Pal44

My father has had bouts of depression/anxiety/alcoholic episodes for many years. The past few years have been increasingly worse. Although he is a functional man.. gets up every morning, goes to work, provides for his family, he continues to be a closet drinker and this November was charged with a DUI.

After he was charged he started going to AA although he just went to the lectures and did not do the 12 steps. He was good for the past 6 months and just got his license back 2 weeks ago. I don't believe my father related well to some of the people in AA because many of the people did not work and were addicted to other substances not just alcohol. Unfortunately I think by going he felt that because he didn't identify with them that maybe he wasn't an alcoholic.

My dad has also been going to a psychiatrist who didn't seem to be helping. The practice appeared to be very "new age" and every time my father would ask the dr. what he needed to cope with a craving for alcohol the doctor told him that he had to practice his "breathing excercises"

This Saturday he picked my mom up from work drunk. Rather than have it out with him, she waited until Sunday morning, when he told her that it wasn't a big deal he had just had a bottle of vodka.. when she said that he can't do that he is an alcoholic he said "No I'm not"... then he made her a list of "suggestions" of how to help him .. hide his keys.. don't give him money.. etc. My mom has grown increasingly angry with him and told him that she is his wife not his warden and she needs a husband and not another child.

Unfortunately, I think my mom and I have made this whole process to easy for him. Although I love my father I'm so angry with him and I don't know what to do.. the loving and supporting approach has not worked and now I have decided that I can't speak with him for a long length of time which I know will really hurt the both of us, but I feel as if he needs to see what he will lose.

What makes matters worse is that I just got engaged last month, and although I know it's selfish I thought this was supposed to be one of the happiest times in my life but instead I don't even want to get married because I'm worried about the reception and the alcohol

Please I need some words of wisdom,... I just don't know what to do anymore.

PsychoKitty

Pal44, Hi, I am sure there are many here way more qualified than me to give you advice, and I am also new here, but I congratulate you on sharing your problems, and my heart goes out to you in what should be the happiest time of your life.
Tough love, maybe it will help, he seems to be a decent enough guy and what you said about him going to the meetings and not relating therefore thinking he is not an alcoholic is probably true, also the fact that he has a job, only one dependency etc may have made him feel that he was better than the other members. But an addiction is an addiction, whether its one thing or more.
Have you told him how you feel, about the reception, maybe it will shock him into thinking more deeply about it.
He may be begging for help by asking your Mom to hide the keys etc, and if he knows he needs help then deep down he must realise that he is an alcoholic.
Don't give up on him, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Pal44

I'm not sure if he realizes his impact on all of us. He would probably be mortified to know that since I left college in 98 I've had to tell each and every boss of mine that my father has depression/alcoholism which would cause me to miss work and be a overly pre-occupied.

My father's priorities seem to be all mixed up. I think he sees being a provider for his family monetarily as the biggest and best thing that someone can do, and because he does that and does that well I think he feels he can "check out" from us when he wants to. That we will all be there because we always have been.. it was getting ridiculous to the point where I would make him call me in the morning, in the afternoon when he left work and when he got home.. and I live 350 miles away.

It's heartbreaking because he is a wonderful person.. I mean he always came to sports when I was younger he provided for us.. I never wanted for anything.. EXCEPT.. holidays would be ruined by his drinking and he just gets so crazy when he drinks. The biggest problem is the drinking and driving. I know that if he ever hurt someone in an accident he would never forgive himself and I really don't know if that is something I could forgive either.

The problems are so deep I just fear that we can't help him. His parents were both abusive alcoholics and because of that he doesn't have a relationship with his brother who is also an alcoholic. He used to work on the 92nd floor of the WTC so when 9/11 happened he lost one of his best friends and he just can't seem to cope with anything. He told me once that he drank so he didn't have to think anymore. He overanalyzes everything and no psychiatrist has been able to help him.

My sister said she has had it with him.. She says that he is "dead to her" and I told her at this point I can't talk to her either just because we can't agree on that subject right now and it hurts me more for her to tell me he is a horrible person that doesn't care about any of us.. I guess she is just angry because it's all fresh but I hate the feeling that my family is falling apart.

