How can I talk to a heavy drinker and chaos agent without losing my mind?

When someone is convinced that everyone else is to blame for their problems, there can be more value in asking questions than stating facts.

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Shipwreck after a Stormy Sea (1886) by Ivan Aivazovsky

Hi Katie,

When a person drinks regularly for a long time and thinks everything bad that they experience is someone else’s fault, how can a sober person talk to them without tearing their own hair out? Is the only response to evacuate?

In other words: What/how/when do drinkers realize they’re in the middle of every storm?

This is probably an unanswerable question, so I should get lots of goat pictures.*

—Not the storm

*Very important editor’s note: I have four goats and post pictures of them in my Substack notes feed every Friday.

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Hi NTS,

For as long as people have been getting drunk, people have asked some version of this question, and for good reason. It sounds like you think this person is a chronic, heavy drinker, and, indeed, such drinkers are often unwilling or unable to see how many problems can be traced back to their alcohol use. That was certainly the case with me. I had to make the grand pilgrimage from the Emergency Room to the Psych Ward before I could maybe consider the possibility that the people in my life weren’t being mean, melodramatic prudes when they said my drinking was an issue.

You write, “When a person drinks regularly for a long time and thinks everything bad that they experience is someone else’s fault, how can a sober person talk to them without tearing their own hair out?”

It’s an important question. First, let’s talk about why someone who chronically misuses alcohol might blame their problems on everyone but themself. It’s easy to write it off as selfishness or a lack of self-reflection—and that might indeed be part of it—but there’s probably a bit more going on. Understanding how chronic alcohol use can contribute to a person becoming defensive and accusatory will help illustrate how you might deal with it.

Throughout most of my drinking career, I did whatever I could to lie about my drinking and deflect attention away from how abnormal it was. I wasn’t a bad or fundamentally dishonest person; it felt like the only reasonable option.

Drinking was how I coped with anything and everything. It was how I celebrated, sure, but it was also my response to anything that made me angry, sad, stressed, or even the slightest bit uncomfortable. I believed it was the most effective solution to every problem and would do anything to protect it.

I was like a mama bear, only my cub was a handle of cheap vodka. If you so much as suggested that my drinking caused, exacerbated, or in any way contributed to my problems, I lashed out at you, ridiculed you, or just stopped talking to you. If you didn’t understand why I “had” to drink so much, it was only because you didn’t understand how uniquely stressed/sad/maligned I was.

Naturally, things that weren’t other people’s fault had to become their fault. Because if they weren’t, those things were my fault. If the things were my fault, people would want a reason. And that reason typically involved my precious baby, whom I would die to protect, Bottom Shelf Booze.

These lies may not have fooled everyone (and over time, they fooled fewer and fewer people), but they fooled me. Did I know on some level that I was full of shit? Yes. But at the same time, I believed that I was fine and the problem wasn’t me or what I had done or failed to do when I was drunk; the problem was this boyfriend or that boss or this trauma or that injustice. I repeated these excuses so often that they became my reality.

It’s possible that the drinker you mention, let’s call him Bob, has spent so long in a defensive crouch that he’s forgotten how to stand up straight. Or doesn’t want to.

You ask: How can a sober person talk to them without tearing their own hair out? Is the only response to evacuate?

Much depends on what your goals for the conversation are. If you’re trying to talk to Bob about his drinking or show him that his drinking plays a significant role in the events he’s blaming on others, you’re going to run into a lot of brick walls and walk away with fistfuls of your hair. My guess is this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve tried to talk to Bob about the storm his drinking is creating, so he’ll be on defensive high alert. If you have the patience, one option is to listen to Bob’s various complaints and rants, be as sympathetic as possible, and then ask some questions. It could go something like this.

“My boss is such a goddamn jerk—he treats me like I’m the one who doesn’t know what I’m doing. I’ve done this job longer than he has!”

“That’s so frustrating. Why do you think he treats you like that?”

“Because he thinks the last project failing was my fault, even though it was Ted’s fault.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. Why does he think it was your fault and not Ted’s?”

This sounds tedious as hell, and it absolutely can be. But by taking what Bob says at face value (even if you think it’s BS), you might find his defenses start to come down. Asking questions about what caused these horrible people to treat Bob so unfairly (Bob’s words, presumably), the wheels might start turning in Bob’s head. He’s unlikely to come right out and say, “Well, it’s because my drinking causes chaos wherever I go,” but it might force him to think about the chain of events or behaviors that led to all this animus and blame.

It’s easy to get into a pattern of hopping from outrage to outrage like a frog on a chain of lily pads, but each has its own history. Even if it doesn’t happen right away, or he doesn’t acknowledge it, asking those questions as non judgmentally as possible might lead to some self-reflection about what that history is.

It sounds like Bob sees the world as comprised of either enemies or friends. Shifting the focus of your conversations from alcohol to whatever Bob claims is causing the storm identifies you as a friend—someone he might be able to let his guard down around or talk to if he ever decides his alcohol use is causing problems in his life.

But you can also evacuate, and you shouldn’t feel guilty if you do. Your job is not to force Bob to understand that he’s the common denominator in every storm. There is no surefire way to convince someone who is addicted to alcohol that they are addicted to alcohol. It depends on the person, the circumstances, and a million other variables.

That said, isolation really doesn’t help. It might be counterintuitive, but being patiently inquisitive and nonjudgmental offers Bob meaningful support. His world has likely gotten pretty small if he’s always blaming everyone else. You could help open it up a little.

That only works if you can truly stay patient and nonjudgmental when you might feel anything but. If you can’t, that’s perfectly understandable. We can all be benevolent and empathetic with some people and...on a much shorter fuse with others.

While your question isn’t unanswerable, the answer might not be the most satisfying. As a consolation, please enjoy a few pictures of my goats.

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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.