choices of outpatient programs include:

• Regular Outpatient Program (OP)
• Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)
• Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP)
• Virtual Intensive Outpatient Program

Find Alcohol Rehab in Tampa

You love your wife and you hate to see her suffer and not live up to her potential. If you have been wondering “How to help my alcoholic wife?”, let us show you the way. Tampa Bay Recovery provides several types of outpatient programs that get to the root of a person’s addiction and show them how to heal from it. We offer therapeutic programs designed to improve your wife’s physical and mental health, allowing her to get back to the woman you fell in love with and want to see become healthy again.Visit our admissions page now and find out more about how we help people overcome alcoholism. We can help your wife get started on treatment right away.