Alcoholic Parent

heartbreak_star

Sommer43, what an incredibly strong person you are and how amazing are your family. I am so glad you're in a good place now.

Aileth - I have nothing to add really but I wanted to send you good luck and lots of good wishes.

HBS x

aileth

Sommer43 wrote: »

I'd the same were it someone I loved. They cared for me when I stopped drinking, while I was drinking I wouldn't allow them to. Which is all they wanted to do, love me better.

I've lost the craving for a drink now. I can get in my car and not worry about being pulled over by the police, I am legal and I am not worried when the phone rings, the postman comes. Drink nearly killed me and almost destroyed the people around me. I allowed this to happen.

OP. Tell your mother straight. You will no longer visit while she's drinking.

I have told my sister that I am only going to visit the premise that it is a teetotal weekend. She is worried that this will cause fireworks, but I have said that tiptoeing around it will not help and it now needs to be faced head on. They have tried to be blunt, and everything came to a head last night, but they are scared of what might happen.

If my mother tells me that she doesn't want me to come at all on this premise, then I will tell her straight she is putting alcohol before her daughter and go from there. I have absolutely massive respect for you, Sommer.

Sommer43

You wouldn't, if I told you a quarter of the stunts I used to pull. But, this is isn't about me is it?

Your sister has to deal with her coping threshold and you deal with yours. If you cannot stand her when she's drinking, then you don't have to go. She might be your mother, but don't react to her as a child. Tiptoeing around her makes for a hard life. If she's impacting on your life so much then you need to put a stop to that. This is your life, not your mothers. If she wants to drink herself to oblivion, why should you be a party to that? If you don't want it to be.

A simple "I refuse to visit you when you're drunk or in the process of getting plastered"

That's clarifying your boundaries. You may be met with "How dare you tell me what to do" answers, but those I would take with a pinch of salt. My friends locked me in a room once with them to tell me what I was doing, I threatened to climb out of the window and told them all to foxtrot oscar. My friend called the police after a row when I took off drunk in my car. That's how I woke up in a police cell. Because my friend was terrified I would mow someone down. I was furious with her at the time, now as a responsible adult, she did the right thing and we are still very close friends. She helped me through when I withdrew.

Setting your boundaries will not make her stop drinking and it really is nothing to do with you how much she does drink, but she is hurting you with her behaviour and you no longer want to be hurt.

People use the excuse that alcoholism is burying deeper pain and trauma. Frankly I don't buy that BS. I was in pain and I chose to euthanase myself with drink. Yes, I was addicted and needed it to function, but like any addiction they can be overcome and one has to be prepared to change. The horror of killing a child or a person while driving under the influence and breaking the law was enough to make me see sense. There are some who will never forgive me for my actions while drinking and I don't blame them. Those who rallied around saved my life and helped me through. But only after I stopped. For that, I have one very kind police officer to thank who I did write to after a year off the stuff. She obviously had experience in her own life of coping with a person who is drunk. One sentence: "There are two types of alcoholics, high-brow and low-brow. One is face down in the gutter and the other has their chin on the curb" I will never forget that statement as long as I live.

Your mother is lost and not interested in stopping drinking. I wasn't. But when I stopped I knew the damage I had done. Sheer terror was what I felt. I thought the ceiling would cave in at any moment. My gamma readings were 10 times what they should have been on my liver and I was a sorry mess. My skin was terrible, my eyes were not sparkly and I stank. I was 7 stone and at 5' 6" I looked like something out of Belson.

Print off an article on wet brain and post it to her. If that doesn't wake her up, not much will. Tell her she'll end up wearing a nappy and dribbling and unable to speak. You can be powerful without saying a word.

Best of all, print off this thread and stick it in front of her face when you next visit her.

Sommer43

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke%E2%80%93Korsakoff_syndrome

Wet brain. There you go OP. It's some pretty tough reading, but she needs the severe clicking of fingers in front of her face and this could be it. Hit her hard with it. It's the only way to make her see sense.

Alcohol is a killer. There are many children who are suffering with parents of alcoholics and very little help is being given to them, because it is a legal substance.

pigpen

Sommer43 wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke%E2%80%93Korsakoff_syndrome

Wet brain. There you go OP. It's some pretty tough reading, but she needs the severe clicking of fingers in front of her face and this could be it. Hit her hard with it. It's the only way to make her see sense.

Alcohol is a killer. There are many children who are suffering with parents of alcoholics and very little help is being given to them, because it is a legal substance.

my 2 little cousins are orphans in a German childrens home thanks to alcohol... that is enough for me

nicp60

Aileth,
My mother is an alcoholic. She has lost everything through it - a couple of husbands, her career (she was in middle management at a high school) and eventually her relationship with her children.

Nothing that I or my brother have done or said has ever made a difference to her or her drinking. She has surrounded herself with other alcoholics, which has made the 'sober' people in the family the outcasts.

