Alcohol problems hide inside normal life better than any other addiction. Drinking is social, legal, and everywhere; a person can hold a job, keep a family, laugh at gatherings, and still be quietly losing the ability to choose whether tonight involves drinking. Often the person suspects it long before anyone else says it. If you’re reading this page about yourself, that suspicion is why you’re here, and it deserves better than another year of private bargaining.

Signals worth taking seriously

Not a checklist, and not a diagnosis — reasons to talk to a professional. Rules you set for yourself and keep breaking: only weekends, only beer, only after work. Drinking that has to be hidden, minimised, or accounted for with prepared answers. Mornings organised around recovery from the night. People you love raising it, more than once, and the conversations going nowhere. And any experience of shaking, sweating, or deep unease that eases when you drink again — that last one matters medically, and soon.

Before you stop: read this

If you have been drinking heavily for a long time, do not stop abruptly on your own. Alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous, and its severity is hard to predict from the outside. Call +256 770 700944 first and let a clinician advise you; if withdrawal symptoms are already severe, go to the nearest hospital now. This is not drama. It is the one piece of medical advice this page will insist on.

What treatment looks like

Assessment first, always, because “drinks too much” spans an enormous range and the right response spans one too. For some people, out-patient counselling and therapy do the work while life continues. Where the body has become dependent, treatment usually begins with medically supervised detoxification at our residential centre — a minimum of two weeks, set by your own medical picture and confirmed by assessment, with the length driven by the person’s overall presentation rather than by alcohol alone. Beyond detox, alcohol programmes here combine medical care with intensive psychotherapy, typically 30 to 180 days of in-patient treatment where clinically advised, integrated with 12-step work. Recovery then gets infrastructure: relapse prevention, aftercare, and the alcoholics support group at our Kyambogo centre — a single peer-led meeting in the 12-step tradition, Tuesdays at 5:00 pm, free to attend and open to people recovering from other substances too.

For the family watching

You did not cause this and you cannot drink-proof another adult’s life. What you can do is get informed, get supported, and keep a door open — the families section is written for exactly your position (For Families). If tonight’s problem is a person in severe withdrawal or danger, the nearest hospital comes first.

One call starts the sorting-out: +256 770 700944.