New here and dealing with alco-mom. Any insight would be helpful.
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New here and dealing with alco-mom. Any insight would be helpful.
Hey all,
I am new here. Been reading through posts for about an hour and am just amazed that so many of them say what I am feeling and thinking. I am just looking for some insight on how to cope with all the stuff bouncing around in my head right now.
A little background. My mom is an alcoholic. She has always been an alcoholic. In the last year there have been a few events that have put a definite strain on my tolerance of her behavior. Event one. She showed up at a party at my house drunk last April - I mean, embarassingly wasted (stumbling, slurring, being wholly inappropriate). She was planning on taking my puppies (mini weenie dogs and my babies since I don't have kids) for a sleepover. I knew better but I let her take them but I didn't want to "make her mad" so I let her. She wrecked her car by plowing into the back of someone. She almost killed my Boomer boy. Thank goodness he is fine, but it has really made me not want to let her keep the dogs anymore. I told her at that point that I would not be around her when she was drinking anymore, which as I am sure hoping some of you can imagine, did not go over well. Second event. I got engaged in September and she has had a very hard time dealing with it. I mean, she has a hard time dealing with anything that removes focus from her, but she has been very nasty to me about how I "ignore" her now. My fiance and I went to see his fam for Christmas and she was texting me the entire time we were gone about what a horrible person I was because I would not permit her to go 'kidnap' her grandpuppies (don't worry - we had a pet-sitter). Third event. She got fired from her job Jan 9. I know it is because she was constantly calling in "sick" (or hungover to rational people). Fourth event and the last straw for me. She tried to kill herself by ODing on her medication last week while she was very drunk. She texted my 20 year old sister and told her what she had done and my sis called 911. Mom got very angry with me that I didn't go see her while she was in the ER and that I removed my house key from her. I told her the day she got home that if she doesn't start seeking help and make a serious bid at getting sober, I am done and she will not be a part of my life anymore.
I am ok with that and I have a very mentally/emotionally abusive father that I cut out of my life 8 years ago, so I do understand the ramifications and what I am signing myself up for. BUT... I love her. I want her to get better. And most of all, I want her to quit feeling like she gets to control my life and my feelings. I am pretty much not speaking to her now because trying to tell her anything just makes me SO angry. And because no matter what anyone says to her, she somehow winds up being the victim. It truly is unbearably frustrating. I feel for people on here who are dealing with drunks because they are horrible to deal with. And I'm not so much having guilt as just I have no idea where to go from here but I know it can't stay like it has been for the last 15 years because it is killing me. Any advice or wisdom from someone who has dealt with this with a parent?
I am new here. Been reading through posts for about an hour and am just amazed that so many of them say what I am feeling and thinking. I am just looking for some insight on how to cope with all the stuff bouncing around in my head right now.
A little background. My mom is an alcoholic. She has always been an alcoholic. In the last year there have been a few events that have put a definite strain on my tolerance of her behavior. Event one. She showed up at a party at my house drunk last April - I mean, embarassingly wasted (stumbling, slurring, being wholly inappropriate). She was planning on taking my puppies (mini weenie dogs and my babies since I don't have kids) for a sleepover. I knew better but I let her take them but I didn't want to "make her mad" so I let her. She wrecked her car by plowing into the back of someone. She almost killed my Boomer boy. Thank goodness he is fine, but it has really made me not want to let her keep the dogs anymore. I told her at that point that I would not be around her when she was drinking anymore, which as I am sure hoping some of you can imagine, did not go over well. Second event. I got engaged in September and she has had a very hard time dealing with it. I mean, she has a hard time dealing with anything that removes focus from her, but she has been very nasty to me about how I "ignore" her now. My fiance and I went to see his fam for Christmas and she was texting me the entire time we were gone about what a horrible person I was because I would not permit her to go 'kidnap' her grandpuppies (don't worry - we had a pet-sitter). Third event. She got fired from her job Jan 9. I know it is because she was constantly calling in "sick" (or hungover to rational people). Fourth event and the last straw for me. She tried to kill herself by ODing on her medication last week while she was very drunk. She texted my 20 year old sister and told her what she had done and my sis called 911. Mom got very angry with me that I didn't go see her while she was in the ER and that I removed my house key from her. I told her the day she got home that if she doesn't start seeking help and make a serious bid at getting sober, I am done and she will not be a part of my life anymore.
I am ok with that and I have a very mentally/emotionally abusive father that I cut out of my life 8 years ago, so I do understand the ramifications and what I am signing myself up for. BUT... I love her. I want her to get better. And most of all, I want her to quit feeling like she gets to control my life and my feelings. I am pretty much not speaking to her now because trying to tell her anything just makes me SO angry. And because no matter what anyone says to her, she somehow winds up being the victim. It truly is unbearably frustrating. I feel for people on here who are dealing with drunks because they are horrible to deal with. And I'm not so much having guilt as just I have no idea where to go from here but I know it can't stay like it has been for the last 15 years because it is killing me. Any advice or wisdom from someone who has dealt with this with a parent?
