Lenore

Not just that something was wrong, but that your parent was an alcoholic? I'm just curious really, as I've been reading Robert J Ackerman's book on adult daughters and it says that most daughters of alcoholic mothers did not realise/admit the drinking problem til they were 19. I was fully aware that my mother was an alcoholic from about the age of 7. I hid it from others as best I could and downplayed how miserable it made me, but I knew exactly what was wrong. I'm just wondering what other people's experiences were?

Tiro

7 HUH?

I did not realize how dysfunctional my family was until my early thirties. I thought we were just poor and that all poor families had drunk and abusive parents.

dothi

Must have been 15 or 16. It was a hard, slow realization, and didn't happen alone. My first clues were when friends would get vocally upset at me if I got in the car and my dad was drunk. It never dawned on me that my life was actually in danger when I did that. Parents of friends even went so far as to ban their children from being in the vehicle if my dad was driving. Even when I told my dad this, do you think he had a problem? Not as far as he was concerned!

It took another several years after that to accept that his drinking was truly not something that I could fix.

GiveLove

I knew SOMETHING was terribly wrong when I was in the single digits, but didn't really know about alcoholism until I was around 20. I thought alcoholism was the town drunk who stumbled home from Duffy's Tavern every night and passed out on the lawn. I didn't know it could have other faces and didn't know it was living in my own house.

GingerM

I knew something was very much wrong before I ever entered school, although I couldn't (and still can't entirely) identify what the problem was. All I knew was that no one else's family behaved like mine did.

In all honesty, I believe that my mother self-medicates for some other mental illness, which has gone undiagnosed and untreated for her entire life. So was the dysfunction from the alcohol or the mental illness? It doesn't really matter.

My dad carried his own baggage from his childhood, but probably walked a fine line between not-an-alcoholic-but-occasionally-drinks-to-excess and alcoholic for a number of years, slipping into blatant alcoholism with no doubt after he retired.

But either way, I knew something was very much Not Right in our house from probably the age of 3 or 4. I don't worry too much about putting a label on the dysfunction - the outcome is the same no matter the cause from where I sat.

cinderellawkids

I was about 22, my 9 year old sister began calling me in the middle of the night asking for ride from friends were parents were to home, where parents were going because she wouldnt get in car.

My sister is now 20 and wont touch alcohol, her friend who I also gave ride too has a drinking problem at 17 (Her dad also drunk)

Im married to an alcoholic, I believe my children know and my sons best friend is his aunt, they have this unspoken connection of similarities

guiab

As far back as kindergarten, I remember being really ashamed about something in my home, and it was something I should not talk or think about. The screaming and arguments and stumbling and unpredictable moodiness and sadness were, on one hand, a characteristic of our life that had to be endured. On the other hand we could not talk about this thing that we had to endure.

This makes so little sense as I write it, but it was the acceptable and only response.

In later years it was apparent that both our parents drank alot. And I never really drew a line, cause and effect, from the drinking to the behavior. More it seemed that the anger and sadness resulted in the drinking. Only in my teen years did I hear about alcoholism and AA.

marwel

I would have been around 14-15 wen i realised what was happening. i knew my mum drank on a regular basis but iwas kid and i suppose i was naive. I started to really notice wen she jus cried and cried when she was drinking but wen she was sober she was a completely different person. she has been sober now for 11 months with only 1 relapse and i am so proud of what she has accomplished seeing as though she was drinking for 16 years. Just be there for your parents. screaming, shouting doesnt help the situation, it just exacerbates it.

brundle

I grew up in a home with a dad who was a control freak and an abusive nut job. My mother was the long suffering "at least your dad is a good provider" type. She would defend him while we hid. Her parents where alcoholics; her mom died of it at 55. She started really drinking in my teens.

I have a sister who was born when I was 15. By the time that sister was 12 she (my sister) was all but living with me because of my mother's drinking. At this point both parents have mellowed. I turned 40 this year and am planning on leaving my 50 year old AH. This is the first year that I've really been able to say that my mother is an alcoholic. I never had an issue saying our family was screwed up. I just couldn't label the way she and my husband let me down in a lot of the same ways. I feel it's kind of strange that it took me so long.

Ananda

I knew something was secret for a long time...probably by the age of 5 when I already had so many secrets that i would loose time to escape.

My mother sat down and told us that dad was alchoholic when I was 11. Of course after that some days he was and some days he wasn't ... the family view changes on a daily basis. Same with my brothers and sister-in-laws using...depends on the day wether or not anyone calls a spade a spade.

You know I have no problem defining someone as alchoholic wether they recognize it or not.

As a child I wasn't real sure what was the problem and there were so many to choose from.

I'm pretty confused about a lot of things right now....just trying to get some healing from all this.

Eleison

Probably my awareness started in my mid 20s. That was when a counsellor [who was otherwise not too great] lent me a book about the inner child and dysfunctional families. Since then, with good therapy that started in my early 30s, I am growing in awareness and compassion and acceptance by the day.

decenda

I knew my mom had a drinking problem from the moment it started. She went from drinking diet pepsi all the time to drinking vodka... I was 13-14 I guess. I think the 180 degree flip helped me understand what was happening. I don't think I started actually coping with her REAL personality compared to the construct I made of her growing up until a few months ago (I'm 24)

Understanding the alcoholism is one thing, but then starting to understand who your parent REALLY is I think is another step in the process. We all have these mental images and feelings of who we think our parents are, and in our case they are usually far off base. That's the true confrontation, I think.

Kimm992

I always knew that my parents were different than other parents but I never understood why.

I was about 14/15 when I first realized that they were both addicts.

