Adult children of alcoholics

Not so much Friction, but what annoys me is that i have been asking "WHY?" for years and years and years.. why didn't she pick me up from school in kindergarten... why couldn't i have friends over..why didn't she want to go to the hosp. with me.. why didn't she she want to bother with me? why this and why that.. and the only answer i get to all my "why" questions is "she had problems."... period.. that's it.. end of discussion!... no other explanation.. just "she had problems"!.... i KNOW she had problems, i have KNOWN that my entire life.. but her alcohol "problem".. isn't an excuse as to why she refused to do things while she was sober... you can;t blame alcohol when your sober...
it's like having a dr refuse to help you.. and you ask the the dr why.. and the only reason he gives is because well because he has better things to do and doesn;t feel like helping you...???????? what kind of answer is that? That is not a valid answer!!
i don;t know why i feel the need to have a legitimite answer as to why my mother did or didn;t do things with me or for me... maybe there ISN'T an answer to this.. but for some reason i feel like there has to be some reasonable explanation behind it all! and it frustrates me that nobody, not even my family can give me that explanation.

Why did she treat you so badly? Because she was a narcissist and alcoholic. Why was she a narc and alcoholic? More complicated. It is a mix of nature and nurture that determines personality. Was one of her parents and alcoholic or narcissist?

welll my mother and her whole family were pure IRISH, so that's where the alcohol comes into play, my grandfather and uncles drank..but my grandfather could hold his liquor and never really drank enough to get drunk.. i have NEVER seen my grandfather drunk! My grandmother DESPISED alcohol and never bothered with it, but yet i was told that she used to give my mother money for beer, because even though she hated her drinking she would rather have her drink at home then be in a bar all night long.

As for the narcissism.. both my grandparents were very loving and affectionate towards me anyway. they were constantly arguing with my mother about her drinking, but never ignored her, until the one day they refused to give her more money, and she bought one of her... how shall i put this... "male drinking companions" (can;t find any other way to phrase that).. to my grandparents house, saying that he was going to kill them, if they didn't give her money. Police were called, and they didn;t see my mother again for a long while, (turns out she was "living" in the park down the street). so they never ignored her, but refused to put up with her drinking. So i have no idea where the narcissicm comes from, none of her siblings were like that. Unless my fam is right and says that the alcohol messed up her brain, and maybe the alcohol made her narcissistic? I don;t even know if that is possible, but i don;t have any other explanation for her behavior!

Some questions just don't have answers. Not enough is known about how the human brain works. If you really want answers you might have to become a psychologist or psychiatrist and start doing research.

hello, my dad was an alchoholic, my entire childhood....he basically robbed me of knowing what its like to be a carefree child. I was always worried aobut him taking his next drink and what he would do....my mom didnt do anything to help us kids or protect us. After many many years of denying he had a problem, she finally admitted to me one day that she had tried to get him professional help for his drinking but he'd refused...that was such a relief to hear her finally admit HE HAD A PROBLEM, he was a drunk, I was not imagining it....
yet, both of them, my mom and dad, never took any responsibility for what he did, or tried to make amends in any way for what he did
my sister and I talked about his drinking when we were younger. SHe told me she had wrote him a letter when she was a teenager telling him how much it had damaged her. My brother is the only onw who has been unable to admit it, he is totally in denial that our dad had any problem at all. If you try to talk about the drinking, my brother will get angry and turn it around on the person. When I told a social worker about our dad, my brother said I have a personality disorder. He cannot bear to admit what our dad did, anything is easier than to admit that for him I guess

Mom made amends - by dying in her 40s. Dad was a high functioning alcoholic - it didn't really catch up to him until he retired and could start drinking at 9 am.

I'm not sure what you want your parents to do to make amends. How old are you now?

Hi everyone,
Stumbled across this forum when I was searching for some kind of help or support, or just someone to talk to, about my Mum.

