Ex husband is an alcoholic and I am worried about his elderly mother

[pinkchampagne1]

Basically, my ex husband (my DS's father) has had mental health and severe alcohol issues for about 5 years now. He appears to function ok for so long and then he goes on a drinking binge where he drinks bottles of neat vodka for days on end. Around a year and a half ago he was in ICU fighting for his life after ingesting his own vomit.

He is now living with his elderly mother (she is 84 next month) and still has regular drinking binges.
Yesterday his mother phoned us in tears as she had nobody else to turn to and he was in such a bad way that she had had paramedics out and police round. He apparently got a knife and was threatening to stab himself unless she got him vodka. However, by the time the police arrived he was able to talk to them quite normally and they left, just advising her to let him have some drink as it is dangerous to go cold turkey.

We popped round today to check she was ok and the house absolutely stank where he had been vomiting, urinating and messing himself on her sofa. He was upstairs in the bedroom and we could hear him vomiting and demanding she bring him vodka between vomits.
She said that no one can help her as they all say it must be him that asks for the help. Social services are going to visit apparently but not until the end of this month.

I know people think we shouldn't get involved but she is an elderly lady with no family around her and we are worried about her.
Has anyone got any advice as to how we can get some support for her?

“I don't think she wants him there at all but she worries about him being alone”

It’s a bit alarming that he’s selling his house, if she doesn’t want him living with her!

Is he somehow holding down a job in between binges?

Poor, poor woman. She must have been heartbroken to pay for rehab only for him to come straight home and drink again . I think that tells her that she can’t solve this, though.

Your poor children, too

How awful, Horses. I am sorry you went through all that. Were you still married to your husband at the time?

My ex has been like this for over 4 years but he is stallion denial that he is an alcoholic. He thinks it is more a mental issue and that he reaches for drink when he feels down but that he doesn't crave it. I find it hard to believe he would get himself in these terrible states, let down everyone who loves him and risk losing the job he has been in nearly 30 years if he didn't crave the alcohol.

I am not really sure of his reasons for selling the house. I think he maybe sees at as freeing up some money and he claims he hates his house. I don't think he should be selling it but he won't listen to me. I think he is handling the sale. When he is sober he gets all these things done fine.

Goodness knows how he has held down his job for so long. They have been very good to him and given him lots of chances but when he gets in these states he is not with it enough to phone in sick or talk to his boss when he phones the house. I will be amazed if he still has a job after this latest episode.

It's awful for my boys. They are both teenagers so they try to make contact with him themselves. My youngest son really adores him and is constantly asking if I have heard from him. I had to tell him he had been drinking again as he wants to know the truth. He then said 'he is putting drink above his family' I know it is an illness but it's really hard for the boys to understand.

Should say 'still in denial'

How terrible for your sons

Does he take anti-depressants or get treatment for MH issues? I can see why you wish they would section him, and treat it as a MH crisis rather than alcoholism.

He is more or less inflicting himself on his mother if he sells his house, isn't he! Was she co-erced into that, do you think?

Are there any other family members, like a brother or a sister who could help her withstand his imposition on her?

I would call an ambulance and the police, have him taken to hospital

And if he refuses to go? Or discharges himself from hospital? The medical and emergency services are right in what they have told you and her so far. He can't be sectioned while drunk, he can't be taken to or kept in hospital against his will, and he can't be treated while he has no intention of getting sober. Even if he went voluntarily to hospital he would just come straight back to his mother again when they discharged him. His medical problem is that he is an alcoholic, and as long as he is still drinking and not at all inclined to get sober, medical services, including mental health, can essentially do nothing for him. People get to drink themselves to death if that is what they want to do, and nobody can really stop them.

The only thing his mother can really do is to kick him out and mean it. I know she doesn't want to, and who could blame her, but living with her is doing nothing to help him and is terrorising her. The only thing that I think you can do, OP, is to support her to do that. Al-Anon, Age Concern, and services for her may be able to help her with the practical and emotional side of this. But nobody can stop her son from drinking or ruining her house (or life). The only thing anyone can do is get him out of it.

