We, especially my mother, are all feeling an extreme amount of guilt about the path we have chosen for this family by ignoring his illness for all these years. I almost feel like this feeling i've had in my gut for the past few days about this is my punishment.
First of all -- Al-Anon's three Cs are crucial to you: You didn't CAUSE your Dad's drinking, you can't CONTROL it, and you can't CURE it. Stop with the blame -- blaming yourself or your mother does nothing except make you feel miserable. Your Dad, harsh as it seems, is suffering the consequences of his own choices. Not your choices, not your mother's choices.
You'll find a whole lot of people here who wish we had that magic wand, or word, or intervention technique, to stop our loved ones from drinking. Nobody has it. They have to want it.
I have no medical expertise, but from reading your post, I have two gut-level feelings:
One is that the bro in SoCal could get in the car and come see the situation before he decides what should be done. Experience of recovery is great, but it sounds like (Two
the most immediate concern right now is your Dad's physical emergency. As I understand it, Wernicke-Korsakoff in some cases are treatable. But my feeling -- and that's not medical advice -- is that in your situation, I would probably deal with what's causing him confusion and making him unable to care for himself first, and the alcoholism in step two.
And I'm so sorry you're having to deal with all of this.