Rancorous

I suppose I always knew there was something really wrong in my home life. I knew I shouldn't just go around talking about things that happened. I kept telling myself that there had to be kids out there who had it much worse and that I should be greatful that my situation wasn't worse than it was. It wasn't until I was about sixteen or so that I pieced together that my dad was an alcoholic. I was snooping in his home office area one day while I was sure he wouldn't be around to find me and get angry and violent. I found all these reciepts in this black filing cabinet where he kept this bottle of gin (I knew he had it from previous "expeditions", and, yeah, I used to snoop a lot because I barely knew anything about my own father and I still don't really) Anyway, the reciepts I found told me that the bottle wasn't months old at any given moment, as I had previously thought, it was brand new. He was going through a giant bottle of gin a week. I suddenly pieced together the fact that he was an alcoholic. Years later, after he died, which was last year (for those who havn't seen me post), I finally realized that the stem of most, if not all, my problems were from the impact of my childhood on me as an adult today.

iamica

My dad started drinking I think around or before I was 7, and it seemed to get worse every year after that. At first I didn't know how to react to it; my biggest strategy was just to hide in my room and pretend that nothing was going on. It wasn't until he started getting arrested for DUIs that I started to realize that something wasn't right. I didn't understand anything about alcoholism, and I didn't even really know what it was, until I was a teenager.

Kallista

I didn't realize it until I went to AA. I spent the first month to six weeks of my recovering crying and crying and crying. One of the things that I was crying over was that if I quit drinking, I would lose my mother. I wasn't very coherent about it, but I knew if I didn't use, my alcoholic/addict mother and I could never have a friendly relationship.

I was right. She effin' hates me.

all4barb

Kallista, your mother will never hate you. I went through a drug addiction with my mother, and I became sober well before she decided to. Once I had been sober for about 2 months, she decided to put me out of the house at 18. After her life at 40 was torn to pieces from drugs and alcohol, she picked up what was left and moved away. We didn't speak very much for about 2 years. That is when she began to tell me how sorry she was for everything she did, and how much of an inspiration I was to her because I had the strength to do something she couldn't do. At that point, we bonded with our experiences and she became my bestfriend.

So, it is very possible to have a friendly relationship with her. As with everything, it takes time and patience. As you probably know, you can't give up on her. She may feel as if you are the only person she has to lean on, and if you take the support away from her it could get worst. Just know that she will never hate you.

all4barb

LENORE. I don't know if I full understood alcoholism until it was too late. Growing up, my mother drank Candian Mist and 7up. I didn't know then that she was drinking it everyday, I just thought she was drinking 7up. She was what everyone called "the cool mom." I thought that was normal? I guess. I really don't know. The older I got, she started going out and staying out all of the time, and eventually she became very depressed with my grandfather passed away. I was only 13 then. I remember her laying in the bed for days and days, and she lost her job of 23 years. She would cry randomly. Basically, she had all of the symptoms of an alcoholic but I was too young to know that. As I stated above, she also had a drug problem and she moved about 3 hours away from our hometown. I didn't get to see her very much, but when I did everything seemed fine. About 1 1/2 years ago, I went to see her and noticed that she was gaining weight. I was proud of her, I thought it meant she was just off drugs completely and she started gaining her weight back. After going to visit her last Christmas, I knew something was wrong. She looked as if she was 9 months pregnant, and she was only 4'10 110lbs. I got in her car, and found 2 empty vodka bottles. I opened the refridgerator and the sweet tea had vofka already mixed it. My grandmother was with me then, and on the way home she started telling me stories about mom, and said she looked like she had cirrhosis of the liver. I had noooo idea what that was or what alcoholism really was. I came home and researched it, and sure enough, I knew it. All of the crazy things she did when we were growing up were all early stages and symptoms of alcoholism and cirrhosis. I could have beat myself for not knowing this before hand. I called my mom and talked to her about it, and of coarse she said she didnt have a problem. In February 2008 I got the call that she was in the hospital, and she was diagnoised with final stages of cirrhosis. The doctor told her that she needed to quit drinking if she wanted to save her life because she didn't have much of a liver left. Of coarse, because she was an alcoholic she didn't stop. I thought she had stopped. She told me that she wasn't drinking, and very very very occasionally she would call me to say that she had a rough day and just stopped for a drink. In May 2008, she went back in the hospital. I went down to be with her this time instead of my grandmother. Basically, the doctor told her, with me in the room, that she was going to die if she ever took another sip. He told her there was nothing left of her liver. I cried, begged, and pleaded with her to please stop because I didn't want to lose her. I moved her home after that, and I thought she had stopped drinking. She went into the hospital for simple ole' Ammonia in August. They drained fluid off of her belly and from around her lungs, and she was coming home the next day. Unfortunately, she did not make it back home with us. Her organs suddenly started to shut down, and her liver was shot. There was nothing left. She passed away on August 16. After her passing, I went through her mail, and found her bank statement. After the doctor told her that she would die, she didn't stop. She was going to the Liquor store nearly twice a day, and I had no idea. SHe was so immune to it that I you would have never known. I know this is a long long reply to the post, but simply it is how I discovered my mom was truely an alocholic. I wish I would have known way before I did and maybe there would have been a chance to get her help.

guiab

all4barb,
It sounds like you were close to your mother when she died. I am sorry that her death was so awful. In front of your eyes. You have to know that only she could make the decision to stop drinking. My mom died in a car accident and she likely blacked out from alcoholism-induced diabetes. There are so many superhuman efforts people have made to stop a loved one from drinking, and so many did not work. Addiction and enabling are so intertwined that what seems like help may actually make the disease worse. Please don't beat yourself up. Addiction is beyond the control of any but the addicted and their higher power.

Kallista

I know you mean well, but this made me laugh really hard.