Relapse - long-winded appeal for advice.
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Join Date: Sep 2021
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Relapse - long-winded appeal for advice.
Stumbled across this site looking for advice, this seems like a supportive and insightful community and I hope that someone has some advice and wise words to share.
I will try to keep this backstory short as possible - my (single) mum has been a functional alcoholic for the majority of my life. This is not aided by the fact that my close family and I are quite certain she has a narcissistic personality disorder, depression and bipolar disorder - when she was in her mid-20's her mother (my grandmother) spoke to my father stating that "she has the biggest chip on her shoulder about the world".
I am 29 now, I identified that alcohol was an issue for her when I was perhaps 12 years of age. I staged an intervention with my 8-year-old sister; this was met with a lot of tears on mum's part, but ultimately nothing changed, as rather than facing the crux of the issue, she was more upset that her "children think she is a ****-head". Undoubtedly in denial.
Despite a number of these discussions over the ensuing years, this alcohol dependency became routine in our lives. In our pre and teenage years, we would routinely wait until she drank herself into a deep sleep at around 6:00 every evening before we then could go about our own business - mum at the time had a very strong family attachment, where we needed to spent literally every waking moment in each other's company, therefore, we saw these opportunities to see friends and 'live life' so to speak. Occasionally, things would be more intense, and we would have to pay her bar tabs and carry her home and put her to bed. When I was of age, she would request daily I pick up wine from the local shop every day. My internal conflict in this instance stems from the fact that while she was undoubtedly reliant on alcohol to function, she still held a job, got promotions, bought a house and made sure that myself and my sister had the things we wanted, therefore could be considered to be a good mother during this time. However, when she drank she became very angry and would 'blow up' over very minor and inconsequential things, to the point of shouting at us for 9 hours at a time in some instances. Occasionally this would be physical and myself and my sister have suffered from scratch marks on our faces and arms, and our more expensive possessions would routinely be thrown out of windows, something she reflects on today as funny.
We developed strategies for this to handle these situations, without communicating we could gauge independently the likely outcome of the 'heated exchange' and apportion blame to each other depending on the path of least resistance to put an end to it. Nowadays she speaks a lot about how I was a perfect baby and recalls the feeling of joy she felt when I was born - with this in mind, I suspect that this anger was stemming from the fact that we were progressively becoming more independent, free-thinking and she was losing control of us.
Around 14 years ago, she got into a relationship with someone. This was better for my sister and I, as she became a far happier and content person; much more like her old self. The issue is he was a HGV driver, so the days he was away, she would default to 'angry mum'. I suspect this was because when she doesn't have a distraction, she is very guilty of intensely deliberating on where her life 'went wrong' and would compare herself to others, to their successes, their material possessions, relationships etc. which would make her spiral into a depressive state. She routinely contacts my father to inform him that the mortgage would have been paid of, reminisces of old times, she truly lives in the past, unfortunately.
Around 12 years ago, she fell pregnant with the HGV driver's baby and abstained from alcohol during the pregnancy - we honestly thought we were out the woods, however, during the latter stages of pregnancy she lost her mother to cancer, whom of which was quite partial to drink herself. Perhaps history repeats itself. This death sparked post-partum depression and saw her begin drinking once more. She and the father split around 1.5 years after, on the count of her accusation that she caught him watching CP. She never loved him, but this sparked a very damaging self-pity feedback loop, where she used everything negative in her life as an excuse to be depressed - even depression. An extreme example of this would be that she uses the excuse of having been raped as a reason to be depressed, despite that this never happened and was 'rape' on a technicality, what with both consenting individuals being underage at the time. She began fabricating similar stories to fit her depressive agenda and ultimately ends up believing them with the utmost conviction, including one which featured me punching her so hard in the face that she flew across the room or how my father (who worshipped the ground she walked on) was physically abusive. I digress, but my sister and I ended up caring for the baby most nights, preparing evening meals and so forth.
We tried intervening and getting her help, but this didn't work as she was deep in denial. She would have "you're right, no more drink" moments, but the alcoholic side of her mentality had more control. We knew she had the willpower as she gave up smoking cold turkey.
She started connecting with old school friends on Facebook and entered a relationship with one of them. She left my sister (at the time, 16) to fend for herself while she moved to another country to live with this man which she knew for 1 month. He was an ex-drug user and ex-alcoholic and picked up fairly quickly what was going on with her. He worked with myself and my sister to get the help she needed, but she would descend into bouts of rage and denial. He tried managing her drinking, by allowing her to drink a certain amount a day, gently reducing it until she no longer felt compelled to do so. This led to her drinking in secret. About 6 years ago, she crashed her car, with his child and her 5-year-old from the previous relationship, police at the scene established that she was 3x over the legal limit.
