Loving addicted daughter

Dear Amy: I have a 49year-old daughter who is an elementary school teacher. She became an alcoholic during COVID.

She has a master’s degree, a beautiful home and a partner of nine years. She’ll lose it all, due to drinking.

She won’t go to AA, and I have suggested inpatient rehab, to no avail.

It is breaking my heart. Her father died from cirrhosis of the liver due to alcoholism at 57, and I’m scared I will lose her too.

Do you have any suggestions besides Al-Anon?

Scared Mom

Dear Scared: Your daughter is aware of the worst-case outcome if her addiction spirals untreated, and if she is unable to attain and maintain sobriety. She knows this because she has felt the consequences and the loss from end-stage alcoholism. But she is an addict. Aside from therapy and Al-Anon (or another “friends and family” support program), my suggestion is to love your daughter through this. Maintain frequent contact, spend time together and maintain your relationship as well as you can. Offer her a judgment-neutral safe harbor so she won’t become isolated, and encourage her to seek treatment without letting her alcoholism become her primary identity.

For your own sake, you should maintain some boundaries. Don’t serve alcohol to her in your home. Don’t make excuses for her. Don’t let her alcoholism run your life. Offer to support her recovery, but don’t enable her addiction. Read, or reread, “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself,” by Melody Beattie (2022, Hazelden).

Dear Amy: My husband is a wonderful man. We’ve been married more than 40 years.

He has children in their 50s from a previous marriage; we all get along great.

His two daughters are quite overweight. He wants to say something and perhaps incentivize them to lose weight by offering to pay for any remedies to get their weight-loss process going.

I too have had a weight problem and have slowly lost 50 pounds over the past 10 years. I’ve been hoping to lead by example.

I think it’s a mistake to bring weight up to his girls.

But he says he’s their father and he needs to approach them for their health’s sake. What do you think?

Wondering

Dear Wondering: My standard reaction to this sort of question is always the same: Does your husband imagine that his adult daughters don’t know that they are overweight?

We are surrounded by images of thinness and the shame of fatness. Weightloss remedies and now drugs like Ozempic are in the news every day. Yet an estimated 72% of Americans over 20 are overweight or obese.

As you know from your own experience, obesity is a life-long social, personal and health challenge.

Obesity has been so stigmatized that it’s considered taboo to discuss, as discussing it can highlight the pain and shame some people with obesity internalize.

This is a tough topic to bring up, but if your husband can do so in a loving, supportive and nonjudgmental way, he could try.

Perhaps your husband could rehearse a conversation with you.

Maybe it’s time to discuss obesity as a disease instead of a character flaw.