Last edited by AtATotalLoss; 01-24-2013 at 01:03 PM. Reason: font
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I'm sorry you are going through this with your AM. FWIW, I think you are doing the right thing. She is the only one that can get herself sober, and maybe losing the important people in her life she will hit bottom. Or, maybe not- but, you can not control it.
UGH- I hope you and your sister are close and can be there for each other.
UGH- I hope you and your sister are close and can be there for each other.
A work in progress
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: South Jersey
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Hi, glad you're here.
I've never had to deal with an alcoholic parent, but I've been in two marriages to alcoholics (one got sober before we married, and is still sober today, but he was drinking when I met him). It is an INCREDIBLY difficult and crazy-making disease to deal with as a loved one. (Not great for the alcoholic, either, but right now we are talking about loved ones.)
I strongly suggest that you and your sister both check out Al-Anon. It can help a lot for coping with the insanity that surrounds the disease, and will be helpful even if you have no contact with your mom until/unless she chooses recovery.
You have the right not to allow your life to be dictated by her disease and ensuing drama.
I've never had to deal with an alcoholic parent, but I've been in two marriages to alcoholics (one got sober before we married, and is still sober today, but he was drinking when I met him). It is an INCREDIBLY difficult and crazy-making disease to deal with as a loved one. (Not great for the alcoholic, either, but right now we are talking about loved ones.)
I strongly suggest that you and your sister both check out Al-Anon. It can help a lot for coping with the insanity that surrounds the disease, and will be helpful even if you have no contact with your mom until/unless she chooses recovery.
You have the right not to allow your life to be dictated by her disease and ensuing drama.
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Thank you for the support. I have just recently come to realize how all-consuming her sickness has been for me. I have accepted my accountability for enabling her behavior, but I know that I am the one that has control for making that stop. Thank the higher power that I have a wonderful and supportive fiance who has been reinforcing how intolerable this has gotten for me and who deals with my occasional rants and insanity. I WILL get through this, come what may. And I finally feel in a strong enough place to truly be there for my sis with this too.
BUT on a happier note... My mother attended her first AA meeting ever today and she liked it and wants to go back tomorrow (tho of course her email about it was very pissy and "are you happy now?"). Scared to hope too hard, but very cautiously optimistic that she can get well.
It is just so nice knowing I am not crazy. Trying to express any feelings about this with her is pointless. She is so deep in her victim mentality at this point that anything I say gets turned around so I am horrible and she is so mistreated. Is SO beyond irritating. Plus, she has been very nasty to and about me and as much as I respect that it is her sickness and denial, I hate to admit that it still hurts.
I have attended some al-anon meetings. Maybe the ones I was at just were not "good" but I didn;t get much out of them. I will try again though, because I am def in a WAY different place with this than I was three years ago when I went.
If any of you are praying folks, please offer up some prayers for my mum that she can be well...
BUT on a happier note... My mother attended her first AA meeting ever today and she liked it and wants to go back tomorrow (tho of course her email about it was very pissy and "are you happy now?"). Scared to hope too hard, but very cautiously optimistic that she can get well.
It is just so nice knowing I am not crazy. Trying to express any feelings about this with her is pointless. She is so deep in her victim mentality at this point that anything I say gets turned around so I am horrible and she is so mistreated. Is SO beyond irritating. Plus, she has been very nasty to and about me and as much as I respect that it is her sickness and denial, I hate to admit that it still hurts.
I have attended some al-anon meetings. Maybe the ones I was at just were not "good" but I didn;t get much out of them. I will try again though, because I am def in a WAY different place with this than I was three years ago when I went.
If any of you are praying folks, please offer up some prayers for my mum that she can be well...
Last edited by AtATotalLoss; 01-24-2013 at 05:49 PM. Reason: font
A work in progress
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Heh, "Are you happy NOW?" LOL, sorry, I don't even know your mom but I can just hear the tone.
I will keep you and your family in my prayers. I hope you do find a good meeting. It does sound like you picked up some recovery tools the first time around--you seem to get the idea of detachment, for example. Has your sister been?
I will keep you and your family in my prayers. I hope you do find a good meeting. It does sound like you picked up some recovery tools the first time around--you seem to get the idea of detachment, for example. Has your sister been?
