Adult children of alcoholics

detach - I can sadly relate to a lot of what your saying. My mother would do the same of getting horrilby drunk and calling me lots of names then acting lke I'd made it all up the next day and was "sulking" or being "silly".
Parador - from the way you talk it seems it would really help you to speak to someone who can help you, councilling just to pour out your whole story, it sounds like its what you would want.

I had a lot of shaem associated with my mother, I think mainly because when sober she was wonderful in a middle class sort of way, she had a good job, she worked amazingly hard, she was a really good cook, the house was always spotless and anything she tried to do she was good at.
So when I was helping this same woman to bed after she'd slipped and cut her knee and been sick it felt horrible, it just felt like it was so embarassing for her. All my family knew she was an alcoholic, but I actually don't think anyone knew how bad it was for me and my sister, what we went through or what a state my mum would get into, I wouldn't tell them now because i know it would kill them, they obviously know she must have been stumbling aroun drunk a lot and it was hard for my sister and I , but we've never shared that when she was drunk she'd drive with us in the car swerving all over the place, or call us names and tell us no one wanted us and we were going to a chidlrens home, and i've never shared the time she tried to throttle me because I was interuppting her phone conversation. Again, these things seem all the worse because she was just so normal when sober, and until near the end she could have drank a bit and still act fairly normal, so if we had people round for dinner my sister and I would start to get upset and pissed off cause we would know where my mum was headed, and her friends would think we were just sulky children. At the time I didn't realise how serious her problems were, or that I wasn't becoming a *normal* child. I got bulleid in school because I openly cut myself, and I would just act weird, I imagine it was mianly because I was brought up in such a strnage household.

I to had to make the decision to seperate myself from my alcoholic parent,I wrote her a note, saying I was never going to see her again unless she stoped drinking. I was about 13 at the time and its still the biggest betrayl of my life that she directly choose alcohol over me. I did go on and off even after my dramatic note, but she hadn't changed and I left properly when I was 14. About a year after I left she got given a death sentance by the docs, they gave her 2 weeks so I went to see her, she looked terrible and it still kills me to remember how she looked but I don't regret visiitng her. She ended up living till I was 18, and they terrible years where I started to realise properly how ###$ up my life had been up till then. She'd get a bit better, leave hospital, get strong enoguh to leave the house on her own and start drinking again until she eneded up back in hospital. I had hoped being re-united with me (which made her cry at the time) and having been in hospital would have made her stop, mainly cause she was forced to stop for 2 months in hospsital. But because I always knew she never had long left I was still being nice to her and I don't regret that, she'd stopped being horrible to me by then depsite still drinking. I can remember the day my anger turned to pity, a thought dawned on me that "whatever has made her put us all through this hell, has obviously been ten times worse for her, becuas ewhat else would make you throw away your life like this? Shes lost a husband, 2 kids, a good job, and nearly her second husband. Shes ugly, in constant pain and nearly blind"

I understand the relief you speak off when they die, I remember thinking I could never start to get over my mental health issues until my mother died. When she did die I didn't feel that relief I just felt the worst I have ever felt but I can accept that her death was the begging of the end of my pain even if it felt much worse at first. Now I'm 21 and I can remember my mother a bit more fondly, and forget about some of the worse times. But I feel like I've missed out on so much because of her and becuase of the way her treatment made me turn out.
I can relate to detach when she says she wishes people were more normal, my boyfriend invited me to christmas this year and it was a very sweet invite but wow, I wish I had my own proper family to sit round a table with and smile and make jokes with and support eachother. I'm still very much on my own and I often very much resent the fact that my life has been fucekd up, sounds like an obvious thing to say but when people bring up hapy childhood memories I wish I had more to contribute, when people talk about their parents coming to visit them at uni, I wish my mum could. I wish I looked forward to going home like all my friends do.

Parador wrote:My mother was a really severe alcoholic. She would scream obscenities, throw bottles, and abused my dog. Finally killed the dog one day. I remember we couldn't even watch TV with her around. I remember once the olympic figure skating was on and she started yelling " Get down on and the ice and SCREW HER. It will feel cold, but not for long! Just SCREW HER!" She did that kind of thing a lot. She would yell at me a lot and call me stupid or retarded. She would tell me I was crazy and would end up in a psych hospital one day. My father didn't really do anything. He just got drunk too. He wasn't a mean drunk, just a passive drunk. One night he did beat her up in frustration.

