What do I say? Can anyone help?
I have a friend aged 30, who drinks 2-4 pints of beer most nights, drinks wine at home, adds cocktails or spirits to that on nights out every few weeks, and goes on benders every once in a while, a few times a year. He has been in this pattern since his teens, and is from a culture where this is to some degree regarded as normal. He also doesn't eat properly - chips at the pub or a late kebab most nights, or tinned sausages if he's run out of money for expensive chips/kebabs.
Obviously it's way too much booze, and I think he knows it is way too much from the number of stories he tells about the time he saw a doctor who referred him to AA for young professionals, or the comments about looking like an alcoholic because of the number of beer and wine bottles he has stacked up in his recycling, or the backhanded "boasts" about how many days he's gone without eating lunch or breakfast.
However, he's also from the kind of culture who sees alcoholism as the province of people less fortunate than himself. Somehow his excellent professional career (one that isolates him a bit because of its solitary nature and extreme time committment) means he's not the kind of person who needs help with alcohol. So gentle suggestions from other friends have not been taken seriously, and those friends have stepped back a bit. His girlfriend may or may not be saying anything - it's hard to tell, and I don't want to tread on her toes. But she does do a lot of the nights out with copious spirits too...
Obviously it's his problem to fix, not mine. But other cases of this peculiar "I can't possibly be an alcoholic, i'm a successful white-collar professional" that I've seen have successfully been dealt with by structured career-based help - suspensions from work or bollockings from respected senior professionals.
This friend isn't in a career path where that will easily work. NHS leaflets also don't work.
Anyone got some experience that could help?