EvenIfItKillsMe

After an exhaustive amount of investigating to determine that my mother is not in fact drinking or using Xanax again (to the most of my knowlage) all I can come up with is that she must be a dry drunk per the AA definition. She definitely fits the criteria-unable to look past instant gratification, denial of past damage caused by alcohol/drug use, indecisive, impulsive, quick to run away or turn off from problems, extremely childish, inappropriate (for instance telling a relative stranger with an ill mother that she knows she's going to lose her soon so she better spend more time with her), and naive (for instance trusting telemarketers because she instantly deems them "good honest people"), very self pitying, obsessed with the percieved wrongs committed against her (from as long as 50 years ago!), lying about things that don't even matter (for instance what she ate for dinner) the list goes on and on. Should i try to get her to go back to AA? It didn't seem to help before...

Kialua

Absolutely if she will go back to AA it will her a lot. Have you been to Alanon? that would help you put up with it also.

One thing I learned for the dry drunk personality is, what ever age the alcoholic started drinking at is the age they stopped their maturing process. So in my Dad's case we were dealing with a perennial teen.

Sounds like your Mom doesn't have any social skills and says the first thing pops into her head. She may have a lot of maturing to do.

Melbadaze

Perhaps your mothers issues are more than "dry drunk" Sometimes we have to simPly let go. Perhaps this is your mothers journey. Remember AA also say "your where your meant to be" detachment works too.

EveningRose

Interesting to read that these are traits of dry drunks. My dad was diagnosed as a dry drunk because he could stop drinking any time he pleased, although he did routinely drink 2 or 3 rum and cokes every night after work. However, the list sounds more like my mother who never touched a drop. She is self-pitying particularly, and obsessed with perceived wrongs even decades later. She still re-tells tales of her brothers getting away with less housework, 60 years ago, as if it happened yesterday, still full of bitterness.

Do co-dependents typically pick up traits of dry drunks?

wicked

I am just beginning to realize that my mother (RIP) did have all those traits.
Never heard about her family at all except to prove that men are abusive idiots (like my father, he was also a pathological liar according to her).
self-pitying and perceived wrongs, yep, that went back decades.
I am fairly sure my maternal grandfather was an alcoholic, (he came from Wales and worked in the mines) and his wife died young after having six children.
But, my mother was almost always sad, lonely and miserable.
I miss her everyday, but it must have been a hard life with my father, and she made her choices.

Beth

DesertEyes

Not typically. What happens is that people who already have some kind of dysfunction in their mind will marry an alkie and then _also_ become co-dependents.

The "stereotype" co-dependent is a perfectly healthy person who gets "sucked in" by the subtle manipulations of the alkie. A few years of that and the codependency is in full bloom. If the codependent gets into some kind of recovery they "get well" fairly quick and return to the perfectly healthy person they were originally.

Mike
Moderator, SR

EveningRose

This is sort of the devil's horns, isn't it? On the one hand, my mother has been married for 50 years to a verbal, emotional, and occasionally physical, abuser. She has been treated with disdain, criticized, run down, ignored, and sometimes hit.

And yet... She made the choice to marry a man who hit her even before marriage. She made the choice to stay. She had a good education, a career she could have gone back to, a large and loving family that would have supported her. Instead, she chose to stay and chose to fight back with bitterness and hatred.

EveningRose

Thank you, Mike. When I think of some of the stories she's told about her childhood, I think she had a lot of issues even then. Jealousy, feeling victimized, self-loathing. Maybe her family was not as perfect as she portrays, although her mother was actually awarded Mother of the Year awards, so who knows if it was her family or something in herself.

keepfinding2

No, don't try to get her to go back. AA can be really unhealthy for some people. Her behavior is just who she is, as odd as it may be. You could look into so alanon meetings for yourself.

As for the "dry-drunk". This is just a made up term. Nobody can be drunk and dry at the same time.