Swap the four sentences that close a conversation for four that leave it open. Describe what you saw instead of naming what they are. Say the effect on you once, not fifteen times. Ask for one specific thing. And say none of it while they are drunk or high, because that version is not remembered.
The four swaps
These are the phrases that come out of your mouth when you are frightened, which is most evenings. None of them is a character failing. All of them end the conversation.
**"If you loved me, you would stop."** It is true that it hurts. It is not true that use measures love, and the sentence hands them an argument they can win, because they do love you. Try instead: "I was frightened on Thursday when you did not come home. I want to tell you what that was like for me." One event, your feeling, no verdict.
**The label.** Whichever word you would reach for, the one that names what they are rather than what they did. Labels put people in a defensive crouch and shift the conversation onto whether the word applies, which is a debate you cannot win and do not need. Try instead: "You were asleep on the sofa when the children came in." A fact has nowhere to go. A label arrives with its own counter-argument attached.
**"You promised."** True, and it means the next thirty minutes are about the last broken promise rather than about the next step. Try instead: "I do not want another promise. I want you to come to the GP with me on Thursday." Trade the promise for an appointment.
**"This is your last chance."** Do not do ultimatums on a page. We cannot see the room you are standing in, we do not know whether you can carry it out, and an ultimatum you do not enforce is worse than nothing. What you can say is what you will do, in your own control, without a deadline attached to their behaviour. [Boundaries that are not punishments](/guides/supporters/boundaries-that-are-not-punishments) is the whole method.
Why the big confrontation is not the answer
You have seen the televised version. The family gathers, everyone reads a letter, the person breaks and agrees to treatment.
Two things about it. The first is that families almost never do it. In the trial that everyone cites, "most CSOs decide not to go through with the family confrontation (70% in this study)". If you have been dreading it and quietly suspecting you do not have it in you, you are the majority.
The second is the evidence. William White and William Miller reviewed the field and concluded: "Four decades of research have failed to yield a single clinical trial showing efficacy of confrontational counseling, whereas a number have documented harmful effects, particularly for more vulnerable populations." They name the belief underneath it too: "if you can just make people feel bad enough, they will change."
Shame is the fuel of most compulsions. Adding more of it has never turned out to be the missing ingredient.
What to say when they are using
Nothing.
That is the whole section. An intoxicated conversation is not stored. What survives to morning is the worst sentence either of you said, and you will both be able to quote it for years.
If something has to be said, keep it to logistics. "I am taking the keys." "I am sleeping in the other room." "The back door is locked." Then stop.
What to say when it goes well
This is the part almost nobody covers, and it is the part with actual trial evidence behind it.
The approach with the best evidence for getting a reluctant person into treatment is Community Reinforcement and Family Training, and one of its components is reinforcing the behaviour you want more of. That does not mean praise, which grown adults hear as management. It means noticing out loud, once, plainly.
"It was good to have you at dinner." "You were up with the kids this morning, thank you." "That was a nice evening."
Then stop. Do not attach it to a lesson. "It was a nice evening, see how much better things are when you are not drinking" undoes the whole thing in nine words.
Four more that are worth having ready
- **When they minimise it.** "Maybe. I am telling you what it looked like from here." You are not the arbiter of the facts and you do not have to become one.
- **When they turn it on you.** "I am not going to argue about this tonight. I will leave it with you." Then actually leave it. Repetition without escalation is the technique.
- **When they cry.** Stay. Do not immediately fix it, do not immediately withdraw the ask. Silence is allowed to sit longer than is comfortable.
- **When you have nothing left.** "I do not have another one of these conversations in me this week." That is honest, it is not cruel, and it is more useful than pretending. [Listening when you have heard it all before](/guides/supporters/listening-when-youve-heard-it-all-before) is about exactly this.
The one you say to yourself
You are going to get this wrong regularly, because you are having the conversation while frightened and tired, and no script survives that intact.
Orford's research describes the ordinary family response as being "worried, preoccupied with thinking about the relative and the problem, feeling nervous and panicky, irritable and quick tempered, low and miserable, annoyed and resentful". That is the state you are running these conversations from. Getting snappy in it is not proof that you have become the problem.
If a conversation goes badly, note which sentence turned it, and cut that one next time. That is information, not a verdict.
Common questions
**Is honesty about how much they have hurt me the same as shaming them?** No. There is a difference between "I was frightened and I did not sleep" and "look what you have done to this family". The first is your experience, once. The second is a charge sheet, and it invites a defence.
**They are not ready to hear any of this. Should I say nothing?** The trial evidence points the other way. Everyone recruited to the CRAFT trial was refusing treatment at the start, and around 64% of the people they were worried about entered treatment anyway, because the family changed how they responded. You are not waiting for readiness. You are creating the conditions in which readiness is possible.
**What if the right thing to say makes them worse?** Confrontational approaches have documented harms, which is exactly why the sentences above avoid shaming, audiences and ultimatums. If raising anything at all frightens you because of how they react, that is a safety question rather than a phrasing question, and [when it is not addiction, it is abuse](/guides/supporters/when-it-is-not-addiction-it-is-abuse) is where to start.
**Should I write it down first?** Yes, and decide the single ask before you open your mouth. Four asks becomes a row about the fourth. [How to raise it without a row](/guides/supporters/how-to-raise-it-without-a-row) has the full script and the timing rule.
**Is any of this going to work?** Some of it, some of the time, and not on your schedule. The point of getting the words right is not that they are a key. It is that the wrong ones reliably close a door you will want open later.
Sources
- [White and Miller, Confrontation in Addiction Treatment](https://cmcffc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Confrontation-in-Addiction-Treatment.pdf). Four decades without a trial showing efficacy, and the belief underneath confrontation.
- [Miller, Meyers and Tonigan, 1999](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10535235/). The 70% of families who decline the confrontation, and treatment entry at around 64%.
- [American Psychological Association, Community Reinforcement and Family Training](https://www.apa.org/pi/about/publications/caregivers/practice-settings/intervention/community-reinforcement). What the approach contains, including communication skills training.
- [Orford, The experiences of affected family members, 2012](https://www.gjcpp.org/en/resource.php?issue=10&resource=47). The ordinary family response, irritability and resentment included.
