One of my alcoholic patients is following up on his THIRD recent ER visit for pancreatitis.

[tavalon]

8. You are offering him a chance

That's not spinning wheels. Thinking that failure to get him to find a way out of his hole is spinning your wheels, then, maybe you are.

Disconnect the outcome with the attempts to get him to let go and ________. You never win against alcohol and your patient is the only one one who could have, may now or may in the future choose life over alcohol. Do everything you can to understand that in your head and in your heart. This is between your patient and alcohol and it always has been. You're not at fault. Nor are you going to be his savior, and forgiving oneself for that was for me, one of the hardest things I've ever done.

The situation you describe is even harder for us, the families who have addicts. And we've had to go through all the steps including anger, nay, fury at our _____________ or not fighting the bottle. It felt personal and it wasn't. Many of us have lost family to the fight, some metaphorically and others on your ER.

If I sound like a walking,talking 12 stepper, I am. However, I think there are more ways to skin a cat. 12 step worked for me but just as a hint to my fellow RNS, if you go to Codependents Anonymous or Adult Children, expect portions of your job to get harder Don't tell anyone, but probably 90% of us are codependents. The other 10% are recovering! Lol