Is There a Medication to Help My Husband Stop Drinking?

You have probably heard that treatment for drinking means rehab or meetings, and noticed that neither is something you can get your husband to do this month. There is a third thing, it is prescription medication, and almost nobody gets offered it.

Yes — there are medications, three of them approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for alcohol use disorder, and an ordinary family doctor can prescribe them. That is the short answer, and the rest of this page is about the questions that come immediately after it.

What the three medications are for

Each does a different job, and the differences matter more than the names.

Naltrexone turns down the lift a drink gives — the reward signal. People taking it often describe a drink as less worth having, which makes it the one usually discussed for someone who is still drinking and wants to drink less.

Acamprosate works on the restless, off-balance feeling that can linger for months after someone stops, so it is meant for staying stopped rather than for cutting down.

Disulfiram makes the body react badly to alcohol — drinking on it makes a person feel ill. It works like a tripwire, and it depends entirely on the person wanting it to be there.

The American Academy of Family Physicians, the professional body for US family doctors, summarizes the research this way: a large federal review of 135 outpatient studies found moderate evidence supporting naltrexone and acamprosate, and insufficient evidence for disulfiram. Which one — if any — fits your husband is a clinical question about his health, his history, and what he actually wants, and that is genuinely not answerable from a webpage. The side-by-side version is in which medications help with drinking.

Why has no doctor ever mentioned this?

Because for most people, no doctor ever does — and that is a fact about the health system, not about whether the medicines work.

Among an estimated 27.1 million American adults with past-year alcohol use disorder in 2024, about 2.4% — roughly 665,000 people — received any medication for it, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the federal alcohol research institute.

Two and a half in a hundred. If your husband has seen a doctor a dozen times in the last decade and never once been asked about his drinking in a way that led anywhere, he is in the overwhelming majority. The NIAAA's own review of stigma in alcohol care is candid that the reasons run in both directions: people don't raise it because of what they fear the label means about them, and clinicians often don't ask.

That gap is the actual news on this page. The thing you are wondering whether to hope for is not exotic or last-resort. It is routine care that mostly isn't happening.

Can I get it for him?

No. A prescription requires him — his appointment, his medical history, his consent. There is no version where you arrange this behind the scenes and he discovers it later, and there is no version where you add it to something he drinks. That isn't a technicality; it's a safety issue, because whether any of these is appropriate depends on his liver, his kidneys, his other medications, and his other conditions.

What you can do is real, though narrower: you can find out what exists, find out where it's available near you, and have that ready. Most families never get past "you should get help," which is not an offer anyone can accept.

Does he have to quit first?

Not for all of them, and this is the misunderstanding that stalls the conversation more than any other.

The common assumption is that a person has to be sober, committed, and finished with drinking before medication is on the table — which sets an impossible entry price for someone who is, at the moment, still drinking every night. In practice the three options are aimed at different starting points: one is oriented toward people still drinking who want to drink less, one toward people who have already stopped and want to stay stopped.

So "he isn't ready to quit" is not, by itself, a reason the conversation can't happen. What he wants — to stop, or to cut down — is one of the first things a clinician will ask, and the honest answer is more useful than the impressive one.

Who prescribes this — do we need a specialist?

A primary-care doctor can. The NIAAA's Alcohol Treatment Navigator says it plainly: professional treatment has two main components, talk therapy and medications, and the medications can be prescribed by a primary care clinician or a board-certified addiction doctor. Not a residential program. Not a specialist waiting list.

The Navigator also names telehealth — phone or video appointments — as a legitimate route, and notes it is particularly useful where addiction specialists are thin on the ground. For a husband who will absolutely not walk into a place with a sign on it, that detail is sometimes the whole difference. Clero is one such route: a telehealth service that connects people with a licensed clinician who can review whether a medication like naltrexone fits their situation. If he prefers to start with the doctor he already has, how to find a doctor for alcohol use disorder covers the other paths.

How do I bring it up without it landing as an accusation?

Ask, don't prescribe. The difference is the whole thing.

"I read that there are medications for this now, and a regular doctor can prescribe them. Would you be willing to ask yours?" leaves the decision with him. "You need to be on naltrexone" hands him a diagnosis from his wife, and the Navigator's advice on starting the conversation is specific about the conditions that make it go badly: don't raise it while he's drinking, don't pick a holiday dinner, don't gang up on him or back him into a corner, plan what you'll say.

A few things that help in practice:

• Bring it as information, not as evidence. The 2.4% figure is more persuasive than a list of what he did last month, because it says the system missed this, not look what you are.
• Time it to a real opening. After a bad morning, when he is the one saying he needs to do something, is when a name and a number get used. In the 1999 trial of family approaches, people typically entered treatment after four to six sessions of their family member being coached — this is rarely a one-conversation thing.
• Let the doctor be the one to weigh it. "Ask about the options" is a request he can say yes to without conceding anything about who he is.

If he drinks heavily every day, read this first

Medication for alcohol use disorder is not medication for withdrawal, and the two get confused constantly.

If he drinks heavily every day, stopping abruptly can be medically dangerous on its own. MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's consumer service, describes withdrawal symptoms that can escalate to confusion, hallucinations, and seizures — the severe form is a medical emergency. Shaking, sweating, confusion, or a seizure during a stretch without alcohol means calling 911 or getting to an emergency room, not waiting for an appointment. Any conversation about a long-term medication comes after the question of how he stops safely, not instead of it.

The thing worth holding onto: the option you are asking about exists, it is ordinary, and the reason it hasn't come up is that it almost never does. Knowing the name of it, and where it can be prescribed, is a genuinely useful thing to be carrying the next time he asks what he's supposed to do.

This is general education, not medical advice, a recommendation, or a prescription; whether any medication fits is a decision for him and a licensed clinician who knows his history, and SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP can give either of you a confidential referral.

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