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

As someone with a long garden backing onto a footpath & car park, let me tell you there are plenty of people out there who secretly drink. We have at least 4 'regulars' that either chuck their bottles into our garden or shove bags into the hedge presumably so their families don't see the empties. Every week it's the same few bottles of cheap vodka, multiple white wine bottles (same brand so assume it's the same person) and 3 or 4 half bottles of brandy. Really sad but please don't think just because you don't see the hard evidence it doesn't exist.

Start by speaking to him tonight.

Get some quit lit and listen to some podcasts.

Speak to your GP

Try and get out with the little ones and make
some friends. Toddler group etc.

If and when you feel strong enough open up
to your husband

You’ve got to change, and you can. But it takes work x

Something is going to happen which will make you have to stop, trust me.

My advice is to stop before it happens.

Do you want to waste these precious years pissed up when your kids are little? Do you want to be an embarrassing drunken mother? You'll never get these days back.

When they're older they'll know you've been drinking and they will hate it, you might not realise it now but your behaviour is different when you're drunk around your kids.

You can overcome this OP. You will always be an alcoholic, but you can be sober, and have a better life for yourself and your children. It will be hard, but it can be done.

DH and I both have one alcoholic parent. I’m your age OP. My father is dead, and DH’s mother has significant brain damage and can no longer walk or do anything for herself. All from alcohol addiction. DH’s mother had her infant children taken away from her due to neglect. You’re functioning until you’re not.

Please approach someone for help. A GP perhaps. You need to find something that will give you a therapeutic approach. Maybe the GP can prescribe a green prescription for horticulture therapy or something that gets you out of the house. You also need to be aware that your infant children are NOT safe in your care. You may be able to get free childcare for them while you work ok yourself. Don’t be scared to reach out for help. Don’t leave it until it’s too late.

Well done for saying something, OP.

My mum is unbelievably judgmental in an old-fashioned way about anyone, particularly women, drinking at all. She says "alcohol" in a whisper and always accompanies it with a gesture when she says "he drinks" or similar, and she will always comment! The outcome of this was that I drank a lot, defiantly, in my early twenties just because her attitude pissed me off so much. I could easily have gone the way you have. But luckily I met DH who grew up with an alcoholic mother and had to walk on eggshells around her. Basically, being weird about alcohol in either direction can have unwanted outcomes. I would say that a friend of mine died aged 36 of "secret alcoholism" he ended up in hospital bleeding from the throat, then finally fell down the stairs and died.

I know you want help and I don't have much advice there but I'm glad you've reached some kind of turning point.

Perhaps give yourself something more meaningful to do in the day to prevent drinking? Join a club, go out with the kids or get a part time job. Boredom is probably why you're drinking. My dad drank a few pints every night. I thought it was the norm, but realised my friends dad's didn't do that. He drank alot of his money away. But he rarely drinks now, in his old age. He said he was bored, that's why he drank at night. Find something meaningful to do.

Do you drive? What if you have an emergency or some other reason and are expected to drive somewhere, what excuse could you use that you're unable to drive?

This was my mother, I'm the eldest child, due to her alcoholism she no longer is aloud near me or her grandchild.

And if you seriously believe you're going undercover with it, you're not.

She always thought the same, " vodka doesn't smell " to someone who doesn't have the tolerance of vodka, yes it bloody does. You say you want to change yet you've came on Mumsnet, go to a GP who can refer you.

My grandad also died of sirosis of the liver aged 59, my uncle also died to alcohol dependency epilepsy, age 35. All on mother's side.

You'll be doing school runs soon enough, and the school will smell it, happened to my mum and now she shares parental responsibility of her under 18s with social services.

And also, yeah I did try and stop her drinking, even went as far to tip all her alcohol down the sink, to her to attempt to push me down the stairs whilst I was holding my child in a car seat, and put her hands round my neck.

Doesn't sound like you? Maybe not yet, but it will be. You're no longer choosing the drink, the drinks choosing you.

That is a terrifying admission.

Please seek help.

My mum doesn’t but she becomes more sleepy her repossess gwt slower and she never remembers conversations it’s not always being drunk and rolling around or being aggressive it’s sometimes just not acting like them it’s soul destroying to see your parent that way. I am a adult and I struggle and I have the understanding that she is unwell my children “just don’t like many after tea time” please remember alcohol slowers responses and stops emotional regulation x

Do you know you can have a stroke and die young from drink?
That happened to my sister - she was Cambridge grad. and high flyer.
I have never been much of a drinker and do not drink at all now.

