Dear Doors,
None of us would ever recover if we didn't have consequences to face. The compulsion to drink is powerful and something must be there to help overcome it. Sometimes it's the loss of family, job, self-respect, or blistering headlines and a prison sentence. We must "reach our bottom," where ever that may be. And sometimes the bottom is death.
If the price of our drinking (sometimes refered to as "the high price of low living") didn't somehow become more than we can afford, in whatever currency is important to us, we would continue - period. So consequences are important and vital.
The concept of "enabling" by friends and family simply means that they continually rescue someone who's drinking and allow them to avoid needed consequences. Bailing them out of jail, lying to employers when they miss work, or any one of a million other examples, only adds to the problem and prolongs it. Although usually motivated by love and concern for the individual, it is, in fact, the cruelest thing one can do and eventually results in literally "loving someone to death."
Blue skies,
Lyle Prouse
Originally Posted by
Doors to Automatic
This chap has lost his job, his house and indeed, his career. It is clear that turning up in such a state ahead of his flight is not something he did for the hell of it so I am at a loss to understand precisely what sending him to prison is going to achieve - especially as the prisons are supposedly so full that dangerous criminals are persistently given derisory sentences and let out early.