shoregirl

Hi all,

I couldn't find a post on this question, but I am sure there may be one out there -- so please don't flame me for this. I was excited to find a place to post my concern.

My mother is an alcoholic and has been for over 15 years, since I was a teen. She went into treatment once, about 10 years ago and after 5 months of being sober started drinking again - back then it was in spurts. Now it is a daily event - its actually quite astonishing how much vodka that woman can put away, but I digress. My mother will not go back into treatment, she will occassionally admit she has a problem, but she really doesn't want to stop, and is a big liar about the whole thing. Interventions haven't worked because of that. Frankly she loves drinking more than anything else and I can't do anything about that, I am afraid.

Anyway, the thing that drives me the most insane is the fact that I know she drinks and drives. She was in a car accident and totalled her car the other day -- since it was an inanimate object she hit and not another person -- I was really happy b/c I thought that would be the icing on the cake to have my Dad (who is an enabler), not purchase another car for her -- she wouldn't go and purchase a car on her own, as she is a little old fashioned in that the "men handle the finances". Anyway, my Dad is now buying her another car because he is too weak from his own (non-alcohol related) illnesses to put up a fight with her or leave her.

I just don't think I could live with the guilt if she hits another person. Have any of you done anything to stop a person in your family from driving outright, such as calling the police on your parent? Stealing keys/car? I don't live with them so I am not positive everytime she goes out on the road -- but my guess is that 80% of the time she goes out drunk. I have given up on trying to make her sober (she needs to do want to do that herself), I just want to see if there is anyway to get the driving to end. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated !

Thank you !

GiveLove

Hi shoregirl,

Very tough situation, always, when we have to stand by and watch the alcoholics in our lives make really cr@ppy choices. At least you are far enough along in your own emotional recovery that you can admit there's nothing you can do to stop your mother from drinking.

But truthfully, there's not much you can do about her drinking & driving, either. You are not your mom's babysitter -- nor your dad's, for that matter. You can't make your dad see the light until he is READY to stop being an enabler, and for some people that just doesn't ever happen. It's miserable and it's sad, but...

There have been people here on the forum who have tipped off the police to the fact that their alcoholic loved one is on the road drunk, giving specifics of where to find them; this has met with mixed results. One husband I remember went to jail. Another, an alcoholic wife, did not, and it just exacerbated the situation. There are many others who say they would not hesitate to do so...I'm one of them.

So that's an option, I suppose, but mostly I think you may want to step back and look at how you are allowing yourself to get involved, to take responsibility for your mom, to stay involved in the chaos and drama that surrounds alcoholics. Stealing the keys or car -- bad idea, and a slippery slope for sure, but your suggestion of that tells me just how invested you are in something you really can't control. Are you sure you want to get FURTHER involved by choosing these routes? Or would it be better to work on your own detachment, knowing that the only life you can truly control is your own?

Guilt has no place here, really - YOU AREN'T DOING THIS AND YOU CAN'T CONTROL IT. Can you see that your guilt would be misplaced? (misplaced guilt, by the way, is a wonderful sign of being raised with alcoholics/addicts....I have taken on some pretty crazy burdens in my life too, things I had NO power over....)

Just some thoughts. I'm sorry you're involved with this - I had to really seriously detach myself from my family members AND their choices AND others that might be affected by them. It was the only way to sanity for me.

Take care of yourself
GL

supernova

I am new to this.. so when you ask about a parent who drinks and drives. As a parent of teens and daughter of an alcoholic, the answer seems obvious. I would call the police just as I would on anyone i think is who drinking and driving. There is no way of knowing if the situation will change for your parent. I don't know how old you are, but when you have dealt with a parent who drinks for a long time, we either continue to enable or we no longer take responsiblity of their behaviour. I got tired of enabling, it was toxic to me and there were no consequences to my parent.
If your parent hurts or kills someone, that will be devastating to your entire family. Good luck with your decision.




"You don't need a good memory if you always tell the truth."

Taking5

You could turn her in for drunk driving....a bit of guilt would likely be involved there too, but not nearly as much as if she killed someone while DUI.

shoregirl

Thank you for the replies ! I think this forum is great and I am glad there is a support system for people who are going through this. I agree with all three of you, and I am going to try and find a way to have the police catch her for driving drunk. I have actually tried to do this but I am having a problem getting it done.

The problem is that I don't live with my parents and so I don't really know exactly when my mom drives and where she drives to -- though often enough there is a stop at the liquor store near their house. Any suggestions on how to get her caught in the act? Should I just call their local police department and give them a description of her, her car and her routines and see if they can watch out for her?

I haven't had a good sense that police want to get involved in these cases. My mother hit something (not someone) previously in a grocery store parking lot about a year ago (she was drunk) and the cops LET HER GO. I couldn't believe it...I think that they felt she was a troubled old lady and felt sorry for her. I would've loved for them to throw the book at her - and at least taken away her license.

Well, if I call the police and warn them, that is all I feel I can do at this point. That and pray that she doesn't do more damage. Thanks for listening.

escape artist

it may not be your business, however it can be your duty to help keep drunks off the road. my concern had been for the sake of my kids as to whether to say something about the drunk neighbor who would pass out behind the wheel of the car, with it still running and still in drive with his drunk foot on the brake!!!! so i told him that i would call the police the next time i saw him driving a car (he did not have his license) and tell them where he was. he moved away for awhile the next day! and he walks. so, since you know the dangers when your mother gets into a car, you can't really control what she does, but you can inform her of what you can do to take protective measures for all concerned!!!

tromboneliness

I've had some of these issues, too. My Dad used to drive drunk all the time when I was growing up -- often, with my sister and me in the car! It used to scare the cr*p out of us, as you might imagine, although to be fair, my Dad was actually a pretty good drunk driver -- as drunk drivers go.

Now, however, he's 89 and the state has taken his license away -- not for driving drunk, just for being an old goat who shouldn't be driving anymore. His doctor has signed off on a statement that he IS fit to drive, and he has tried -- unsuccesfully, so far -- to get his license back; he claims it was because the gear shift on his friend's car is sticky (which it may be -- but that doesn't change the fact that my Dad is 89, has only one eye that works, has a neurological condition that makes his hands shaky, and tends to drive drunk).

So I have wrestled with the issue of what to do if he should somehow convince a testing examiner that he can still drive. What I'm probably going to do is just stop by at the police station and insist on sitting down with someone I can talk to, and tell them the following: "My Dad is 89, has a history of drunk driving, can only see out of one eye, has a neurological condition that makes his hands shake, drives a Corvette (I kid you not -- that's his car... a purple-and-yellow '98 Indy pace car -- you guys will think I'm making this up, but it's the truth!), and is a MENACE TO SOCIETY when he's on the road!" The police in the next town over (his house is right on the town border) tend to be very strict about any kind of moving violations, and they're the ones who took his license away in the first place -- so if he managed to get his license back, I hope they'll take it away again....

T

sienna76

Driving drunk, buzzed or just with drink in hand is SOOOO common with my dad (in his earlier days) and all of his brothers.

We'd have a family function at my parents' house - way out in the country - so all the brothers have to drive at least an hour with their young families to my parents' house. At the end, after drinking all day, they load up their cups and head off with a full drink in hand, with elementary school children bouncing around the back seat without seat belts.

I point it out to my dad, and he's like "Aw they know all the cops in their town."

Yeah, but the kids are going to be so f***ed up!

I moved away from it all. Like 1500 miles away. I cannot stand to see that, there's nothing I can do.

Yes, calling the cops would be an option, but it's not like I knew which roads they were on or which towns they are going through.