rosiev

My mother-in-law, who is in her mid-seventies, drinks wine in secret every day and lies about it. She probably drinks between 1 and 1.5 liters on average daily. It is hurting her health in many ways, the most serious of which are dementia and congestive heart failure (CHF). My husband and I moved in with her for a year to try to help her get straightened out. For that year I did not work and I spent every day focused on her health and companionship. I ate meals with her, took her for walks, planned activities, and took her to the doctor. After about 6 months she decided she didn’t want to not drink anymore and she started withdrawing from me. Eventually, she was constantly on us about moving and it was pretty unbearable, so when the opportunity came up we ended up moving into the house next door to her. We had to do this for our relationship and our sanity.

Now we provide her three meals every day that are consistent with the diet prescribed by her heart doctor and we check on her twice a day. We do this because my husband fears that her health will decline much more quickly if we leave her to get her own food. (Yes, I realize that we are totally enabling her.) He thinks that her dementia may be so severe that she is incapable of making the choice to get food for herself. I sometimes argue that she can make the decision to drive to the store and buy wine once or twice a day, she can make the decision to argue with him about whether drinking is bad for her or not, and she can make the decision to repeatedly cancel plans with her friends, so she seems capable of making the decisions she wants to make even if her memory is failing.

Every time my husband takes her to the doctor, they talk to her about how drinking is harming her health and she just gets angry and defensive. Then she goes home and drinks. My husband also tries to talk to her in private about her drinking problem, but she is in complete denial and defends herself at all costs. She turns every one of these conversations into ugly exchanges even though my husband and the doctors are all very calm and kind to her. It seems that there is nothing more important to her than drinking wine.

Last weekend my husband and his sister decided they wanted to try hiring a caregiver to come spend some time with their Mom once a week. After a big scene during which she got angry, cried, and tried to kick us all out of her house, she finally agreed to give the caregiver a try. However, when the agency came out to talk to her and my husband, she had no recollection of agreeing to anything (no surprise there) and went through the whole anger/crying/arguing drama again. In the end, she did not agree to have a caregiver come over.

After all that, I told my husband that if he can’t bear to let her go and he thinks that she is too isolated in her house, and we have already failed to change things for her by being with her constantly, the only other thing I can recommend is trying to get her to move into a retirement community with assisted living so that she will have social interaction and supervision. He and his sister really are trying to not do that. Their Mom has a colossal fear of “being put in a home” and they might not even be ABLE to do it. While she has dementia, she isn’t impaired enough to be declared legally incompetent. And, all this really comes down to her alcohol abuse. I think most of her defensive arguing centers around protecting her access to wine. I know it is also about independence and pride, but I think that if alcohol wasn’t ruling her, she would realize that she needs a little help and might even be glad that we are here to lend a hand.

Thank you for reading my story. If anyone has experience or perspective to offer, I will gratefully look forward to reading it!