I'm a secret SAHM alcoholic

[Theblondewino]

Married, two kids, stay at home mother and functioning alcoholic. Both my kids are happily playing with toys in front of me while I sip on my second vodka and sprite and wrap gifts for nieces birthday tomorrow

Online SMART meetings are very helpful.
It took me to be poorly before I asked for help.
There are a couple of FB groups too.
Good luck op. 👍

Could you please clarify?

I clarified with my comment above that one.

What is the reason you are drinking?

Most people use it as a way to deal with things (we all need something).

The fact that you have up drinking for so long to get pregnant, suggests you aren’t dependent on it, you just use it to deal with stuff.

What are the bad things about your life?

Are you struggling with the kids?

Did you work before you had kids?
Would going back to work be something you would like?

If you are drinking when you are looking after your kids, it suggests that you’re trying to escape as you don’t like parenting.

FWIW my DDs best friends mum died a few weeks ago from liver damage. She leaves behind 4 kids and a loving DH.

Would your partner be supportive of you if you were honest?

Your life of domestic servitude sounds really boring OP and mothering can be as well. So your drinking is probably a way to escape that and all the hiding and messing around is at least using your brain. And the guilt and shame of the drinking is making you an amazing mum and partner so you hiding it really well. Have you read any of Marian Keyes books? She is great on alcoholism. The drinking is preventing you from making friends and thats keeping you bored and the circle keeps spinning as the drink helps the boredom. It also sounds really lonely and that you have some big questions to ask yourself - namely how do you make or remake your life into one that you dont need to escape every few days...good luck OP. Posting here is the first step towards a better life and you have already taken that first step! Live your life for yourself, dont get lost down a bottle and in the drudgery of mothering! Find new ways to cope! Good luck xxx

Then you’re wrong.

please educate yourself.

https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/stomach-liver-and-gastrointestinal-tract/alcohol-related-liver-disease/#:~:text=drinking%20more%20than%20the%20recommended,more%20serious%20types%20of%20ARLD

What am I wrong about, exactly?

Yes this is what I thought. Although it’s true that some people can drink heavily for years and have a healthy liver (my dad did- we know because they had to do an autopsy) but alcohol is definitely a cause of liver disease.

I don’t post on here usually but couldn’t read and say nothing. You could be my mum 30 years ago. She too was a ‘functioning alcoholic’, held down a job, just a glass or two of wine each night, possibly a gin or two thrown in too. Over the years it crept up.

She was adamant it didn’t impact on her but she couldn’t see what everyone else could see (that was the alcohol). As a child I became intimately in tune with the signs she had drunk. A child is so aware of their parents mannerisms and behaviour and they notice when mum seems different. It’s not necessarily something you think would be harmful (for me it was mum telling me she loved me), it’s still triggering for me if a drunk friend does this now.

long story short her drinking destroyed her relationship with me. I felt responsible for keeping her safe, pouring her drinks away, making excuses for her. As I got older I had to liaise with health care services begging for help who didn’t want to because she had made the choice to drink. She was unable to control it and ultimately lost her job. She never knew her grandchildren. She died a horrible painful death from liver and multi organ failure.

Her drinking continues to haunt me. I felt I lost my mum many many years ago. Grieving for an alcoholic parent is unbelievably hard and something I won’t ever recover from.

Your children are babies, you have time to make a choice not to give them the life I had. Stop now and you can have a happy healthy relationship with them for years to come. At best maybe we are all wrong and you can control it. But is it worth gambling your kids future happiness on?

I'm an alcoholic, 9 years sober. Please go to A.A. it's given me and my family a brilliant happy life. Drinking is just a symptom. A 12 step program helped me not need a coping mechanism. I wish you the best. It is a brave step making that first move towards getting help

This sums up perfectly what it is like to be the child of a "functioning" alcoholic. My dad was like this. I rarely saw him roaring drunk and I never thought of him as an alcoholic until many years later. But it damaged my entire childhood and my whole sense of who I was and how I relate to the world.

What I lived with was the constant sense that he had a short fuse, that he was apt to rant at people, that he was always grumpy and shouty in the mornings and that there was always something that was more important than me. You know something isn't quite right but you can't articulate it and you don't feel 100% emotionally safe.

This was "genteel" alcoholism: always post 5pm, in the home, usually with food and always quality alcohol. It was a far cry from being anything which would prompt the attention of social services and in the standards of the day it passed largely without comment. But it was still highly damaging. I never developed serious problems with drinking myself, I think largely because I didn't want to end up like him. But I drank far more than was good for me for a long time.

