New Here - Daughter of a Alcoholic Mom
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: CA
Posts: 5
New Here - Daughter of a Alcoholic Mom
Hi All,
Just wanted to introduce myself and share my story. I just ended up here after googling around "cutting off an alcoholic parent" and reading a few old threads that really hit home. I have struggled with finding the right al anon group in the past as I've always been the youngest of the crew or it felt like everyone there either had a recovered parent or one that had passed on, while my mother is very much active. After stumbling on threads that very well could be written about my mother, I decided to join.
Alcoholism runs in my mothers side of the family, and while she may have had issues all along, things didn't start to really get bad until I was 14. I had a wonderful childhood and she was a great mom. 14 years old was the first time my mom lost her **** so bad while on a bender that the cops were called. My aunt and uncle came by to help out and I heard my dad sob for the first time. My mother used to drink red wine each night, sometimes getting belligerent and drunk, others just going to be like a normal night. About once ever two months she would get drunk and start fighting with my father, hurling insults, lies and sometimes being physically abusive. When I was still living at home in my teens, I saw her stab him with a pair or scissors in the stomach.
She continued this way or losing it every other month, then a month of being good until I graduated college. My first year out of school was a nightmare. She could barely keep it together and had moved from red wine to gut rot cheap vodka. She nearly ran an undercover cop off the road while driving drunk and Thanksgiving. He then followed her home and myself, my brother and my father had the pleasure of watching her fight with the cops in the drive way as they wrestled her to the ground. That was her first DUI. She had been to detox many times, but she was now ordered to go to a court rehab program. She didn't feel she belonged. It was gut wrenching to receive letters from my once (and sometimes still) beautiful, intelligent, graceful mother writing about other inmates/patients stealing her underwear. The memories of which I mostly block out.
I ran the Boston Marathon that spring, a once in a lifetime chance, and she missed it because she was in some mental institution as a result of a bender. She never called me for my birthday that year. I began having panic attacks and realized her life and sickness had totally consumed me. I moved cross country at the end of that same year to get away from her and take a break from the east coast.
3.5 years later I have been able to move on myself and separate myself from her illness, but every time I fly home for a visit she is on a bender and I wm thrown right back into that anger, sadness and embarrassment. I'm flying home tonight and I know she has been on a long 8 day bender. She can seemingly go long stretches where she is "good" which helps to keep my father around. She is truly quite pleasant when she is sober, but a monster when she is drunk. At this point, I am ok with letting her go. I so rarely see the person she used to be that it's like I already lost her.
My issue is my father. He is a wonderful man, my best friend and has been with me through the whole journey (my brother is older, moved out sooner and has pushed her away easier). I worry about her killing him with the wear she is putting on his life. She will hurl insults at him all night long when she is drinking so he can't sleep. She has and will try to attack him all the time. She makes up lies and says he abuses her. She's sick in the head and says awful things to all of us. I know as much as I can't change my mother, I can't affect what my father does either. But after all this hurt and anger, he's the one I still care about, while she is mostly gone.
Sorry that was rambling, but any words are welcome. I am trying to just not interact with my mother when I travel home if she is drinking. I need to look at it as saving myself as opposed to a punishment to her--because then I feel guilty.
Just wanted to introduce myself and share my story. I just ended up here after googling around "cutting off an alcoholic parent" and reading a few old threads that really hit home. I have struggled with finding the right al anon group in the past as I've always been the youngest of the crew or it felt like everyone there either had a recovered parent or one that had passed on, while my mother is very much active. After stumbling on threads that very well could be written about my mother, I decided to join.
Alcoholism runs in my mothers side of the family, and while she may have had issues all along, things didn't start to really get bad until I was 14. I had a wonderful childhood and she was a great mom. 14 years old was the first time my mom lost her **** so bad while on a bender that the cops were called. My aunt and uncle came by to help out and I heard my dad sob for the first time. My mother used to drink red wine each night, sometimes getting belligerent and drunk, others just going to be like a normal night. About once ever two months she would get drunk and start fighting with my father, hurling insults, lies and sometimes being physically abusive. When I was still living at home in my teens, I saw her stab him with a pair or scissors in the stomach.
She continued this way or losing it every other month, then a month of being good until I graduated college. My first year out of school was a nightmare. She could barely keep it together and had moved from red wine to gut rot cheap vodka. She nearly ran an undercover cop off the road while driving drunk and Thanksgiving. He then followed her home and myself, my brother and my father had the pleasure of watching her fight with the cops in the drive way as they wrestled her to the ground. That was her first DUI. She had been to detox many times, but she was now ordered to go to a court rehab program. She didn't feel she belonged. It was gut wrenching to receive letters from my once (and sometimes still) beautiful, intelligent, graceful mother writing about other inmates/patients stealing her underwear. The memories of which I mostly block out.
I ran the Boston Marathon that spring, a once in a lifetime chance, and she missed it because she was in some mental institution as a result of a bender. She never called me for my birthday that year. I began having panic attacks and realized her life and sickness had totally consumed me. I moved cross country at the end of that same year to get away from her and take a break from the east coast.
