Stop Drinking

Good luck, I mean it. Caring and seeking to understand is a core first step. I'm not sure I have any sage advise but one thing that stood out to me is needing to quit "forever". That's a really big commitment. A lot of us are able to chain together single days that add up to bigger numbers. Forever is a long time, but a day is doable. Finding positive connections is a big deal and will help them on their journey. It's tough to find good ones, but they exist.

Your mileage may vary, but when a friend was stopping drinking, they said it was useful when their friends made an effort to make non-alcoholic cocktails at social events. Some of them were so tasty that even those of us who were still drinking alcohol would have some. There were also some friends who don't have problems with alcohol but just prefer not to drink it who enjoyed them.

My friend said that it was especially useful in that period after she had stopped drinking, and was trying to transition to a new normal. She compared it to dieting — how you will eat at a deficit to reach your goal weight, and once there, you need to transition to eating a maintenance level of calories and avoid regaining weight by slipping back into old habits.

She said it was helpful in making stopping drink feel less "all or nothing". There were points where she felt she had to sacrifice a lot of her social life, and to some extent, that was true, because some of our friends were pretty heavy partiers, but she didn't want to give up on all social drinking. She realised that non alcoholic cocktails helped to preserve the "social" part of social drinking.

Unrelated to that above idea, it's worthwhile to consider what he gains from the social drinking. For example, I have autism, and the only way that I can tolerate the noise level of a nightclub or a pub is through a combination of earplugs and some level of intoxication. For me, as it is for many people, alcohol acts as a social crutch, but it functions differently than it does for most people.

What kind of events has he been going to for LGBT community? A lot of social culture around that is pretty party heavy, especially for men. However, there are activities and groups made by people who actively want to find community outside of that party culture. In my city, there are activities like queer book groups, or "queer family tea", an LGBTQ choir etc, queer board games nights, queer skateboarding etc.. I'm fortunate to live in a large enough city where there's lots of stuff like this, so there might be fewer options where you are.

I moved to this city during COVID and I was pretty socially isolated for a long while. I tried going to various events in an ad hoc manner, but all the connections I made felt superficial and it just burned me out more. What really helped with this was going to events that were more regular. For example, through going to board games stuff, I found a regular Dungeons and Dragons game. I haven't been to the choir yet, but that's a weekly activity and is exactly the vibe I need. The book group was also useful. If I had to summarise the vibe, it's things that are activities first, and social second. That was what was helpful in beginning to build an actual routine.

On a more general note, try not to push too hard. You can't make him switch mindset here — he needs to get there himself. I'd advise taking a pragmatic approach over Christmas, because if he were able to sustain a "I'll just quit for a little bit" over this period, that'd be a big achievement. He might be struggling from the pressure of "all or nothing" mindset, so even though it seems unlikely that it's possible for him to drink in moderation over this period, perhaps that conversation would be a good one.

Try talking to him about the recent event with the neighbours. How does he feel about it? Does he understand that how he behaved was problematic? Try to be a little honest about your anxiety about spending Christmas with him, and explain that you want your partner's family to be able to get to know the version of him that you know, because you know that how he behaves when overly drunk isn't authentically the person you love. Maybe ask him if there's any times he can think of where he was able to drink socially in moderation, and try to figure out with him if there's ways you can support that over Christmas. Of course, this only works if he understands that the way he behaves when drunk is inappropriate. Ideally, you should do some amount of planning for failure with him. I.e. if you guys agree that he's going to try not to drink over Christmas with your partner's family, what happens if he does cave and drink? Even if the goal is no drinking at all, it's still worth discussing strategies for supporting moderation. If there's anything I know about recovering from addiction, it's that fuckups and relapses aren't actually failures, but actually an inevitable part of the recovery process. Understanding this is essential for preventing (or minimising) the self destructive guilt spiral that can result from a relapse.

The best case scenario of this conversation is that it may get him a tad closer to understanding that drinking in moderation is not a thing that's possible for him (if that is indeed true). Unfortunately, based on past experience with friends, often this learning happens in a difficult way, such as agreeing a protocol for friends supporting someone to drink in moderation, and then everything going to shit. That feels like a failure, but it can be useful, especially if people are supportive in the aftermath, such as doing a debrief like "okay, so what went wrong? What could we/you have done better?".

