How can I help her?
Hi everyone. This is my first post on this forum. I'm here to try and find out what I can do to help my dad's partner. She is an alcoholic and it has come to the point where her drinking is ruining her life, as well as my dad's.
A bit of background info: to be brutally honest, I have never liked her very much. My younger brother and I started living with her and my dad when I was 17 (I'm now 25 and living out of home). My brother was 12. I have always seen her as emotionally immature and unstable, lazy and as having a 'victim mentality'. It didn't help that she had never lived with or had anything to do with teenagers. My brother and I always felt as if we had to compete for our dad's attention.
Anyway, seven years on, I have moved out and it's just my dad and his partner living together. She was always a drinker, but it's now at the point where she is drinking 6 bottles of Jim Beam a week. I honestly believe that she has damaged her brain as she is almost unable to communicate at all, barely ever leaves the house and has developed a bad facial tic when she's really drunk. She has played a major part in bankrupting my dad's company - she was supposed to be taking care of the 'books' - all the paperwork and other administrative things that come with running a business. Instead, she just got drunk all day.
I have felt a LOT of anger, even hate, towards her. I have been unable to understand why she wont do anything to help herself. I can't understand why she doesn't think that she has a problem. I have felt immeasurable frustration that my dad has allowed himself to be dragged down with her.
Having said all that, my anger and frustration has gotten me nowhere. It has created so much tension between me and her that I can barely stand to be in the same room as her. She has not sought help, despite my anger. My dad has suffered a relapse of major depression because of all this and he is unable to do anything to help her, either. I am desperately worried for both of them. She is going to drink herself to death and I'm afraid my dad will die from all the stress. He wont leave her because he is afraid that she will kill herself.
So, this brings me to why I'm posting on this forum. I've realised that I need to start approaching the situation from a different angle. I desperately need some insight into how she's feeling so I can do something (anything) to help her, and in turn help my dad. I am trying extremely hard to start viewing her and her situation with compassion, rather than anger. Before my dad was so severely depressed, he made her go to a doctor. She was prescribed Naltrexone. She took the pills but kept drinking at the same time. My dad also forced her to go to into detox - she was there for 10 days, but had a drink as soon as she got home. It's as if she doesn't want to stop at all. Sometimes I feel she drinks out of spite.
What can I do to help her? What can I say that will make her do something to help herself? Why doesn't she want her life to get better? Help!!
Any advice is very much appreciated.
Laura