Social services became involved and the 5-year-old got taken away on a temporary basis, to allow her to detox. After 3 failed attempts and 2x self-discharges from rehab, the child was taken away and put into foster care, who ultimately ended up living with me after a very lengthy and stressful process. This, naturally, made mum seek out drink more, and over the following 5 years, this has seen her in and out of the hospital with cirrhosis, ascites and complications thereof. She would never turn up to addiction counselling appointments, and ignore the doorbell when she had home visits. I cut ties with her for a year as she was becoming verbally abusive on the phone - along the lines of "you were an accident, you ruined my body, you told the social services I am an alcoholic, it's all your fault". I understand this is the 'angry mum' speaking but I needed to do so for my own mental health.
When she was told that she had 3 months to live, she finally stopped and has been abstaining for over a year and a half. We got the old, 'happy mum' back, and has been getting stronger and mroe positive with every passing week. Social services are becoming more and more receptive to her and her youngest spending more meaningful one-on-one time together. Things are looking up. Although it is difficult seeing her frequently on the count of caring for her daughter and living an hour's drive away, which does upset mum a fair amount, but my hands are tied.
This weekend my sister visited and found 3 empty boxes of wine under mum's bed, with her looking noticeably more ill. The fact that mum called me around a month ago to tell me that her funeral has been paid for in advance feels more significant now.
So I guess the question is, at this point, how do you help someone who has lost their house, children and nearly her life (absolute rock bottom) but is still on this path of self-destruction? Despite all of this, I feel (perhaps wrongly) that she is deep down a caring and good person and a wonderful mum, who if had the drive and willpower to face her demons would have the large, happy united family she has always dreamt of. Unfortunately, she is in denial about drink, and even more so in denial about who's fault this situation is - when she admits to drinking, it's everyone else's fault, especially the social services for taking her child away over "one silly mistake". She quit the most recent rehab visit at the therapy stage as she couldn't deal with the idea any of this is/was her doing.
I'm going through the motions at the moment, she is lucky to weigh 6 stones at the moment, her body cannot deal with this torture for much longer. I am conflicted because when the day comes (and it may come soon, I feel) I will feel a mix of emotions: relief that the angry alcoholic in her is gone, but I will also be sad and frustrated that the (perhaps illusion) of 'old happy mum' is trapped inside her....and that loving, caring person is about to have her entire existence extinguished over denial and a beverage....where not even the prospect of meeting her grandchildren or seeing her other two children get married is enough reason to live. I feel I owe it to 'old happy mum' to give fixing the situation one last go. My sister thinks we should let her run her course and do what she wants, as nothing will stop her, but I feel I owe it to the person that raised me, and I owe it to my youngest sister (12) to keep her mum around as long as possible, as flawed as she is.
What do you do when nothing else has worked? Thoughts most appreciated and thank you for sticking until the end of this essay.
I will try to keep this backstory short as possible - my (single) mum has been a functional alcoholic for the majority of my life. This is not aided by the fact that my close family and I are quite certain she has a narcissistic personality disorder, depression and bipolar disorder - when she was in her mid-20's her mother (my grandmother) spoke to my father stating that "she has the biggest chip on her shoulder about the world".
I am 29 now, I identified that alcohol was an issue for her when I was perhaps 12 years of age. I staged an intervention with my 8-year-old sister; this was met with a lot of tears on mum's part, but ultimately nothing changed, as rather than facing the crux of the issue, she was more upset that her "children think she is a ****-head". Undoubtedly in denial.
Despite a number of these discussions over the ensuing years, this alcohol dependency became routine in our lives. In our pre and teenage years, we would routinely wait until she drank herself into a deep sleep at around 6:00 every evening before we then could go about our own business - mum at the time had a very strong family attachment, where we needed to spent literally every waking moment in each other's company, therefore, we saw these opportunities to see friends and 'live life' so to speak. Occasionally, things would be more intense, and we would have to pay her bar tabs and carry her home and put her to bed. When I was of age, she would request daily I pick up wine from the local shop every day. My internal conflict in this instance stems from the fact that while she was undoubtedly reliant on alcohol to function, she still held a job, got promotions, bought a house and made sure that myself and my sister had the things we wanted, therefore could be considered to be a good mother during this time. However, when she drank she became very angry and would 'blow up' over very minor and inconsequential things, to the point of shouting at us for 9 hours at a time in some instances. Occasionally this would be physical and myself and my sister have suffered from scratch marks on our faces and arms, and our more expensive possessions would routinely be thrown out of windows, something she reflects on today as funny.