A benefit of having a conversation about expectations and goals over this Christmas period means that you (or your partner) can potentially run it by your partner's family. This might mean coordinating to ensure that there's plenty of interesting, non alcoholic beverages available. It could also mean flagging to them that this is a thing he's working on, that you've discussed with him, but that it's possible that it might go poorly. The goal here would be to make it marginally less awkward if he does end up drinking too much and he embarrasses himself in a manner that requires you to handle his behaviour. Whether it's wise to mention it to your partner's family in advance depends on how supportive and understanding they are likely to be. Sometimes people can be too supportive in a way that makes things feel weird. Like, ensuring that there are plenty of non alcoholic drinks is great, but people can sometimes make it weird for the person who isn't drinking and draw awkward attention to it. They may also try to actively police your brother's behaviour in a way that's inappropriate and unproductive, so once you've had a proper discussion with your brother, convene with your partner to discuss what to tell their family (if anything)

Sometimes when I'm partying with friends, I enjoy intoxicants other than alcohol, and if most other people are just drinking alcohol, I will often let a friend know what I'm taking so that they can give me a gentle nudge if I'm being a bit much (because the last thing I want is to make people uncomfortable). If he's not open to making this Christmas period with your partner's family a period where he doesn't drink, I wonder if he'd be amenable to you being his "prosthetic executive function" so to speak — someone he trusts to be able to go "okay, that's enough now" before he gets too drunk. A risk with this approach is that even if he agrees to it while sober, he may become more difficult when he's had some alcohol.

Overall, I think the important thing is to be clear that you're on his side. I understand why you want him to switch to the mindset of "I need to quit forever", but if he's been struggling with drinking for this long, it's likely that he feels it's impossible to do that, and pushing for that may demoralise him further. I can tell from your post that you love your brother a lot, and that you want to support him in whatever way he needs. I'm really glad he has that, and it would be unfortunate if he ended up feeling like he had to hide his struggles if he feels like you are just part of a nebulous blob of people trying to push him to do something that feels impossible (and that he may be in denial about and believe that he doesn't even need to stop drinking). Shame is often a big part of addiction, and if you're able to be there with him in a way that facilitates him being open about his struggles, that can make a world of difference.

I don't have experience with problematic use of substances, but I have previously struggled with self harm, so I can relate to the "all-or-nothing" feeling of how we frame "falling off the wagon". It used to be that when I'd relapse and self harm after many months of not doing it, this would start a period where I would regularly self harm, because "fuck it, I've ruined my streak, I might as well". It took a long while to break myself out of that mindset. What helped was acknowledging that relapses were probably going to happen, and that what was important was how I responded afterwards. I literally can't remember the last time I self harmed (years ago, I think), but it's unfortunately the case that I will probably do it again in future. A lot of the Alcoholics Anonymous framing of addiction can be pretty problematic, but there is some merit to the "once an addict, always an addict" notion (it isn't necessarily incompatible with the notion of someone learning how to drink in moderation in the long term, it just means that it'll always be something you need to watch yourself with). Something that I'm proud of is that the last few times I self harmed, they were isolated instances where I pretty promptly got "back on the wagon" despite the setback. It took a while to reshape my thinking in this way though

This got far longer than I had expected, but I hope that something here is useful for you. Feel free to reply to add additional thoughts or questions, and I'll try to reply, even if it takes me a few days. However, please don't feel any pressure to reply. There's a lot here to think about, and when someone puts so much care into replying to your post, I know that can lead to a lot of pressure to reply to convey gratefulness. Know that I won't be offended if you don't acknowledge this comment.

One thing I will add is that when I stopped, I initially found it very difficult to be around people who were drinking. It's hard to hold a conversation when you're sober and they aren't, which is kind of boring for the sober person. Depending on who I was with, I was on edge about whether they'd forget I wasn't drinking and offer me something.

Could you and your family commit to not drinking while he's staying with you?

There's various pinned posts on here that offer help and advice, it might be worth having a read through those.