Mom set herself on fire twice that I remember. She liked to smoke 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day. I remember once when I was 9 or 10. The last time when I was 12 I remember really well. Mom was in bed smoking and drinking and ranting "masterbate, masterbate, masterbate!" I went in to take a shower. I had one of those feelings that something was going to happen. In the shower I suddenly heard my father mother,and sister screaming. I got out and there was mom on fire in her bed. They wanted water to put her out. My sister finally had the composure to cover her with a blanket. then she went to the hospital where they treated her burns and sobered her up.

She ended up in the hospital more times than I can count. I remember the time when I was only 8 and she almost drowned in the bathtub. It really would have been best if she had died then. But dad fished her out of the tub and gave her mouth to mouth. I vividly remember the gurgling sounds. He got a real scared look on his face and said to call an ambulance. I froze, My sister went into the bedroom and called. She got all upset when they asked her which ambulance service she wanted. How was she supposed to know? Then the cops came and started questioning me and my sister. It was clear that they suspected he had tried to kill her. That was almost as scary as her drowning. i thought they were going to lock up my father and leave me with psycho mom. I remember the cops asking me if my father had ever hit my mother. I guess she still had some bruising left from that one time he beat her up. She had hit him a couple of times first. he was not a violent man at all. I hesitated and then said "no' to the cop. But I knew he knew I was lying by the look on my face. I was so ######6 scared. I was always scared when mom was alive.

Her heart/liver finally gave out when I was 13. I remember she had been taken to the hospital after calling an ambulannce and telling them she couldn't breath. I figured it would be a nice weeks break from the horror until she came home. When my sister and I came home from school my father told us that mom had died the night before. I still remember he said that he couldn't bring himself to tell us when we woke up in the morning that our mother was dead. I was so relieved that she was gone. I still vividly remember my first thought "Thank God, it's finally over." Then I started crying and thinking how terrible it was that I wished my mother dead. I got over that pretty fast though.

now that I'm suspended from my job I have all this time to think and remember stuff like that. I don't want to remember this stuff.

What a terrible story.
I hope you can find peace now.

My mother is an alcoholic and has been for the past 20 years. When she is drunk she is violent, aggresive and a truly horrible person. When she is sober she is like a different person, loving, caring and a nice person to be around.

Three years ago she admitted she had a problem and sought help, but only after everyone left her and had no contact for almost a year. When she became sober I started to have contact again and let her see my child. She had been sober for two years until 3 nights ago when she started again. I could hear in her voice that she had been drinking, from what she was saying (everything is so negative and / or aggresive) to how she said it, slurring her speach and generally just being argumentative. I called her out on this and she denied it (normal if she had been drinking). I phoned her the next morning and she still denied it, but I am sure she had been. I don;t mind if she has stumbled and had a slip up with alcohol, but it's the lying that I cannot handle. It makes me think that the past two wonderful years with her mean nothing!!

What do I do? I reminded her that if she drinks, then she has no contact with her grandchild (I cannot let them go through the same as I went through) and that contact with me will cease too. I cannot be around her when she has had a drink. I find myself geting overly annoyed at her and getting really snippy (this is normally my first indicator of her drinking!!).

If anyone has any advice, please let me know,

TIA

kelpie wrote:My mother is an alcoholic and has been for the past 20 years. When she is drunk she is violent, aggresive and a truly horrible person. When she is sober she is like a different person, loving, caring and a nice person to be around.

Three years ago she admitted she had a problem and sought help, but only after everyone left her and had no contact for almost a year. When she became sober I started to have contact again and let her see my child. She had been sober for two years until 3 nights ago when she started again. I could hear in her voice that she had been drinking, from what she was saying (everything is so negative and / or aggresive) to how she said it, slurring her speach and generally just being argumentative. I called her out on this and she denied it (normal if she had been drinking). I phoned her the next morning and she still denied it, but I am sure she had been. I don;t mind if she has stumbled and had a slip up with alcohol, but it's the lying that I cannot handle. It makes me think that the past two wonderful years with her mean nothing!!

What do I do? I reminded her that if she drinks, then she has no contact with her grandchild (I cannot let them go through the same as I went through) and that contact with me will cease too. I cannot be around her when she has had a drink. I find myself geting overly annoyed at her and getting really snippy (this is normally my first indicator of her drinking!!).

If anyone has any advice, please let me know,

TIA

Is she going to AA? Maybe you could tell her you will only talk to her if she is going to AA. That would be easy to verify. That way you won't have to accuse her of drinking and have her lie about it.

MJ25 wrote:

What a terrible story.
I hope you can find peace now.

Thanks. But nope, no peace at all. I hate being alive.

Parador wrote:Is she going to AA? Maybe you could tell her you will only talk to her if she is going to AA. That would be easy to verify. That way you won't have to accuse her of drinking and have her lie about it.