We developed strategies for this to handle these situations, without communicating we could gauge independently the likely outcome of the 'heated exchange' and apportion blame to each other depending on the path of least resistance to put an end to it. Nowadays she speaks a lot about how I was a perfect baby and recalls the feeling of joy she felt when I was born - with this in mind, I suspect that this anger was stemming from the fact that we were progressively becoming more independent, free-thinking and she was losing control of us.
Around 14 years ago, she got into a relationship with someone. This was better for my sister and I, as she became a far happier and content person; much more like her old self. The issue is he was a HGV driver, so the days he was away, she would default to 'angry mum'. I suspect this was because when she doesn't have a distraction, she is very guilty of intensely deliberating on where her life 'went wrong' and would compare herself to others, to their successes, their material possessions, relationships etc. which would make her spiral into a depressive state. She routinely contacts my father to inform him that the mortgage would have been paid of, reminisces of old times, she truly lives in the past, unfortunately.
Around 12 years ago, she fell pregnant with the HGV driver's baby and abstained from alcohol during the pregnancy - we honestly thought we were out the woods, however, during the latter stages of pregnancy she lost her mother to cancer, whom of which was quite partial to drink herself. Perhaps history repeats itself. This death sparked post-partum depression and saw her begin drinking once more. She and the father split around 1.5 years after, on the count of her accusation that she caught him watching CP. She never loved him, but this sparked a very damaging self-pity feedback loop, where she used everything negative in her life as an excuse to be depressed - even depression. An extreme example of this would be that she uses the excuse of having been raped as a reason to be depressed, despite that this never happened and was 'rape' on a technicality, what with both consenting individuals being underage at the time. She began fabricating similar stories to fit her depressive agenda and ultimately ends up believing them with the utmost conviction, including one which featured me punching her so hard in the face that she flew across the room or how my father (who worshipped the ground she walked on) was physically abusive. I digress, but my sister and I ended up caring for the baby most nights, preparing evening meals and so forth.
We tried intervening and getting her help, but this didn't work as she was deep in denial. She would have "you're right, no more drink" moments, but the alcoholic side of her mentality had more control. We knew she had the willpower as she gave up smoking cold turkey.
She started connecting with old school friends on Facebook and entered a relationship with one of them. She left my sister (at the time, 16) to fend for herself while she moved to another country to live with this man which she knew for 1 month. He was an ex-drug user and ex-alcoholic and picked up fairly quickly what was going on with her. He worked with myself and my sister to get the help she needed, but she would descend into bouts of rage and denial. He tried managing her drinking, by allowing her to drink a certain amount a day, gently reducing it until she no longer felt compelled to do so. This led to her drinking in secret. About 6 years ago, she crashed her car, with his child and her 5-year-old from the previous relationship, police at the scene established that she was 3x over the legal limit.
Social services became involved and the 5-year-old got taken away on a temporary basis, to allow her to detox. After 3 failed attempts and 2x self-discharges from rehab, the child was taken away and put into foster care, who ultimately ended up living with me after a very lengthy and stressful process. This, naturally, made mum seek out drink more, and over the following 5 years, this has seen her in and out of the hospital with cirrhosis, ascites and complications thereof. She would never turn up to addiction counselling appointments, and ignore the doorbell when she had home visits. I cut ties with her for a year as she was becoming verbally abusive on the phone - along the lines of "you were an accident, you ruined my body, you told the social services I am an alcoholic, it's all your fault". I understand this is the 'angry mum' speaking but I needed to do so for my own mental health.
When she was told that she had 3 months to live, she finally stopped and has been abstaining for over a year and a half. We got the old, 'happy mum' back, and has been getting stronger and mroe positive with every passing week. Social services are becoming more and more receptive to her and her youngest spending more meaningful one-on-one time together. Things are looking up. Although it is difficult seeing her frequently on the count of caring for her daughter and living an hour's drive away, which does upset mum a fair amount, but my hands are tied.
This weekend my sister visited and found 3 empty boxes of wine under mum's bed, with her looking noticeably more ill. The fact that mum called me around a month ago to tell me that her funeral has been paid for in advance feels more significant now.
So I guess the question is, at this point, how do you help someone who has lost their house, children and nearly her life (absolute rock bottom) but is still on this path of self-destruction? Despite all of this, I feel (perhaps wrongly) that she is deep down a caring and good person and a wonderful mum, who if had the drive and willpower to face her demons would have the large, happy united family she has always dreamt of. Unfortunately, she is in denial about drink, and even more so in denial about who's fault this situation is - when she admits to drinking, it's everyone else's fault, especially the social services for taking her child away over "one silly mistake". She quit the most recent rehab visit at the therapy stage as she couldn't deal with the idea any of this is/was her doing.