Anyway, it feels better to vent. My fiance has been absolutely amazing through all of this and I can tell him anything, but sometimes it helps to talk to people who are outside of the situation because they aren't emotinally tied to the person.

Thanks.

PsychoKitty

I think it is so sad that a wonderful person who loved his kids and went to sports etc should suffer from such a debilitating [sp] illness, he has everything going for him as a wonderful father and oneday a great grandfather yet he ruins it all by drinking. Maybe he needs to believe in himself, see himself as being a really nice guy, with a problem, you have to love yourself first so they say.
My stepfather was to me the epitome of what a perfect person should be, he could do no wrong in my eyes, but then I grew up and realised that altho he put on an amazing show of being the perfect husband he was actually an emotionally abusive one, my Mom was a nervous wreck, he would not allow her to do anything without his permission and she had to account for every cent spent, and they were not having any financial problems, and when I say account I mean account, she had to write down everything she spent money on in a little book and he would check it every night and she had to show him the money she had left and make sure it balanced. I found one of her little books when I was going thru her stuff after she passed away, it was dated 1972, and she had written down every little thing, right down to the 5c she gave me to buy sweets, I confronted him with it and gave him hell, I think I really scared him. Of course it was a case of too little too late, if only I had known what her life was really like, we could have done so much to help her, but we were all too selfishly worrying about our own lives, and expecting her to help us out all the time. I remember shouting at him in temper quite a few years ago and telling him that he may fool others but he could not fool God, and he would get punished, the day would come when he needed us, not the other way round, well, be careful what you wish for/or shout about .
When my Mom passed away we moved in to their house as I did not want to uproot him at his age (73 then), he has Parkinson's and is dependent on us for everything, from dressing him in the morning to putting him to bed at night. I run his business, my hubby does all the maintenance etc work, yet I cannot gloat over the fact that my prophecy came true. All I see is a sad old man, no one comes to visit him anymore, when my Mom was here they had lots of friends. My sisters don't have the 'time' to sit with him, his entire day consists of meals and reading the paper. Reading anything he can find. I am totally off subject here, how did I get to this, I think it has something to do with your sister saying he is dead to her, its not fair on you, you are now having to shoulder all the responsibility, and your Mom needs both of you to support her, don't leave it to late, like we did. Sorry, about all my rambling, guess you are right, its good to vent.

journeygal

HI Pal44 and welcome! Once we become overly preoccupied with the A's in our life, it's time to take a step back. You're right when you say you fear you can't help your father. You can't save him from his depression or his alcoholism. My dad is an alcoholic so I understand your pain. But only he can decide when he's ready to seek help. You will only drive yourself crazy trying to save, control, or fix him. You can't. We've all tried, believe me! But it's not up to us. They have to do it for themselves.

Have you attended any Al-anon or ACoA meetings? It's very helpful to be around people who understand from experience what you're going through. You might also check out the power posts at the top of the al-anon and nar-anon forums. They contain valuable information and insight into addiction and how it affects the family.

Keep coming back and sharing with us!

Hugs,
JG

ODAT

You didn't cause it, you can not heal it.

By worrying excessively and analysing his stuff, you sort of help him stay where he is and end up getting stuck yourself.

Detatchment is SO SO hard, and yet often times it is the only solution that works.

Your father may or may not stop drinking. He may or may not drink himself to death. He may or may not drink at your reception. If only we had a crystal ball and could look into it and see what was going to happen.....well, we would probably be far richer now.

Worrying excessively over an active alcoholic is sort of like attatching yourself to a sinking u boat and trying to pull it out of the water. Its far too heavy for any person to pull and our efforts only succeed in drowning ourselves. Then we get to sit back and look at our lives and everything that we wanted and didn't get, every dream that we wanted and didn't strive for.....well, we can blame that on the alcoholic and say it was HIS fault.

But you know something? Sooner or later it stops being 'their' fault. Sooner or later we have to realize that their story is their story and ours is ours. And we can either live and die reacting to them or we can honestly try to look at ourselves and take responsabiity for relearning the lessons we learned wrongly as we were growing up.

