Originally Posted by
Lewis73 
Some great advice above....heres the problem....she is maybe not as bad as I think? I know this sounds like its ME in denial! But let me describe a day to you and you tell me if this is someone I should try and get out the house....
She will get up at 6.30am (with a head ache!) and get the kids school lunch ready
She'll get them to school (10 min walk away) - I do it when I can but often have left the house by then for work.
She'll come home....now, from 10am until she gets them at 3pm anything can happen. She may have a good day and do cleaning/DIY non-stop, may meet friends...or may just crash in bed. She will probably drink if she doesnt have to drive later that day...but wont get very drunk.
3pm she gets the kids and from then until 8pm ish is busy with getting dinner. If she has to drive them somewhere she wont have drunk....but she avoids doing that (i take them places almost daily for sports, etc) because while she is getting dinner (which is stressfull with young kids yelling and fighting) she start sneaking off to her bedroom for a few cans.
By 8 or 9pm the kids are bed, we are both home and she'll have had 4/5 cans....if I'm nice and happy she will be as well (although I can tell she is clearly "altered" - oddly, friends dont even notice she is drunk) She will often cook dinner and sit and chat....all happy families while she sneaks in another 4 cans or so. We'll go to bed, she'll pass out pretty quick and spend all night snoring and smelling off booze.
If I mention the drink...we will fight, she'll say she is fine/its her choice/she could stop but doenst want to and then, in a mood, she'll drink more!
So you see (i hope) the problem.....if I shut up everything is almsot ok...the kids arent daft, they see the empties in the bin every day and the 13 year old will mutter "drink" when he gets shouted at for doing something minor.........but its not like she drink drives, she only vomits everywhere after getting REALLY wasted on nights out (once a month I suppose) - In the last 8 weeks she went clubbing with friends and fell over (huge bruise) and we had the holiday vomit issue......so in her mind, its no big deal. (well..it is, otherwise she wouldnt have spent £££££ on home detox, wouldnt have a bedroom carpet still stained by sick, her 17 year old daughter would still talk to her, etc, etc - its just amazing how the drunk mind tricks itself.....she has recently got annoyed at ME for getting her help with detox as she views it as a waste of money as she now sees she could have stopped herself but just doenst want to! Twisted reality!!!)
I really dont know what to do...I wish she was drink driving so I could have something to go at her about.
Holy Hatbaskets, Batman. Yes, she's as bad as you think & I would wager that she's really much worse off than you realize.
It's like this - when you're IN IT you can hardly see the reality, but when you have a more removed POV (like us online strangers here at SR) we can see it more clearly... much like the way the view changes from being on the ground at point zero vs. viewing it from an airplane above. Same situation, totally different understanding.
When I read this post I find it to describe intolerable behavior. FOR ME, I could not live my life around this type of emphasis on her drinking. Everyone in the family has to work AROUND her and she bases her choices (whether to participate in taking her kids to their sports obligations, etc.) around whether she "wants" to drink. So essentially, you are ALL hostages to alcohol, every single one of you in that house.
I think the fact that your oldest child won't even speak to her mother speaks VOLUMES. Your children are hurting and telling you so: LISTEN TO THEM. I have long since forgiven my father for his addiction but I had a bit of a harder time forgiving mom for NOT stepping up as the SOBER parent & protecting us when she could.
Please understand how this disease progresses. There is so much shared information on this site, I spent 8 months reading before I ever posted. What you are experiencing now is just collateral damage compared to where you are likely headed. The problem for us codies is that we adjust degree by degree to the damage our A's cause & find these small adjustments tolerable, never seeing the larger strokes until it's too late.
Please read the stickies, visit the ACoA forum & read about how children of alcoholics struggle even after becoming independent adults & think about how your kids are being exposed to that same poison.
The problem is she doesnt see her problem as anything she cant sort out if she WANTED to......
Every active alcoholic thinks this. Every. Single. One. It is part of the disease/dysfunction. Has she ever actually DONE it?