Yes we were still married- technically, anyway. He was made redundant and spiralled downwards quickly. I couldn't let his boys, then 3 and 8, see him like that so we moved out, thinking the crisis would pass. He didn't improve so my family took him in, so we could go back home. He still didn't improve so had to go to his elderly mum's hundreds of miles away. Took 15 months in total to die.
Everyone tried but he would not accept help. I can't forgive him for choosing to drink when so much help was offered. For choosing drink over his little boys. But I don't know how his mother managed. She is very houseproud, lives in an affluent area and worries about what the neighbours think. He was a nasty drunk, trashing her house and rolling round in the gutter, getting brought home by the police, in court for drunk driving til he wrote off the car etc.
I certainly couldn't have carried on for 4 years.

poor lady. Suggest she gets on the phone to her support group. goes to the support group.

Your right slarty. Ex mil can control his behaviour. All she can do is manage her response to it. Support group will help with that.

How are things today, OP?
Is he still on a drink binge?

If he can go for periods of not drinking, but then having these extreme binges he could have something like bipolar. I know someone who did this and after about ten years of this pattern they got a diagnosis of bipolar type 2 and once medicated for the bipolar the binges stopped. Obviously could be completely wrong, but what you described really reminded me of that person so thought I’d share.

Sorry, haven't had a chance to get online until now.

Horses - that is so very sad. It must have been terrible for you & your boys. How are your boys doing now?
My ex blames his ex girlfriend for his alcohol problems but then he always blames someone else for everything. I just can't get my head around it.

I wish ex MIL would kick him out but she is too soft and she worries about something happening to him. She is getting herself to the Al Anon groups which she has found very helpful. I just feel so sad for her having to go through all this time and time again.

It seems my ex has got through the worse now as he started replying to my youngest son's frantic text messages last night. He then phoned me today like nothing had happened and asked if he could have the boys overnight at his mother's house tomorrow! I said absolutely not. I don't want them staying with him.
He said that he fears he will have lost his job this time as he was on last warning last time this happened. I fear that if he loses his job he will get far worse with the drinking and soon kill himself.

PPP - he does actually seem a bit bipolar in some ways. He has said that one minute he can feel quite positive and the next he is in deep depression. I guess the alcohol may play a big part in that though as it is a depressant and will also stop his anti depressants working. Interesting that you knew someone bipolar who behaved in a similar way though. It's certainly something that has crossed my mind.

His car is still at the police station. Seems he drove topic it up from a friend's house and had to pull over because he didn't feel right and someone saw him slumped across the steering wheel and thought he was dead so called the police. I guess that will be his license gone as well as possibly his job.

perhaps that will be the shock he needs op?

how does he even have a job?

That sounds bad.
When did that happen?
Has he often been driving about when recovering from a drink binge?

I hate to sound really mercenary, but is there any chance that his mother could make her will direct to your children? She is elderly, he will almost certainly drink his way through the money from his own house, then if he has no job he will drink his way through his Mum ‘s szvings, if she lets him, and then in due course, through an inheritance. . All of which just enables him.

The options for his Mum seem even harder if he has sold his house and has no job. Does she agree with him selling his house?

She has to get support and out her foot down. Tell her she need not fear you or your children blaming her if she throws him out.

Al anon have a booklet called the merry go round of denial. It's about the social context of alcohol and enabling behaviour. I highly recommend it.

I don't know how he has managed to hold on to his job. I guess it is because he functions ok when sober. He works as a signal engineer on the railway and they have put him on light duties for a while now. They have organised some kind of therapy for him and given him lots of chances as he has worked with them for nearly 30 years but they did tell him last time that it was his last chance. He gets in such a bad way that he doesn't turn up for work when he should and doesn't phone in sick. I will be amazed if they let him off again.

He has driven after a drink binge before and this has always worried me as I fear he could drive the boys somewhere when over the limit. It will be kind of a relief if he loses his license.

I am not sure what his mother has put in her will but it is indeed a worry that he could use any money left to fund his alcohol. If he carries on the way he is then there is a high chance she could outlive him though.

Thanks for recommending that booklet, Hellywelly. I will look it up.