Hiya Parador,

No she doesn't go to AA, she said she didn't like it when she tried it before!! I did say to her when I spoke to her last that she had to go and get help for her drinking, and if she wasn't drinking as she said she wasn't then she had to go to the doctor as there was something wrong with her, as she was slurring her words and being unnecessarily aggressive and nasty!!

Maybe I'll just have to be really to the point where there is no ambiguity!! Trouble is when she's been drinking, she remembers nothing at all!!

kelpie wrote:

Parador wrote:Is she going to AA? Maybe you could tell her you will only talk to her if she is going to AA. That would be easy to verify. That way you won't have to accuse her of drinking and have her lie about it.

Hiya Parador,

No she doesn't go to AA, she said she didn't like it when she tried it before!! I did say to her when I spoke to her last that she had to go and get help for her drinking, and if she wasn't drinking as she said she wasn't then she had to go to the doctor as there was something wrong with her, as she was slurring her words and being unnecessarily aggressive and nasty!!

Maybe I'll just have to be really to the point where there is no ambiguity!! Trouble is when she's been drinking, she remembers nothing at all!!

Sounds familiar. I went through it with both my mother and my father. Dad only quit drinking when he got alzheimer's. The disease eventually destroys the nicotinic receptors and the person loses their craving for drugs - he quit smoking too.

The most tactful way would be to wait until there is no doubt. Perhaps you could drop by and catch her with booze. Maybe even snap a shot of her with a cell camera. I recall a story where police in a city were able to get people to stop contesting that they were driving drunk by video taping them at the police station. They would SWEAR that they weren't drunk. Until they saw the video of themselves staggering and litterally bouncing off the walls. Now they have the breathalizer so they don't need to do that anymore.

She's too sneaky to get caught. None of the family have been able to find her hiding places even after turning the house upside down!! My father found the empty this morning after going through the rubbish bin!! She is now claiming that he put it there to 'frame' her!! She really can't see that she is obviously drunk!! We have tried videoing her before, but she still denies it!!

Looks like I'm going no contact again!! Was easier last time as my kid was a baby, now that my kid is old enough to know granny, the questions are starting to be asked about why we are not going to see her!! I'll give her the chance to go to AA and then we can talk, but I really feel that if everything carries on as normal then she has absolutly no consequences for her actions!!

Thanks for repling,

Kelpie

That sounds like the right thing to do. Finding the bottle is proof enough. My father found a good hiding place for vodka in the basement under the staris once. This was even after he had developed korsakov's dementia from too much drinking. He couldn't remember much - but he could remember where the vodka was. You can prevent Korsakovs with massive doses of thiamine. It's too bad they don't put that in booze. Maybe your father can give her thiamine pills. Or maybe you can tell her about Korsakov's. I doubt telling her wilol help though. When I told dad he would die if he didn't stop drinking he said he would be fine with dying then. I hope it works out better for you than it did with my parents. Good luck.

Both of my parents are/were alcoholics. My father died in '01 but it hasn't really effected me because I barely knew him. My mother is still alive and drinking.

I have no personality disorders, no alcohlism (although I have drank alcohol) the only addiction I have is to cigarettes. Honestly, with my genetics and heredity I'm surprisingly 'normal'. Sure, I get depressed knowing that my mother is an alcoholic and there's nothing I can do to change it, but I still continue on with my life and live it for me and my child. The only time I allow her alcoholism to effect me is when I'm around her and my child isn't at home. When it's just me and her and she's drunk, it brings me back to my past and there are times where I just *snap* and go off on her for being such a ******g idiot and drinking her problems away. It's sad knowing that I never really had a mother...just a problem that refuses to fix itself.

People sometimes ask me if I would cry if she died...and, honestly, I don't know. A big part of me believes that I won't. What is there to cry for? She's never given me advice, never helped me with my issues, never really acted like a caring mother. She's a good cook, that's about it. If I did cry it would be because I really don't have a mom if she died. And there definately wouldn't be any hope of changing that or making it better.

There isn't a day that goes by that I wish I was put up for adoption. I'm happy with the person I am, but I'm not happy with the people I came FROM. The only thing I am thankful for is that I wouldn't be me if they didn't create me. But they have no influence for why I'm a functioning member of society. In fact, the only thing my parents have influenced me to do is to NEVER be like them. I don't drink often ( I do on special occasions or when I have the time off from work and don't want to be at home), but I will never let it get to the point of alcoholism. If I drink for more than 2 days in a row I feel guilty and don't go out.

My grandfather and my sister are/were alcoholics. My grandfather died 2 years ago a sober man of 35 years...and my sister is currently going through probation, ANTIBUSE and countless court dates (she's been in and out of jail for 4 years now)..so it
s just more a reason for me to be a sober person.