1. He works too much. I don't know how many hours exactly, but he works tons of nights and weekends. Too much stress and not enough rest.

2. His fiancee broke up with him a few months before the marriage, and it's made him lonely and/or depressed. He has a big house but lives alone.

He functions well enough to hold down his job, but he's drinking lots of vodka. I don't know how much exactly, but my mom cleaned his house recently and found tons of empty vodka handles in the trash. He's short-tempered and easily irritated.

What's the best way to approach this? None of my friends have dealt with drinking problems, so I've never had to deal with this before.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5763295&forum_id=2:#49191824)

What you are going to do will depend on how he views his drinking. Does he know it’s a problem? Is he willing to admit that? Or is he in denial?

If he’s in denial it’s going to take a major event to wake him up to the possibility - a job loss, a health episode or a legal issue. For me it was a health issue, I quit about 10 years ago.

I started drinking heavily due to a series of really bad breaks when I was younger…but as time went on, alcohol took on a life of its own. Eventually the things that made me drink faded into the background, but the alcohol was there as its own force. It snuck up on me.

I struggled to quit for maybe a couple years. I could get a few days here. A few weeks there, but would always come back for the bottle. Eventually I just got tired and that’s how I quit. I was simply “sick and tired of being sick and tired”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5763295&forum_id=2:#49191873)