Adult child of alcoholic here. My mother was also a "secret" alcoholic. As others have said, it was not a secret. You DO smell of alcohol (yes, vodka and gin smell too - I still can't stand the smell). You DO act noticeably different. All of that is your denial talking. An alcoholic will deny the sky is blue and will insist that up is down. It is part of the disease.

Alcoholism is a progressive disease, and it is ugly, sad and awful as you get older - for you and everyone around you. My mother is now in a care home with dementia following a (drunken) fall when she hit her head on pavement. That followed a major head injury and other injuries when she had a seizure while driving because she had stopped drinking suddenly. For many years as she aged, we lurched from emergency to emergency. She had three rounds of rehab - paid for by me and my husband. You may not be at this stage but rest assured, you will be if you keep drinking. And you will be lucky if your children speak to you. My mother was never left alone with my children because I couldn't trust her not to drink with them. I never let her drive me or them in a car as I couldn't be sure she hadn't been drinking at some point.

My mother's drinking has caused me unspeakable and lasting harm, though I have had therapy and attended Al-anon for many years and am mostly at peace with my relationship with her. Her upbringing had genuine abuse in it and was very dysfunctional, which has helped me understand and (mostly) forgive her.

As a child I knew something was off, but I couldn't put a name on it until my early teens. For many, many years I didn't tell even my closest friends. I now tell everyone close to me, as it has been such a part of my life, and my life is better for it. I had to learn to let go of the shame. We were a middle class family, and it was so, so easy to pretend it was OK.

Get help OP. It is out there.

There is a woman at our school. It's a prep school OP, she's incredibly well off but it's so so so clear to everyone that she is an alcoholic. I feel for her so much, I've been to events where I've seen her try really hard not to be the one that's drinking heavily. It's painful to see as my father was an alcoholic and in reality he died of alcoholism. It makes me wonder how she is affording to live, her husband has left her.

She is clearly able to drink a lot and not look drink, sometimes you hear it in the slur of her voice, only very slight, she's also recently lost a lot of weight.

I am a retired social worker and I can say that in my experience everything is fine until something happens and you are exposed. So your child has an accident or becomes ill, you have an accident and hurt yourself or your child or you need to respond to an external issue and you are found out. I have been involved with many mums who were low/moderate level drinkers until one of these things happened and they had to face reality. Best face it now and stop before you have a real issue on your hands. You can get support if you are willing to accept it.

Get in touch with your GP or addiction specialists in your area, every NHS trust has them.

I completely used to be you. Vodka in water bottles everywhere and wine in a tea flask to go to the playground. It’s a hard cycle to get out of once you’re in it. I will tell you though that people definitely notice. My Dh was not fooled and now that I’m sober I can totally sniff out the other mums who drink too much.

That said, I will tell you from the other side, it’s so much easier once you stop. I kept drinking because I thought I needed to to keep getting through the day and coping with the tedium. Actually, turns out, once I stopped, family life wasn’t so boring or tedious after all. It was literally me drinking that was making everything so hard! That seems obvious now, but it wasn’t when I was in it.

Make a plan to stop. Do it for 30 days. 100 days. The 100 days was a real turning point for me. Find support. Bee Sober is a great organisation. I’m coming up to 2 years sober in April and I’ve never looked back. It’s so much better on the other side. You just have to leap and get yourself there first.

OP, please read all these replies again tomorrow morning when you're (hopefully) sober.
My dad was an alcoholic and I hated him. I went no-contact with him for the last few years of his life.
You said your dad used to be an alcoholic, so can you confide in him? He may be able to point you in the right direction for getting help to quit.
Wishing you all the best.

Talking about it has made me feel absolutely horrible.

I'm utterly bored and fed up of my life.

My children are my entire life and every single thing I do in a day (except the drinking) is for them. From I wake up until I go to bed I am the fun mum who is always up for anything.

I do not shout or get angry, I keep everything immaculately clean and tidy and every meal is cooked.

I don't feel like I'm a failure just because I drink.

I want to stop for their sake as I know it could cause help problems and I want to be there for them as long as I can.

@Theblondewino You need friends and you need them now, could you tell us where in the country you are? I'm East Midlands. If you are in the region I would love to help you and be your friend. You will get through this, you are asking for help, that is the first step, well done.

Exactly my experience too @pillowspider (horrifying username BTW 😆). The slow responses, the not remembering or mis-remembering things, the sense that she’s just not there, that she doesn’t really have much interest or respect for what you are saying, always just somewhere else. I think I started to recognise those feelings when I was about 7 or 8.

For those asking how I find it, I buy a lots when I go you do the food shop a few times a week, DH doesn't do grocery shopping and rarely asks how much I spend. He knows all our meals are home cooked from scratch and probably thinks that costs a bomb.

Fund*