3.5 years later I have been able to move on myself and separate myself from her illness, but every time I fly home for a visit she is on a bender and I wm thrown right back into that anger, sadness and embarrassment. I'm flying home tonight and I know she has been on a long 8 day bender. She can seemingly go long stretches where she is "good" which helps to keep my father around. She is truly quite pleasant when she is sober, but a monster when she is drunk. At this point, I am ok with letting her go. I so rarely see the person she used to be that it's like I already lost her.
My issue is my father. He is a wonderful man, my best friend and has been with me through the whole journey (my brother is older, moved out sooner and has pushed her away easier). I worry about her killing him with the wear she is putting on his life. She will hurl insults at him all night long when she is drinking so he can't sleep. She has and will try to attack him all the time. She makes up lies and says he abuses her. She's sick in the head and says awful things to all of us. I know as much as I can't change my mother, I can't affect what my father does either. But after all this hurt and anger, he's the one I still care about, while she is mostly gone.
Sorry that was rambling, but any words are welcome. I am trying to just not interact with my mother when I travel home if she is drinking. I need to look at it as saving myself as opposed to a punishment to her--because then I feel guilty.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 1,437
Hi and welcome. Yes thanks for sharing your story. You are not alone, I say that to a lot of people here because it's true. And I know we do feel alone. We are alone in our world sometimes. But when you come here you can see we are all in the same boat. It might be our father or it might be our mother but we understand. Please read the stickies on the forum above the posts here, they have a wealth of information that I inhaled when I first found this forum. And feel free to read my blog, along with others.
Your father has to find his journey, if he wants help there are many forums here to choose from. He is caught up in the sickness of his wife's alcoholism and has his part to play. He does need Alanon himself. You can encourage him but you can't control him. Maybe you could go together to a meeting.
But please remember above all else:
You didn't cause it
You can't control it
You can't cure it.
Your father has to find his journey, if he wants help there are many forums here to choose from. He is caught up in the sickness of his wife's alcoholism and has his part to play. He does need Alanon himself. You can encourage him but you can't control him. Maybe you could go together to a meeting.
But please remember above all else:
You didn't cause it
You can't control it
You can't cure it.
Bunnies!
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Florida
Posts: 1,905
Pretty much what Kialua said. Getting someone to break their codependency is a lot like trying to break the A of alcohol. You can't do it for them. Your father has to want to help himself get out of there. He's made a conscious decision to stay with your AM, for whatever reason. You can be there for support when he asks for it, but nothing you can tell him will really help. I've spent my entire life with an AM. I'm never known anything different. But I do know that you'll just exhaust yourself trying to change other people who don't want to change.
Keep posting here, go to meetings, work on your own recovery. Your father (and mother) will have to find their own if/when they're ready.
Keep posting here, go to meetings, work on your own recovery. Your father (and mother) will have to find their own if/when they're ready.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: somewhere over the rainbow
Posts: 10
you story sounds much like my mother! She can be a great person while sober but when she is drunk she is not the mother I know!! My father had a hard time with my mother also! They did divorce when I was younger, but he still had to deal with her because he had my sister and I! My father and I didn't get along for a long time. I was angery at him for trying to keep me from my mother. I just didn't understand why when I was younger. I do now. I also think that my father just wasn't happy and was so hurt by my mother he didn't know how to show love or be a father. My father now has re-married a few years ago and is the happiest I have ever seen him. We talk all the time and I love to go on vacation with him and my amazing step-mother. I can see now that my father always loved me, he was just so hurt for so many years because of my mother that he was lost. I am happy to say that I now have an amazing father daughter relationship. I may be an adult now, but it's never to late. Anyways, thanks for sharing your story. I have only been on this website a short time and have found it be very helpful!! It's nice to hear what others have to say or to even just vent about whats going through your mind. Best of luck with your trip to see your parents. Stay strong!
Member
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Utah
Posts: 4
Hi Roguey,
I got chills when I just read your post, because it sounds exactly like something I could have written. I haven't been on SR in a few years - I found a place in life where I was managing my "relationship" (if you can call it that) with my mother, and had sort of forgotten about this forum. I've recently been thrown back into the toxic cloud that is my mother, and am in need of a few reminders of how to manage MY recovery from her...and it's somehow comforting to be reminded that there are other daughters out there struggling with a toxic alcoholic mother. I hope that you are finding what you need from resources on SoberRecovery - I know it was really helpful for me the first time around, and I have faith it will be this time too
Thanks for your post...
I got chills when I just read your post, because it sounds exactly like something I could have written. I haven't been on SR in a few years - I found a place in life where I was managing my "relationship" (if you can call it that) with my mother, and had sort of forgotten about this forum. I've recently been thrown back into the toxic cloud that is my mother, and am in need of a few reminders of how to manage MY recovery from her...and it's somehow comforting to be reminded that there are other daughters out there struggling with a toxic alcoholic mother. I hope that you are finding what you need from resources on SoberRecovery - I know it was really helpful for me the first time around, and I have faith it will be this time too
Thanks for your post...
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