I spent a good five years trying to save an alcoholic, so I think I can provide some insight. First, there are two kinds of alcoholics -- those who genuinely want to get better and have taken the initiative to recover on their own, and those who make attempts to get better only because people around them pressure them to. If your boyfriend is the latter, walk away right now. Because you will only destroy yourself by trying to help him. But if not, if he is the former (and I think maybe he is, if he is expressing interest in AA), then the best thing you could do is avoid pressuring him in any way. Don't lecture him or nag him, just be there and express support for his recovery. Help him find new hobbies that will keep him from drinking (boxing/martial arts/ any kind of sport -- these are IMMENSELY helpful). Help him find a new addiction, a healthy one. That's about all you can do. You have probably heard the saying that an alcoholic needs to hit bottom before he'll seek help -- what they don't tell you is that people can hit bottom over and over again, and what we consider "bottom" may not even faze the alcoholic. Why? Because alcohol affects an alcoholic in such a powerful way that it literally distorts their thinking. I've seen drunks get beaten within an inch of their life, lose all their teeth, wake in a police cell or another city with no memory of what happened -- and still not see that as hitting bottom. The alcoholic in my life held me against my will for hours, tortured me and tried to kill me while in a psychotic break from the drugs and booze -- and that still wasn't his bottom. So be forewarned that alcoholism is a disease that will never go away, and even if your boyfriend goes to AA and starts to recover, that may not be the end of it. For your sake, I really hope things go smoothly, but you should go on AA forums and read some horror stories, if you haven't already. In fact, that might help him as well. (I developed a drinking problem because of my PTSD partly because of that first boyfriend, and reading horror stories about alcoholism always helped me). In my experience, recovery is erratic. I remember the alcoholic I tried to save seeming to want to recover, going to AA, and me getting my hopes up that everything would be okay ... only for the disease to come back ten times stronger in a few weeks. It's a rollercoaster ride from hell.