3 years ago my brother was paralysed from the neck down in a car accident (not alcohol-related - he was in a taxi that crashed). At that point I hadn't spoken to her in over 10 years and she lived in Turkey. When she came over after the accident she got so drunk on the plane that she had to be removed from the aircraft in a wheelchair by the flight crew.
She was also so drunk in ICU that she was barred from the hospital family accommodation.

None of that has made any difference to her drinking. My brother always challenges her about it on the phone (she has a pretty permanent slur which is hugely pronounced after one glass of wine), but she always denies it.

I know now that I was right in my 20s - out of self-preservation I had to end my relationship with my mother. I know that sounds harsh, but I have dealt with it all my life and she simply will never change. I have brought up my younger brother and continue to be the only family member there for him because she is an alcoholic.

Sorry for the rant, but imo there isn't anything you can do unless she sees that she has a problem and she wants to change.

I hope it works out better for you. It really is the most destructive thing I have ever experienced.

Sommer43

NICP60

I certainly don't think you're harsh. Why should you have to put up with someone who can't respect human boundaries of those they claim they love? I'm not surprised that you want nothing to do with your mother.

When I was at my worst, I would convince a person they didn't need their eyebrows and then go back and take their eyelashes. People like you who have clearly suffered are the ones who are forgotten.

It pains me to read what you have gone through.

nicp60

Thanks Sommer, to be honest our relationship has had many other issues too, but the drinking is the icing on the cake.

I can't stand back and watch her do that to my brother when he already has so much to deal with.

People like you are an inspiration, though. Well done on your journey so far.

Gra76

My mum is a recovering alcoholic.

My dad nearly split up with her over it many times. One night when I was a lot younger I came home from school to find her gone. She'd been out and drove around for a while after necking a LOT of vodka over the course of a few hours. My dad went nuts at her when she eventually got home (no idea how she didn't crash) and she agreed to go and get some help.

She managed to resist the temptation to fall back onto her old ways up until my dad died 6 years ago.

Myself and my brother and sister had long since moved out so she was on her own for long periods of time. I guess the boredom got to her as much as anything. Within a year she was back up to her old tricks.

You can't tell someone they're an alcoholic. They will deny it even when you tell them you've found the 4 bottles of wine under her pillow or the bottle of vodka shoved down the back of the sofa.

That's one thing I learnt the hard way. As the eldest son it came down to me to deal with things. It wasn't easy. My younger brother and sister were very worried about her and my sister would call me regularly to tell me she thought she was drunk again.

When they need help they'll ask for it. From experience, you can offer it but they will accuse you of interfering. You'll be accused of not knowing what you're talking about and that you've got nothing to worry about.

They will also say they've got it all under control.

My mum did this for months until I caught her fully clothed and asleep in the shower. I took a photo of her, waited till she was sober enough and then gave her the photo.

She rang me a couple of days later and begged me for help.

I rang the Priory at Nottingham and talked to them. Fortunately my Dad had left my mum a very wealthy person and she'd told me to get the best help for her, so I think I did.

My lowest point was when my mum made the call to me to slur down the phone how drunk she was. She asked me to get her one last bottle of wine to get her through the night as she was threatening all sorts of things if she didn't get one. I couldn't face the prospect of her driving to get a bottle herself so to my eternal horror I found myself buying her a bottle of wine on the way to see her.

The next morning I took her to the Priory and she stayed there for a month. It wasn't easy for any of us.

She's had 2 further relapses since and on the first occasion she returned to the Priory for another 2 weeks.

The 2nd relapse was recently but I talked sense into her before it got out of hand again. I hope it worked because I was sick of sleepless nights wondering if she was out driving around again.

So in short, if they're deep into alcoholism nothing you say will make the slightest difference. They need to see it for themselves.

Sommer43

I shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. That's why I couldn't stand the AA meetings. While the concept of AA is good, the people in it (and this is only based on my experiences) is that it is a disease. No, cancer is a disease and alcohol dependancy is about control. Addiction happens when the choice is taken away. It took me seven years to slip over the line, but I do not have a disease and I do believe people can recover from it. People who stop smoking aren't told they will always be smokers. Had I stayed in AA longer, given that people are armchair psychiatrists, I would have ended back in the pub causing mayhem. I had a self-control problem. Not that I had had a bad childhood or an abusive husband or a schizohphrenic mother. Those are not excuses for picking up my car keys and driving while drunk. I just cannot subscribe to this parody that it is a disease. Cancer is a disease. Being !!!!ed every day and causing chaos is not. There is no excuse for the way I behaved and I simply don't behave this way now. That's down to not drinking and having control in my life. I haven't beaten alcoholism (another saying that makes me want to cringe) I simply choose not to drink the stuff and behave in a terrible way. That's a choice I make. Not a fear of the stuff. Like a smoker who doesn't want to hurt themselves any longer, I simply don't want to hurt my body and I don't want to hurt people I care about. I can be trusted without a drink inside me, with a drink, it is a whole different set of dynamics.