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Sis hasn't been yet. But my work offers free counseling so I am looking into some counseling with someone who specializes in addiction and family counseling. I am urging my sister to go with me, but she isn't quite to the "eff this" stage I am yet. And she is very different to me - not near as chatty 
My dear aunt is a 12 year recovering alcoholic so I have talked with her too and her insights have been invaluable and very illuminating.
Just sucks so bad loving my mom so much and knowing that I can't do a damn thing about this. I think my breaking point was the suicide attempt last week when my sister got to my house and said "If I hadn't gotten in a fight with her none of this would have happened" and then burst into tears. I almost yelled at her but told her that she doesn't get to feel guilty for this.
But that is the true hell of loving an alcoholic (parent, bf, spouse etc). Guilt. Shame. Anger. Resentment. Hopelessness.
The point I am at right now is good. For the first time, maybe ever, I don't feel powerless. I love mom. I want her to get better. But I have a very full and great life to enjoy and I kinda really don't care if she comes along for the ride or not. And if she doesn't get sober, I gotta go. Cus trying for all these years to cope with it has just tangled me up. It is a very odd and liberating feeling. Scary. But the good kind of scary - like starting a really FUN roller coaster ride. Does any of this make any sense to anyone? I have been kinda out of it mentally for the last 8 days...
My dear aunt is a 12 year recovering alcoholic so I have talked with her too and her insights have been invaluable and very illuminating.
Just sucks so bad loving my mom so much and knowing that I can't do a damn thing about this. I think my breaking point was the suicide attempt last week when my sister got to my house and said "If I hadn't gotten in a fight with her none of this would have happened" and then burst into tears. I almost yelled at her but told her that she doesn't get to feel guilty for this.
But that is the true hell of loving an alcoholic (parent, bf, spouse etc). Guilt. Shame. Anger. Resentment. Hopelessness.
The point I am at right now is good. For the first time, maybe ever, I don't feel powerless. I love mom. I want her to get better. But I have a very full and great life to enjoy and I kinda really don't care if she comes along for the ride or not. And if she doesn't get sober, I gotta go. Cus trying for all these years to cope with it has just tangled me up. It is a very odd and liberating feeling. Scary. But the good kind of scary - like starting a really FUN roller coaster ride. Does any of this make any sense to anyone? I have been kinda out of it mentally for the last 8 days...
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Also - in a desire to be totally honest here - she has threatened suicide and said things about "not wanting to live" so often. Am a totally horrible person that part of me knows my life would be way easier and smoother if she actually did die? I hate that thought! I hate it. But it is there and the response I don't say when she's on her pity-wagon is "why don't you just do it then?" God... I am awful. Such a hateful thought...
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No, you are NOT a horrible person for thinking that way! You are't actually wishing her harm, but rather to have the burden of dealing with the craziness lifted.
It sounds to me like you are doing the right stuff. Of course, doing the right stuff only ensures that YOU will come through it all intact--not that it will necessarily do your mom any good (though none of it hurts, that's for sure!).
Your sister will have to find her own way, too, but if you can help her see some of the resources available to help her, that's just being a good sister. It's a shame that she is feeling any kind of responsibility for the suicidal gesture.
It sounds to me like you are doing the right stuff. Of course, doing the right stuff only ensures that YOU will come through it all intact--not that it will necessarily do your mom any good (though none of it hurts, that's for sure!).
Your sister will have to find her own way, too, but if you can help her see some of the resources available to help her, that's just being a good sister. It's a shame that she is feeling any kind of responsibility for the suicidal gesture.
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I will be there for my sis as much as she wants/needs me to be in dealing with this. She is really an incredible young woman and I know she will deal with this, but it is good for both of us to know we are in the boat together. Thank you x1000 for telling me I am not horrible. Working on letting go, but those thoughts (and many far worse) haunt me sometimes...
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No, you are not horrible! And good on you for living a full life and detaching.
I grew up with my AM (my parents divorced when I was very young). She was never nasty (not her nature) but she'd drink a jug of crappy Gallo wine each night, and cry. (that tore me apart when I was a kid). She missed countless events that were important to me, and I never invited friends over in the evenings because she could barely speak most of the time. My siblings and I basically raised ourselves, and I got out of the house as soon as I could, at age 17, on to college and so forth, without really understanding any of it. It wasn't detach with love, it was get the he** out of the house as fast as possible and move far away, though of course I love/d her.
She remarried; her husband was an alcoholic too. My siblings split from that scene as fast as they could (and ended up 3000 miles away with me!) She didn't connect her drinking with our fleeing, or if she did, it didn't matter to her enough to stop. One night in an alcoholic stupor, she fell and smashed her head and lay unconscious until the next morning when her husband discovered her on the floor. She was life-flighted to a hospital, nearly died, and spent the next 6 months relearning how to speak, how to walk... she came out of there disabled, sober and has been sober for 20 years. Near-death was what it took.
