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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think that my mum has a drink problem?

6 replies

DementedTiger · 01/08/2014 12:47

My mum has always liked a drink, but I think that she now has a problem. She's not a whiskey on her cornflakes full blow alcoholic yet, but I do think she's got a dependency. She drinks every day, never has a break and can easily sink a bottle of wine, sometimes even more, in one evening. She will then pass out on the sofa in front of the TV until my dad wakes her up and tells her to go to bed.

She admits to needing a drink to unwind at night, and if she is stressed she will reach for a glass. I think when you've got to this stage you've already developed a problem personally.

It goes beyond the household drinking stuff though, because when she goes out she doesn't know when to stop and quite frankly she becomes a nightmare. She's loud, lairy and sometimes even rude to people. I think she's an embarrassing mess and privately my dad has confided in me that he feels the same way. Other family members have also started to comment on it, but she's incredibly touchy about the subject of her drinking. It's the elephant in the room and any comment about it, even made jokingly will be met by huge offence that someone has even dared to suggest she drinks too much.

Recently she decided to try and cut back a bit to loose weight, and she went a while fortnight without a drop. She admitted she felt so much better, had more energy, slept better at night etc She then started drinking again and has gone right back to square one, also now she's done a fortnight without a drink she thinks that it means she doesn't have a problem. But it doesn't work like that, does it?

It so awful, I don't know how to deal with it. She's a pisshead isn't she?

OP posts:
sezamcgregor · 01/08/2014 12:56

I thought you may be my sister until I read about your dad (mum's single).

End of the day, they're both (my mum and yours) and know a bottle a night is excessive (and expensive) and damaging. Mine's even been told by the doctor recently to drink less but "needs it to unwind".

Head > Wall > Bang

I'll be watching this thread.

Johnogroats · 01/08/2014 12:58

YANBU. From what you say she does have a problem. She needs to recognise that .. No one else can stop her drinking. However, how you get to that stage is difficult. I am sure others will ave good advice for you.

weemouse · 01/08/2014 13:00

Oh Demented I could have wrote this about my mother excatly. Yes I've always thought she has a drink problem, as you say, can easily down a bottle at night and conks out on the sofa and my father has to waken her to get her to bed.

Same if she goes out, doesn't know when to stop and just embarrases herself and the family.
When we were younger she used to hide empty bottles in her long winter boots in the wardrobe.

She seems to function fine the next day though, never had too much of a hangover, I think it's because her tolerance is pretty high now.
And no, you cannot mention it at all, even though my father has spoken to me about it on the quiet.

At Christmas I started to go NC with the both of them as my father is an arse in otherways, and I feel relieved to be honest.

I feel so sad for her also, it's pushing me away, and life is too short, and I know she thinks the world of my son, but i wouldn't leave him alone with her again at night.

There is nothing more awful than seeing your mother drunk and out of control. Horrible, just horrible.

Not sure what advice I can offer you, but i wanted you to know I feel your pain and embarassment also. I don't think their is much we can do unless they wake up to the realisation themselves.

DementedTiger · 01/08/2014 13:04

It's got to the stage now where I dread family gatherings because I just know what's going to happen. At one wedding she fell off a chair face first during the reception, at another she was rude to another guest which left me mortified. I wasn't the only person who thought she was rude either, and when I confronted her the next day she denied it ever happened.

OP posts:
weemouse · 01/08/2014 13:08

I'm the same Demented, I make up excuses as not to be around her if she's opened a bottle, and would avoid all public gatherings as much as possible.

I know she's had a hard time in life as my father has a few illnesses and she cares for him at home, but this is not the answer.

It terrifies me to see her out of control like that, and I felt like that for years livings at home, I cannot inflict that on my boy when we visit her, so for the moment I'm NC.

Total denial also here, she went mental when I tried to mention it to her on the phone at Christmas, I think it's their embarrassment at being caught out, they turn it back on you to deflect from their failings.

DementedTiger · 01/08/2014 15:09

I'd be mortified if I went out, got bladdered and then did some of the things that's she's done whilst under the influence. She's fallen down the stairs at home, wandered home from a friends barbecue and managed to lose her shoes somewhere on the way, she apparently had them on when she left, and she was once very rude to a taxi driver who took her home from a function. I was horrified, and when I told her what she'd said and done the next day she just shrugged her shoulders and said "oh did I?", like it wasn't a problem, but she'd spoken to a man who was only trying to earn a living like a piece of shit on her that.

Last summer one of my Uncles and his family had a barbecue in their garden, it was whilst my parents were on holiday and I didn't really want to go but we went anyway. I ended up really really enjoying it and I couldn't remember the last time I'd enjoyed a family gathering so much....

The next day I realised why, it was because my mum wasn't there, because I knew full well that if she had been she'd have got herself blind drunk, made a show of herself and I'd have been on pins on all night waiting for it to happen. I'm never able to fully relax and enjoy myself whenever I go anywhere with her because I'm just waiting for her to get pissed and make an exhibition of herself.

She's not young, she's almost 60, this behaviour would be obnoxious and worrying in a 20 year old, at her age is pathetic, embarrassing and upsetting.

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