My earliest memory is finding an empty vodka bottle in my mum's bedroom, taking it to my dad and saying 'what's this?' I was 3 years old at the time (I'm now thirty). Dad told me to go to my room, then there was an almighty row between them about how he didn't want me finding stuff like that. I can't remember everything, but I suppose that was my first lesson in 'how not to keep the peace' in our house.
Basically, I grew up knowing my Mum was an alcoholic. I never discussed it with my Dad until I was a teenager, when he told me that he didn't know she was an alcoholic until they were engaged and living together. He got a call from her boss to pick her up from work because she was pissed, then he went through their house and found all the hidden bottles. Knowing my Dad, I'm not sure if he just didn't ignore the signs, but anyway, apparently he got her into AA and she stopped drinking for a while. I don't know when she started again but as far as I know, she never stopped since. Dad was happy to ignore the problem. There was the occasional flare up and a few massive arguments between them. He would present her with the empty bottles and she would stare at him like some dumb, stupid child with a look that made me want to slap her. She'd still deny they were her bottles though. My teenage years were pretty crap - my hormones and her drinking / hangovers didn't get on too well. We actually came to blows a few times. My close friends knew about mum's problem, but it was just so embarrassing seeing her staggering around town on a Saturday, pretending not to be drunk. We did a lot of pretending in our house.
When I was eighteen I started a relationship with a heroin addict. I didn't know he was an addict when I met him, but people told me he was and I ignored them. I went through four years of hell, debt, worry and humiliation before I finally snapped and ditched the waste of space. Looking back I can't understand why I stuck with him for so long, but apparently adult children of alcoholics are known for choosing needy partners. Anyway, I met another man after that and we moved in together six months later - finally, I'd escaped, even if it was only to a house 5 minutes away.
My dad comes round to visit once a week, it used to be for an hour but now it's stretched to two and a half, because he can't stand being in the house alone with her. Mum's visited my house about three times in eight years. Basically, she'd rather sit at home and drink than visit her only daughter. Resentful? Me?
Anyway, Mum's 70 in a few weeks, but she looks about 90. She's got permanent tremors, she's unsteady on her feet, and a few weeks ago she started falling over. Dad came home and found her on the floor with a cut on her head, and instead of calling 999, called me. I went round and patched her up. She was pretty unresponsive and I assumed she'd fallen over drunk. Should've called an ambulance but hindsight is great, isn't it? They went on a coach holiday to Torquay a week later, and the first night there Mum fell again. She was taken to hospital and given loads of tests. Long story short, she had low blood pressure and has broken a bone in her knee. She also had a chest infection. She needs 3 weeks bed rest to heal the knee, and is on drugs to clear the chest infection, but the main thing is, she doesn't have access to booze in there. The doctors noticed the signs and asked my Dad if she was a drinker, so for once in his life he had to admit she was. He stayed for the duration of the holiday, ie 3 more days, then left her there and came home to Leicester. She's now been down in Torquay on her own for 2 weeks. I'm fuming at Dad for leaving her there like that, and when I told him to go back he said 'I can't, it's all just doing my head in, I can't cope with it'. So basically, like always, he's running away from the problem.
I've spoken to Mum twice on the bed phone. She's in flaming la la land. I assume it's withdrawal dementia. She thought I was her sister and told me someone she knew was in the next bed. That man died about twenty years ago!! She asked if Dad was going to see her, I told her he was a few hundred miles away, but that didnt register, then she said that I might visit tomorrow. I told her it was me she was talking to, not her sister, but again it didn't register. Dad has mentioned the confusion to the doctors on the phone today and he reckons they told him she's on vitamins and antibiotics so that's what's causing the dementia!!!!! I'm totally sick and tired of having to deal with his spineless and blinkered attitude to the whole thing, but what I really want to know is how long the dementia will last? Will it now be permanent? If she starts drinking when she gets home, will it make her worse? I'm extra worried because we have dementia in the family, my Mum's mum died of it, and she's really sounding like her right now. If anyone has any experience of this I'd really appreciate hearing about it.
Thanks so much, and sorry for the rant!

hi maybe this will help Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.

good luck

Thanks Rob, wow... that sounds kind of scary. I spoke to my Dad again last night, his first reaction was 'well she'll have to go into a home'.

I despair.

devilinablackdress wrote:I despair.

I had a wife who was a drunk.
She was a beautiful girl, young girl.


But live like that? Even they do a program...
She did, I think, once, two years.


And then they slip? Forget it.


It's like you're strapped to a bomb.