Old 01-04-2011, 02:48 AM
  # 14 (permalink)  
naive
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 2,059
hi bella-

it might take you awhile to fully understand that you can not force a drinker to stop drinking if they don't want to.

try to shift your focus from "fixing" your mother, to assisting yourself and your father.

for example, both of you would learn good tools for coping with an alcoholic in alanon...do you think your father would attend? also, why not invite him here to SR, so that he can educate himself.

one thing that you can do is to stop enabling her drinking. i think it's a good idea to remove the household finances from her responsibility. additionally, does she drink and drive? if so, there are steps you can take to remove her ability to do so. and certainly, she should not be in charge of any children if she is drunk.

none of us here have had any luck in begging, pleading, bargaining with the alcoholic to change. please, spare yourself the years of pain that we have gone through ourselves. i would recommend that you reconsider moving in with your parents, as you will go down with that ship.

as for your father, it would be good if he educated himself on alcoholism, through reading here and also alanon. then the way forward will become clearer for him. and perhaps he would be willing to get a therapist to help him deal with the verbal abuse?
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