Your fathers drinking is not yours or your mothers responsability. I'm sure your very much aware of that....even though at times it might feel like its your responsability to stop him drinking or to control how he behaves when he's drunk. You simply can't and any efforts that you guys make to do this, not only serves as helping him to avoid his own responsability, but it keeps you sick. And further and further down we can become sick....very sick....to the point where we are suicidal and half crazed because we want so much to be able to control something which is not ours to control.

I hope that you find some meetings in your area. I hope that you can go and learn how to change some of the messed up beliefs that us children learned to belive. Because, although it is a painful thing to do, scary and feels like such intense abandonment.....we have to learn to change ourselves and in doing so we can create the most miraculous waves. We have to learn to let go of their problems and to concentrate on our own. Where did/do we go wrong? Where were we angry or enabling or lying (refusing to believe) something that we already know to be true (lying to ourselves). When were we trying to fix, save or such the consequences of their drinking.....thuse providing them with good reason not to change.

I wish you all the best. Being the child of an alcholic is very, very tough indeed. Recovering from such things is very painful but along the way there are so many little blessings that sometimes after we have travelled a couple of miles down the road we come to an understanding that we were the luckiest children in the world.

I wish for this for you.

God bless

Pal44

I thank you all for your comments it's really helped me. It's day two of not talking to him and when you talk to someone 3 times a day it's hard not to. I'm trying to be as strong as I can. I'm worried about my sister. I know she says that she hates him and never wants to see him again but I fear she is just going through the same pattern that my alcoholic grandmother went through by cutting her dad out.. and my dad did with his mother in turn..

I feel like it needs to end somewhere. My mom is the strongest person I've ever met. My sister calls my parents co-dependent, and I say my mom is in love.. because as my mom said "yes I want a life.. but I want that life with your father"

Anyway, thank you so much, I'm sure I'll keep in touch and will check out meetings in my area.

elsede

Pal44, welcome I am new here also.
I am also a child of an alcoholic as well as wife to one. And I had to do the same thing as your sister did. I told my father that he was dead to me and that my stepfather was now my dad. That was my breaking point with my father. I had to detach myself from him for my own sanity. Everytime I would try and be a "good daughter" -- go to see him and my stepmonster just to let him know I was doing fine he would be drinking and coking and I would start to leave just so a scene wouldn't start. Well one day I did my good daughter thing and I could smell it on him and told him I was leaving because he was drinking. I had my best friend with me and my step monster and step brothers were there at the time to and he blew a gasket!!! He came after me and started to beat the cr@p out of me. Finally step monster tackled him and ended up hurting herself to get him off of me. I don't to this day remember my friend putting me in the car and taking me to her sister's house to call my mom and let her know what happened to me.

My mother and I had an officer friend of ours patrol around my house and when my father came around to continue what he started we had him put in jail that night. To this day he gets angry about it but for a time period I had to take my self out of the situation. My father didn't get into rehab for another 5 yrs. Through it all my stepfather was my Dad and still is to this day. My father and I are now on better terms but he is a dry drunk. With all the actions and reactions of a drunk. So try not to be too angry with your sister. She just needs to pull away. Help her to know that her sanity is alright now. It is scary to do it.

May God bless and give you strength.
Elsede

Pal44

Thank you for your story. I guess why I'm so upset with my sister is because we didn't have a volatile childhood with our father. I mean he never hit us, never really yelled at us, picked us up from social events and drove all our friends all over, worked really hard at his job and gave us a great upbringing, gave us a college education, a car... etc., he always came home every night, never cheated on my my mom or anything like that... that's why this whole thing is so hard because every once in awhile, and you don't know when it will come he heads out the door and drinks a bottle or 2 or 3 of vodka alone, then lies about it, and then gets behind the wheel of a car.

I don't know I will give my sister her time, because it's not fair of me to tell her what to do.. it's just really hard since my family looks at me as the peacemaker and I'm just real tired of trying.

elsede

Pal44,

They all expect YOU to be the peacemaker. Stop doing it for them. They look to you to fix it. That way they don't have to work on themselves and see the problem for what it is. It takes the burden off of them and puts it all on you shoulders. I know, I was that peacemaker when my dad went into rehab. that is why it affected me so much. I was the one carrying the load for everybody. You became the enabler for all of your familly. Don't carry that load it is too much for you to handle.

HUGS and prayers are with you.
Elsede