"Flailing at the air" - perfection. DriGuy, you made my morning for a nugget to stash for the inevitable use today, I bet.

Put the rope down and move forward doing what you do, protect your child.

Big hugs!

It took me years to finally accept that addiction doesn’t negotiate, it can’t it’s not possible. Tip toeing around waiting for just that right moment when we think the perfect SOBER time has arrived to make our point and talk with them, it doesn’t matter how good our points are or how truthful because they’re not in a cognitive state where they can accept it.

Good for you for dropping the rope!!!

As the posts noted a bribe to sober up? And using/abusing his child's finances as part of a negotiation.

I also think many alcoholics trying to use negotiations to help minimize their drinking as well. It's not just about power or leverage in their minds a completed 'deal' helps validate their behavior.

It took me a few years of experience with an active alcoholic to realize that his mind was never in a normal, functioning cognitive state. Tipsy, drunk, hungover or temporarily dry, his thinking was that of an active alcoholic. I still don't quite understand how alcoholic drinking influences thinking, but I do know that it goes way beyond "drunk" and "sober." I have come to see that there is little difference between those two, even though he would say there is. The way he perceives life and relationships is drowned in alcoholic thinking.