New member seeking advice.

Old 08-13-2012, 06:02 PM
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ble
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Unhappy New member seeking advice.

Hello, all.

I have no idea if this is a place for questions like this, and if not, I apologize.

As a brief introduction, I am 24 years old, I live in Indiana. I am engaged to my best friend, getting married in less than three months. I love photography, I love our three dogs. I love to read. I love country music. I love family. I come from a family of alcoholics.

I don't know if there are degrees of alcoholism, I guess there must be. Some people drink away everything they own, other people pass in society without it being obvious. The problem that I am dealing with seems so huge and destructive and devastating to me, but doing a brief scan here, it seems trivial compared to some who have lost more, suffered more, dealt with more. But today something in me kind of snapped and needed input from someone wiser. I don't know what, if anything, to do.

My grandmother is an alcoholic. We have plenty of other family, but she is the relative that I am the closest to, and vice versa.

When she is sober, she is someone that anyone would want to know. She's intelligent and witty and sarcastic and loving and wise. I always feel a need to explain to anyone who hasn't met her sober that she is so, so, so different, a completely and utterly different person. About 15 years ago she started drinking in the evenings, but secretly. It was never a "couple glasses of wine too many with dinner" kind of situation. My mother and I actually took several years to even figure out what in the world was going on, as ridiculous as that seems in retrospect. She started acting extremely strangely in the evenings, and gradually we put it together: the alcohol smell on her breath, the fact that she would go into her bedroom at unusual times during the evening and come out even more off than before, the fact that if she was out somewhere away from access to her bedroom, she was extremely irritable, but lucid. She lived in Michigan during my whole childhood, but we lived with her there for a few months and that was when we figured it out, and found a regularly replaced bottle of Jack Daniels buried in her bedroom hamper.

It got worse and worse over the next few years, but for some reason it was never spoken of or acknowledged. Out of the blue, she said that she was going to AA meetings around 2000 - the first and only willing admission that any drinking at all goes on - and mentioned them for a few months, then stopped mentioning them and started drinking again. I probably should have encouraged more accountability back then, I think now, but I was 12.

Two years ago she moved to Indiana, next door to my mother. The problems are hard to ignore. I assume that she is driving like this. She must be, sometimes. When she's drunk, she's very strange. she repeats sentence fragments over and over again and makes sounds. When my fiance's mother met her for the first time, she was drunk, and my almost-MIL assumed that she had Tourettes. I was too ashamed to tell her otherwise for a long time. She can't have a coherant conversation when she's drunk, and it's most evenings. She shows up at my mom's house, drunk, just making no sense. Any given family dinner or gathering, she may be drunk. She may not. She hides it in the bathroom linen closet now. If she goes to the bathroom sober, we wait and hang on every word she says when she comes out to figure out if she drank. This is killing me. And still, with all of this - she does not acknowledge a thing. I have a wonderful, supportive, intelligent fiance whose grandfather is an alcholic, and still, I'm too ashamed to talk to him about it very much. My own grandfather quite literally drank himself to death two years and a month ago. This is ripping me apart.

A year or so ago, I approached her about it. Lovingly and as openly as I could stand to. I acknowledged that I do know that she drinks sometimes, and that it hurts me when she does. I told her that I would rather not be around her when she's drinking. She really didn't even directly acknowledge it then at all, but for a while, she was sober around me. She's not anymore, and really, "sober around me" doesn't mean anything. It's not going to protect innocent people who get hurt if she drives drunk. It doesn't help her, or her husband, or my mom.

I'm hoping to start a family soon, and I don't want my children to go through this with her. I feel like I need to "do something," but what? I know that I can't force change on another person, but I don't know what measures should be taken to enforce boundaries, and I feel like the unspoken agreement among us all to never speak of what's going on is enabling her drinking. I do not know what to do. What can I do? Any words of wisdom, or support, or advice, anything, would be so helpful. The general opinion seems to be "can't change her if she doesn't want to be changed," but it is hurting me beyond belief to be around her when she drinks, and I don't want to do this to my children, and I don't want to do the wrong thing because I don't know what to do. I apologize for the long post, and thank you in advance for your input.
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Old 08-13-2012, 06:50 PM
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What a difficult situation, and how insightful you are.

Your family is right that you can't change her, and I think that you understand that change can only come when she wants it to.

What you can do that is different than what your family is doing now is move out of denial and openly acknowledge to others and with her that her alcohol abuse is having affects on you.

Setting boundaries is very important, and you have started that by telling her a year ago that her drinking hurts you and you don't want to be around her when she drinks. Maybe you can have another discussion with her - when she is sober - and when you have thought through what boundaries you want to have and are ready to enforce them.

Alanon may be very for you and your fiance, especially since his grandfather is an alcoholic. There are damaged patterns of parenting in both your families, and it might be very constructive for you both to do some sorting out of that before you have children so that alcoholic behavior is not part of their legacy.

This forum is a great place to come, and I am sure many will offer you more wisdom than I can. Come back often,

BothSidesNow
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Old 08-13-2012, 07:41 PM
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Welcome!
What a difficult situation. I can not even imagine the A in my life being my grandmother. I was very close too mine too. She passed away many years ago and i still miss her.
The "only" (it was enough) i had with drinking was with my RAH. I can only suggest to try and see if al-anon is a fit for you, and start reading, reading, reading. It helped me a lot. I hope you can find a way that is healthy for you so you can have a good start into your totally new life.
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Old 08-13-2012, 09:10 PM
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Please google "Al-Anon" and the name of your state, and you will find links to the meetings in your area.

The meetings last one hour, perhaps 90 minutes for some. You do not have to talk or explain your situation. There is a format which is followed, and members share their experiences of being affected by alcoholism in a friend or a family member, and they relate how they are recovering from those effects, using the Al-Anon program which is modeled after the AA program of recovery.

All you have to do is take a seat and listen and then leave. You can talk to a member after the meeting if you wish to, as it is common for some members to linger afterward or to help put away materials. Or you can simply leave. Nothing at all is required or expected of you, it is a gentle atmosphere, and the sole purpose is to provide solace and education to families of alcoholics and addicts. Everyone there has the same problem.

At every Al-Anon meeting there is an assortment of free pamphlets which explain the disease of alcoholism and describe its impact on the family and give direction to the family about how to cope with alcoholism. You are welcome to take several of these free pamphlets, enough to share with your parents and your fiance, and in doing so, you will be the first member of your family to face the reality of addiction in your midst and to start recovery. It is a family disease, and it makes all involved emotionally ill.

Your grandmother is an alcoholic because she carries the gene for addiction. At some point in her drinking life, her brain underwent a change, the change was silent and invisible to all, but at some point, in years past, her brain became the brain of an alcoholic.

The gene is in your family line and it is also in your fiance's family line. Addiction is going to continue to show up, in some members but not all, for generations to come. But there is a world of difference in the outcome for the family once recovery starts happening. The cycle of denial and despair does not continue like an endless loop. When one of you--when YOU--start recovery, then you change the entire dynamic of the disease within your family, present and future.

Welcome to SR. I hope you will continue your journey toward awareness. Your grandmother will be best served by people who set firm boundaries with her about what they will or will not cooperate with. As your recovery progresses, you will become more and more clear about the right action.

When the family refuses to enable, your grandmother may walk back into the rooms of AA.

If she never does, if she dies an alcoholic, your family -- because of recovery --will be spared much of the guilt and anguish you might otherwise suffer if you thought you might have been able, in some way, to stop her from drinking or to save her from it. You are all powerless over the alcoholic. Al-Anon can teach you how to cope with that.
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