Have you ever believed that if you just loved someone hard enough, their drinking would change?
You reasoned with them. You pleaded. You managed their moods, their mornings after, sometimes even their access to alcohol itself.
And still, nothing changed the way you hoped it would.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and you were never as powerless as it felt. You were simply trying to control something that was never within your control to begin with.
Supporting Versus Enabling
There’s an important difference between supporting someone and enabling them, and the line can be genuinely hard to see from the inside.
Supporting looks like encouraging someone’s recovery and holding them accountable to it.
Enabling looks like managing the consequences of their drinking so they never have to face them.
Making the excuse. Covering the bill. Calling in sick on their behalf. Smoothing it over, again.
If you’ve been doing the second one, out of love and fear in equal measure, that makes complete sense. It’s also worth naming honestly.
The Chief Enabling Officer
In many families affected by alcohol, someone quietly takes on what might be called the role of Chief Enabling Officer.
Making the calls. Making the excuses. Holding the household together so nobody outside has to see what’s really happening.
It feels like love. It feels like keeping things together.
Often, it’s one person carrying a weight that was never meant to be carried alone.
Why This Role Feels So Familiar
For many people, this role isn’t new. It’s an extension of a pattern that started much earlier, perhaps in childhood, learning to manage a parent’s mood or keep the peace at any cost.
If that was your early template for love, then managing someone else’s drinking as an adult can feel less like a crisis and more like something you already know how to do.
Familiar doesn’t mean healthy. It simply means practised.
Signs You Might Be Enabling, Not Supporting
- You make excuses for their behaviour, to others or to yourself.
- You cover the consequences so they don’t have to face them.
- You manage their mood more closely than you manage your own.
- You’ve lied on their behalf to keep the peace.
- You feel personally responsible for their sobriety.
- You’ve lost track of your own needs somewhere along the way.
If several of these feel familiar, this isn’t a reflection of how much you love someone. It’s a sign of how much you’ve been carrying.
Recovery Isn’t Just for the Person Drinking
Their recovery, if and when it happens, is theirs to own.
But you spent years adjusting your life around someone else’s drinking. Watching moods. Managing crises. Quietly setting your own needs aside, again and again.
Their sobriety doesn’t automatically undo what that cost you.
Your healing is a separate process, and it matters just as much as theirs.
What Sober Coaching Actually Looks Like
Sober coaching isn’t only about the person drinking.
It’s about the people around them too, the ones who’ve been managing, fixing and holding everything together, often for years.
Support that includes you, not only the person in recovery, is where real healing tends to begin.
Your Next Step
If this article felt close to your own experience, that reaction is worth listening to.
I’ve created a free 2-minute Codependency Quiz to help you understand where the line between supporting and enabling sits for you, and what your own recovery might look like.
The quiz offers personalised insights into your patterns and where they may have started.
Take the first step today by completing the free Codependency Quiz.
Already taken the Codependency Quiz? It may be time to talk it through. Book a free Discovery Call and let’s look at what’s really going on together.
Roslyn Saunders
Codependency Recovery Coach
Diploma of Counselling | Master NLP Practitioner | Professional Member, IICT