You know you owe it to yourself and your children not to make this their emotional template.

Please read the quote I attached that will clarify it for you.

No, shan't. I'm educated enough about the liver, thanks ma wee lovey dovey booboo.

Oh OP my heart really goes out to you. Do you have the funds to undertake some private therapy? Losing your mum before the birth of you first DC will have been incredibly traumatic. I don’t judge you for feeling like you need to block things out. I think you need to speak to someone professional to try and unpack this, for the sake of yourself and for your kids.

You also mention that you feel that you have no life outside of your kids. Are you working? Do you find any time at all for yourself? It is so important to carve this time out. I’m in the trenches of this too and find myself tempted to reach for a glass of wine in the evenings because I’m so desperate to change my headspace from a caring role to “myself” again. It is hard. So hard. But you deserve to have some me-time. It is not selfish. And please please consider some therapy to help unpack your grief, I promise you it is money well spent.

@theblondewino - you've got a lot of support on three threads, I've had my own troubles with alcohol and it sounds to me like you are self medicating the trauma of losing your mum and the boredom and isolation of caring for a1 year old and 3 year old away from friends and family.

AA really helped me - it's free, it's anonymous - no one needs to know - not the GP or social services. I attended women's meetings in line.
I think as others have said you need some support and taking your children to play groups would be good for making some friends for you, and also there is nothing wrong with them being in nursery for a bit to give you a break and for them to socialise- the 3 year old is probably entitled to free nursery hours. It is boring being at home with small children - boredom was a big trigger for me
It sounds like you can stop drinking for weeks at a time - if you are not a daily drinker but a binge drinker you won't need to taper off, but alcoholism only goes one way - daily drinking, then the morning drinking until,eventually you lose everything. That doesn't need to be you and if you stop now your children won't ever remember you as a drinker - they are young enough to escape the harmful stories others have shared on this thread. You have to stop for yourself though - and it sounds like you want to

I'm sober since 2016.
I was dri king 2 bottles of wine a night, every night while holding down a full time job.
I kept promising DH I would quit, but didn't.

I drank indoors, alone, never in public.
One day, I decided I needed to stop. I rang a counsellor there and then, got an appointment and never looked back.
I never did AA, 12 steps etc... however I got through by saying Today, I will not drink

You can do it OP. Talk to your DH. he most likely knows. Get help.

I concur.

It's the ONLY thing that has made a difference for me. I am 48 and have been a heavy drinker all my adult life. I even spent a week in hospital in 2018 after I collapsed in the supermarket having a withdrawal seizure after trying to stop drinking vodka during the day. I still couldn't stop even after that scare.

I started the Sinclair Method back in July this year and have been an early responder. Please, please look into it. There are TED talks on it, online support groups and reading materials that can be easily found. DM me if you like. Good luck.

I'm sorry @Starsindarkskies your post made me cry. You sound like a very loving daughter. I'm so sorry for what you went through. It's sounds so very hard.

Congratulations.....

@Theblondewino are you aware of the concept of tolerance? The reason you are not appearing outwardly drunk on that amount of alcohol is likely to be because you have developed tolerance. This means you will need to drink more and more to get the pleasurable effects of alcohol. It is a hallmark of alcohol addiction.

What scares you about stopping?

My father is an alcoholic and has always been for my whole life (40+years). He lost his marriage, his job and now slowly his health. He is very depressed and says he thinks about suicide every day. He is an extreme binge drinker who drinks a dozen litres of vodka/whiskey a day (this is no exaggeration) until he can't handle it anymore and then he lives in regret for 2 months and the cycle starts again.

I can tell you it was traumatising growing up and very upsetting still to watch him allow alcohol destroy him even further and take a little bit of him after every binge.

I urge you to get help. Please do. There is no shame in getting support. Are there rehabs centres in your area? Please speak to someone. Your live is worth so much more.

I will be thinking about you and wish you the very best. Xx

I’m confused. You say you drink half a bottle a day then you say you haven’t drink in almost 3 weeks. Which is it?

You could be me. I can relate to what you wrote so much.

My mum died when I was pregnant with my second. I think about her every day and wish I could have saved her.

I’m sorry @Bobbysmumma. The feelings of responsibility for them are really hard to deal with, there’s no logical thing I can say that will take away that feeling. I know.