I have a very good friend (we go all the way back to kindergarten) whose life is a mess right now. He's always been a drinker, but now it has reached the point where it is badly out of control and hurting his life in general. He is married (his marriage is on the rocks and he's only been married for about 14 months), and he has an infant son. He doesn't have a steady career to begin with, plus he's around 60 grand in debt to several different credit cards. He gets by because his wife's family is loaded and he lives off her trust fund, and she owns the apartment they live in outright, so he really has no costs per se, and can thus get by with no income.

He has no excuse for the condition he's in, but he is a good person (loyal friend, not a mean bone in his body), and he and I do go way back. Admittedly we've grown apart to some extent, mostly due to the fact that it's just difficult to have a normal friendship with someone who is drunk all the time.

I also consider myself a loyal friend and don't want to abandon him, as many of our other mutual friends seem to be doing. I want to help him, and his family has reached out to me to try to talk to him directly about his problems.

I'm going to do this in the next few days, but it's easier said than done and I wanted to see if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing and could give me some pointers. I don't want to lecture him and create that sort of environment. First off, I don't think that would be effective, and secondly, I'm not perfect myself, so i dont want to be handing out lectures to people.

I feel like this conversation needs to be had when there is no drinking. I called him the other day and asked him if he wanted to have lunch (my treat of course). He said thanks but he didnt want to go out to lunch because (1) he only likes going out to dinner because you drink at dinner, and (2) it's gay for 2 guys to go out to lunch.

I'm having a tough time getting him in a situation where i can have a 1 on 1 conversation with him about his drinking, and I'm also very inexperienced at having conversations like this in the first place.

Any thoughts on how best to proceed would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.