Well I'm new here so hi, very glad to find a place like this and forgive me if I go on a bit! I'm 25 and my mother was sober for 14 years until last year when she started drinking again. It's had a terrible effect on everyone - my parents are now divorcing and my younger sister refuses to speak to her. My dad has custody of our younger brother, who is 14 with Aspergers syndrome but Mum wants to contest this at the end of the year.
She went back into rehab earlier this year, came out and was drinking again the next day. She went back about 2 months ago and upon her release was sent to live with her brother here, rather than our hometown down south. I thought she was doing really well...until yesterday.
Mum came to spend the afternoon with me and the minute I picked her up I could smell alcohol on her. She'd been on her own in town from about 9.30am til 2.30pm. I thought maybe I was paranoid so I txted my flatmate who told me he couldn't smell it. Then he walked past her 4 hours later and txted me to say he definitely got a whiff of something. Her behaviour was a bit off the whole afternoon, not violent and emotional like she usually gets but very weird, like she used to get after a "top up".
I'm absolutely gutted. I told my dad who is more worried for me and the fact that she wants to go home next week and start living by herself. I just get the feeling she will go back and drink herself into oblivion. She sent me a txt last night denying that she was drinking, and my uncle backed her up saying he couldn't smell anything.
I don't know what to do. I'm sick of her lying, she's done it so many times and I feel so guilty for not believing her. But why would both of us smell it? I just want the truth. I don't think anything can help her now, if two stints in rehab won't. She's only just turned 50 and apparently her liver is not in great shape. She was hospitalised earlier in the year for drinking meths and told that if she didn't stop she would die. I'm at such a loss - would there be any other reason two of us could smell it on her?
(sorry for rambling, it's 5.45am and I haven't slept much lol!)