ajarlson i know i've said it but i'm saying it again - i'm really happy for you and the realizations you're having!! getting free from the shame and guilt that keeps us hooked in, for years and years, is just the best feeling.
i keep wondering, reading the posts in this thread and in so many others, if i could have done more - i spent a lot of time and energy helping and taking care of her, yes, but none of it was addiction-related help because i didn't know that that was the monster i was fighting, at the time. i didn't try to find rehabs, i didn't do any of that research, i didn't try to learn about how to help addicts - i was trying to keep her bills paid, trying to get her to doctors, trying to help her keep her professional life in a way that she could go back to it if she got better, trying to help her keep her house, trying to get her to EAT. but i didn't do anything that would actually help an addict. and now with all the new knowledge of what might have - MIGHT have helped - i wonder if i left her alone to deal with something no one can deal with alone.
so it really helps to hear, again and again, that you can't rescue someone else, and that even with all the right tools you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped - because she really didn't. every thing was a fight. she would make me FIGHT to get her bills to pay them. she would make me FIGHT to get her to eat. she would SABOTAGE my efforts to help her, all the time - but then blame me when things went wrong. and she certainly never admitted to having a problem with pills. and her personality was impossible before the drinking. the manipulations, lies, and guilt and shame started loooooooong ago.
this is not my fault. i have to say it over and over. because she tells everyone her family turned on her.