Although your mother and my mother are polar opposites in temperament, it sounds like, they are very much alike. You are right - you cannot control her or how she is or her way of being or her actions. You are powerless over her addiction.
You can only control yourself, and the boundaries of what is acceptable and what you won't tolerate. You are on the right road, IMHO, by stepping out of the way of her addiction. This is HER battle, not yours.
And you can still love her too, and feel compassion. Seems to me the hardest thing about loving an addict is the never-ending conflicting emotions one experiences, at least for me. Love/hate, loathe/like, disappointment/hope... removing yourself from the immediacy of that merry-go-round seems like a very healthy choice. You can love her from afar.
And btw, I am glad your dogs made it! I'm a low-rider fan myself.
I grew up with my AM (my parents divorced when I was very young). She was never nasty (not her nature) but she'd drink a jug of crappy Gallo wine each night, and cry. (that tore me apart when I was a kid). She missed countless events that were important to me, and I never invited friends over in the evenings because she could barely speak most of the time. My siblings and I basically raised ourselves, and I got out of the house as soon as I could, at age 17, on to college and so forth, without really understanding any of it. It wasn't detach with love, it was get the he** out of the house as fast as possible and move far away, though of course I love/d her.
She remarried; her husband was an alcoholic too. My siblings split from that scene as fast as they could (and ended up 3000 miles away with me!) She didn't connect her drinking with our fleeing, or if she did, it didn't matter to her enough to stop. One night in an alcoholic stupor, she fell and smashed her head and lay unconscious until the next morning when her husband discovered her on the floor. She was life-flighted to a hospital, nearly died, and spent the next 6 months relearning how to speak, how to walk... she came out of there disabled, sober and has been sober for 20 years. Near-death was what it took.
Although your mother and my mother are polar opposites in temperament, it sounds like, they are very much alike. You are right - you cannot control her or how she is or her way of being or her actions. You are powerless over her addiction.
You can only control yourself, and the boundaries of what is acceptable and what you won't tolerate. You are on the right road, IMHO, by stepping out of the way of her addiction. This is HER battle, not yours.
And you can still love her too, and feel compassion. Seems to me the hardest thing about loving an addict is the never-ending conflicting emotions one experiences, at least for me. Love/hate, loathe/like, disappointment/hope... removing yourself from the immediacy of that merry-go-round seems like a very healthy choice. You can love her from afar.
And btw, I am glad your dogs made it! I'm a low-rider fan myself.
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Ahh a fellow weenie dog lover
Oh boy yeah. My mom has been married twice after my dad. My sister's dad was a total fruit loop (on anti-psychotic meds) and my second stepdad was passed out cold from vodka by about 7 every night. I actually moved in with my a-hole dad to get away from mom and second stepdad which she to this day blames all on him. Unbelievable. I bailed her out of jail at 16 because of her drunken insanity with 2nd stepdad, and put her to bed more nights than not - good thing she is a tiny lady cus I had to carry her there most of the time! And then her longterm bf after him was a great guy - when he wasn't chugging whatever alcohol he could get his hands on. Got subpoenaed to testify in court against him for her drunken insanity with him. Yes, such schizophrenic feelings I have for her!!
I haven't shared most of these things with anyone but my closest friends and my fiance. To think that for so very long I have carried the burden of guilt for all this crap. And felt somehow like I was the messed up one. These last few days have been pretty incredible. For the first time ever feeling freed from all this. I've never felt "normal" like this before... And to have finally somehow separated my concern for her and my worry for her well being to live somewhere outside myself. I am so thankful that I am finally here.
Oh boy yeah. My mom has been married twice after my dad. My sister's dad was a total fruit loop (on anti-psychotic meds) and my second stepdad was passed out cold from vodka by about 7 every night. I actually moved in with my a-hole dad to get away from mom and second stepdad which she to this day blames all on him. Unbelievable. I bailed her out of jail at 16 because of her drunken insanity with 2nd stepdad, and put her to bed more nights than not - good thing she is a tiny lady cus I had to carry her there most of the time! And then her longterm bf after him was a great guy - when he wasn't chugging whatever alcohol he could get his hands on. Got subpoenaed to testify in court against him for her drunken insanity with him. Yes, such schizophrenic feelings I have for her!!
I haven't shared most of these things with anyone but my closest friends and my fiance. To think that for so very long I have carried the burden of guilt for all this crap. And felt somehow like I was the messed up one. These last few days have been pretty incredible. For the first time ever feeling freed from all this. I've never felt "normal" like this before... And to have finally somehow separated my concern for her and my worry for her well being to live somewhere outside myself. I am so thankful that I am finally here.
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