I'm going through the motions at the moment, she is lucky to weigh 6 stones at the moment, her body cannot deal with this torture for much longer. I am conflicted because when the day comes (and it may come soon, I feel) I will feel a mix of emotions: relief that the angry alcoholic in her is gone, but I will also be sad and frustrated that the (perhaps illusion) of 'old happy mum' is trapped inside her....and that loving, caring person is about to have her entire existence extinguished over denial and a beverage....where not even the prospect of meeting her grandchildren or seeing her other two children get married is enough reason to live. I feel I owe it to 'old happy mum' to give fixing the situation one last go. My sister thinks we should let her run her course and do what she wants, as nothing will stop her, but I feel I owe it to the person that raised me, and I owe it to my youngest sister (12) to keep her mum around as long as possible, as flawed as she is.
What do you do when nothing else has worked? Thoughts most appreciated and thank you for sticking until the end of this essay.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Chicago
Posts: 5,450
I can tell you what I would do though it will be very hard to hear: I would let go of trying to save her. You can't, anyway, and you never could. You have no control over her will to change. She is an adult who has the right to drink if that is what she wants to, regardless of the consequences.
Sometimes (most times, actually) all we have left is acceptance. This is who she is. You can let her know you love her, but you cannot make her be something she isn't.
Sometimes (most times, actually) all we have left is acceptance. This is who she is. You can let her know you love her, but you cannot make her be something she isn't.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 688
Try to feel pity and compassion for someone who has been so unhappy and struggles with how to handle those demons we all have. And keep your boundaries.
I have entirely walked away from my family because it's an entire force all treating me poorly, including verbal and physical abuse. I am the 'scapegoat' in an alcoholic family. However, if it were just my mother, I think I would find it easier to take a deep breath, take her daughter to see her once a week (or whatever), and know it's temporary. Try to treat her with kindness and listen if she wants to talk about things. If she gets abusive just kindly say, "I'm leaving now."
I have entirely walked away from my family because it's an entire force all treating me poorly, including verbal and physical abuse. I am the 'scapegoat' in an alcoholic family. However, if it were just my mother, I think I would find it easier to take a deep breath, take her daughter to see her once a week (or whatever), and know it's temporary. Try to treat her with kindness and listen if she wants to talk about things. If she gets abusive just kindly say, "I'm leaving now."
Member
Join Date: May 2021
Location: England
Posts: 1,850
I salute your compassion for your Mum , you have survived a very difficult childhood and emerged as someone with insight and personal strength.
As others have said, you cannot save your Mum. Hang on to the good memories to share later. You can treasure the time she has left and accept that she will make her own decisions. It is probably time to let it run it's course. What a difficult time for you.
As others have said, you cannot save your Mum. Hang on to the good memories to share later. You can treasure the time she has left and accept that she will make her own decisions. It is probably time to let it run it's course. What a difficult time for you.
Bunnies!
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Florida
Posts: 1,905
Unfortunately, you cannot help a person who does not want to help themselves. I had to cut off my AM 9 years ago because it was a lost cause and I needed to gain some sanity. She's still drinking, or so I hear through the grapevine. She won't stop until she's dead or ready to on her own. I have a feeling it will be the former.
Set boundaries and learn to let go. You can't save her from herself.
Set boundaries and learn to let go. You can't save her from herself.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Posts: 215
My story has many similarities to yours...
My Mother never found recovery. In fact after numerous bouts of pancreatitis caused by alcohol abuse she eventually succumbed to Korsakoff syndrome/alcoholic dementia and died as a result.
I found the 12 step fellowship of Adult Children of Alcoholic & Dysfunctional Families before her final demise and as a result I managed to make my peace with 'it' and her and I was able to provide care for her when she most needed it. I appreciate now that there was nothing I could do to help. I was as powerless over her addiction/drinking as she was. Sad but true.
There is an axiom posted all over these family boards - Didn't cause it, can't control it, can't cure it.
There is a version of the serenity prayer that I hold very dear to my heart and one which is sometimes posted in and around this particular board;
God, Grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change
the courage to change the one I can and the wisdom to know that ONE is ME.
My Mother never found recovery. In fact after numerous bouts of pancreatitis caused by alcohol abuse she eventually succumbed to Korsakoff syndrome/alcoholic dementia and died as a result.
I found the 12 step fellowship of Adult Children of Alcoholic & Dysfunctional Families before her final demise and as a result I managed to make my peace with 'it' and her and I was able to provide care for her when she most needed it. I appreciate now that there was nothing I could do to help. I was as powerless over her addiction/drinking as she was. Sad but true.
There is an axiom posted all over these family boards - Didn't cause it, can't control it, can't cure it.
There is a version of the serenity prayer that I hold very dear to my heart and one which is sometimes posted in and around this particular board;
God, Grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change
the courage to change the one I can and the wisdom to know that ONE is ME.
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