In this YouTube monologue, Amber Hollingsworth explains why functional alcoholics often remain in denial about their drinking. She identifies two major roadblocks: (1) the ability to continue functioning in work and daily life, which creates a false sense of normalcy, and (2) the deeper denial caused by alcohol‑induced memory gaps that make the drinker perceive others as overreacting. Hollingsworth warns against naïvely recording confrontations, noting that such tactics can backfire depending on the individual's humility and defensiveness. She emphasizes the need to uncover the drinker’s internal motivators and to present treatment as an appealing, indirect option rather than a direct accusation. The video promotes a 5‑day challenge that teaches viewers how to identify hidden motivators, understand protective roadblocks, and apply psychological strategies to encourage a functional alcoholic to face their problem.
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Now, when it comes to alcoholic denial, specifically someone who is a functional alcoholic, you have a double whammy of a roadblock to get through here. 2 huge ones. Firstly, the fact that they're still functioning in most areas of their life is going to continue to give this person the impression that they're fine. And especially when the situation is, is that like their spouse or their parent or this one other person is really the only place that they feel grief about their drinking or drug use, then they really do feel like they don't have a problem. Or I guess they say they do have a problem. Their problem is you, not the substance use or whatever. If it's only coming from you, if someone became an alcoholic when they were really young, this might not apply. But if someone was like an adult already kind of functioning when they became an alcoholic, they'll work and function at work forever for years and years and years. Like the last place it's going to impact is their work. The other big roadblock that you have when dealing with someone who's a functional alcoholic is that alcoholism particularly, and this is kind of different than other addictions is the denial when it comes to this is deeper. And the reason it's deeper is because when it comes to alcohol, you don't remember sometimes at all. And other times maybe you sort of remember, but you don't accurately remember what happened and how you behaved and what all went down. And so it's really easy to feel like everyone else around you is overreacting when you don't remember it the same way they remember it. In your mind, if you're the person with the alcohol problem, it's like, okay, so I got grumpy. I said some things, but you know what? I've been thinking them, and you know my loved ones—they just get mad when I say things that I really think. They just want me to play nice. That's the way they'll see it. They don't remember it the way that you remember it, and so that makes their denial worse. And you might be thinking to yourself, well, well, I'm just going to record them and show it to them. And I've seen that actually work, and I've seen that backfire. So you need to think long and hard before you do something like that about your loved one's personality. Are they the kind of person? that can have enough humility to say, yeah, oh my gosh, that was terrible. Wow, I can't believe that, you know, or are they the kind of person that's gonna just get really mad at you and get super defensive and dig their heels in even further? Think hard before you do that. So you've got those 2 major roadblocks. The fact that they're still functional leads them to an inaccurate— most of the time alcoholism takes years to get ahold of someone. And so because it can get ahold of you slowly, it's just really hard to tell the real and true impact that it's really having on your life. The people that are closest to you are going to see it first, and then those people are going to start saying things to you, and then that is going to make you feel defensive and dig your heels in even further into denial. Someone's denial, one of the key factors here is that they have to experience uncomfortableness that does not come from you and cannot be traced back to you in any way, either valid or not. So you have to find your loved one's motivators because believe it or not, there is a piece of them that does want to change. There are things you can do to pull that forward, but you're going to have to present them with a more appealing option than trying to get someone to think they have this big giant problem. I mean, who wants to come to terms with that? I mean, that kind of sucks, right? And you do it in a way that's Not an easy pill to swallow. That might be a bad metaphor, but y'all know what I mean. And you're selling them on the idea. What you're trying to sell them on is that they need treatment or they need help. Like, there's just nothing about that's appealing. You're going to have to wrap up your appeal. You're going to wrap up your influence in a totally different way. And there are lots of videos on this channel about how to do it. We talk about how to do it on this channel, but we are— I am doing a 5-day challenge where we're going to go really deep into these things. We're going to talk specifically about how to identify your loved one's internal motivators, which are there, how to identify their hidden roadblocks about why they might be protecting themselves against seeing it, how to sort of grow those motivators. It's like all the psychological tricks of how to get through to someone, but it's not direct. Click the link to learn more about how to get a functional alcoholic to face the problem.
