An alcoholic returning to booze after sobriety is a choice not a damn disease

[Violet143]

So it ends. A blissful 9 months of abstinence where it felt as though I finally had some semblance of a mother back for the first time in 15 years. She reached rock bottom last year and was hospitalised, went through medical detox etc. I broke NC of almost a year and supported her, like a mug, as she really seemed to have had a wake up call. She had counselling, at my expense. She was upfront that the drinking was boredom and habit, not some massive trauma response.

Last week she made the conscious choice, whilst in complete sobriety, to return to the booze. Why? She was bored and didn't have much "in her life" ...other than supportive children and grandchildren who love her, as worthless as we are.

I've heard alcoholism referred to as a disease, just like cancer, except you don't go and buy more cancer from the corner shop when it runs out - do you?

It's a choice, especially when you don't have the additional complication of physical addiction to contend with.

I'm so sick and tired of all of the excusing the behaviour and this is exactly why I couldn't stomach another session of Al anon.

Do you strongly disagree if so why?

I think of it as self-medicating with awful side effects. A crutch for mental health problems rather than like a cancer.

Sorry for what you're going through.

I understand your anger and frustration, but this is a relapse, not a choice.

I have a close relative addicted to drugs - it is not a choice.

A relative of mine was an alcoholic (now dead). For a long time I saw it as a choice. But now I think that saying it’s a choice is a massive oversimplification which makes us feel better in the short term, because it justifies our anger. However, beyond the anger I’m (still) very, very hurt. And in the long term I’ve found it more helpful to acknowledge the complexities of alcohol use because it helps me to understand it a bit better. And that makes things a little easier for me.

OP, I’m so sorry your mother let you down again. It’s entirely reasonable to go LC or NC for as long as you want or need to. I hope you will be able to find some support IRL.

People here think trauma needs to be something major, like SA or a violent home. Those are the extremes of trauma, but there is other trauma that goes unnoticed. The poster here who says they have no trauma but drank due to low self esteem contradicts themselves. Why did you have self esteem in the first place? It came from somewhere and probably from the way you were raised together with environmental factors. That's pretty much what trauma is. Something happened and you weren't supported in the way you needed, perhaps over years, and you develop self esteem issues. You drank, others become depressed or develop other issues.

@CreationNat1on we are actually responsible for dealing with our own trauma, even for things that happened to us as a child that weren't our fault. Trauma is never an excuse to have j

..to harm others.

I agree with you 100%.

I'm so sorry for you and your Mother OP.

I know this feeling well, mine was the same and she died of alcoholism when I was in my early twenties. It's an incredibly painful thing to live through for both of you and your feelings of anger are absolutely reasonable and valid.

There is nothing you or anyone else can do to influence whether your mother drinks or not. I hope you know that.

It's tricky because it's sort of a choice.

It's a choice in the sense that the person actively chooses to move their limbs to get hold of the substance and use it.

It's also a choice to steal food from a shop when you're starving hungry and can't afford to buy it.

Both things are still technically choices, but not freely made, and people struggle to understand that.

I think it's hard for people to understand the nature of addiction/substance dependency, how it builds over time and drags people in until they're at a point where they get no benefit from it anymore but have to keep using to feel vaguely okay or face terrible or dangerous withdrawals.

It can happen to any of us in the wrong set of circumstances.

Respectfully, I completely understand what you're saying and it applies to a lot of people I'm sure, but I do have a good understanding of what trauma is in both the extreme and unnoticed cases.

While I don't feel it necessary to give you all of the personal details of my medical history and childhood in order to justify this fact, I did not contradict myself at all in my post. I can confirm that while low-self esteem often stems from trauma in childhood, this is not the case in my situation and consequently my alcoholism isn't linked to trauma. I know exactly where my low-self esteem came from and in my case you're incorrect, it wasn't to do with my upbringing or environmental factors, I received all of the support I could have possibly been given throughout my childhood and my parents couldn't have been more loving, kind, understanding or patient if they tried.

I'm sorry, but we'd class drinking to mask or cope with a ND as a trauma.

That is a really good point @OopsAnotherOne honestly I had jumped to the same conclusion as @Twatalert re low self esteem arising from trauma but you are absolutely correct the person who is best able to analyse their lives is the person who is dealing with their own issues. It doesn’t ever help to make those assumptions about another person’s situation and it can be either enabling or disempowering to do so.

At the end of the day we are all accountable and responsible to ourselves in life so even if a person has trauma underlying their addiction ultimately the individual has to do the work and has to empower them self to manage their own internal world. Nobody else can do it for any one else and any compassion that doesn’t place responsibility where it should be can quickly turn to enabling.

I don't think that alcoholics necessarily had to have had trauma in their childhoods. I know plenty of people in AA who say they had very blessed childhoods.
I myself believe I was born with it. And by "it" I mean that I was born with a mental illness that I then self medicated with alcohol. If I'd found heroin first I probably would have been a heroin addict rather than an alcoholic. My illness was a complete and utter inability to deal with life on life's terms. The inability to participate in life with a sober head.
I actually did experience trauma in my childhood (and various points throughout my life until I stopped drinking - being drunk 90% of the time often leads to getting yourself into lots of dangerous and risky situations 😂). But I don't blame the trauma for my drinking. I drank because I am an alcoholic.

And I'm still an alcoholic even though I don't drink.

To those who say in their opinion it is not an illness... good for you? It is, haha. We can all have opinions on things we have absolutely zero experience or knowledge about.

@Fiddlededeefiddlededoh I completely agree - no matter the reason for drinking, trauma or otherwise, it is still the responsibility of the alcoholic. Unfortunately no matter how hard people try, no one can force an alcoholic to become sober if they genuinely don't want to themselves, or if they genuinely feel they can't because they're so caught by their addiction. It's their responsibility to reach out and accept the help given and if they aren't able to do this or choose not to, they cannot rely on others to enable their drinking or expect them to stick around when ultimatums are broken. It's a heartbreaking situation.

@Damnspot - I'm not quite sure I understand. Please don't think I'm being stubborn or closed-minded because I'm not, I'm really trying to wrap my head around this and am happy to admit I may have been completely wrong. The self-esteem issues weren't caused by trauma, so is the fact I drank because I enjoyed the boost of confidence it gave me a trauma? What makes it so?

I will be bringing this up with my therapist when I see her as she's spent a lot of time with me going through my life and insisting there's no trauma. I'm completely open minded to changing my opinion, I just listened to what she said and agreed with her as the professional because what she said made sense to me, but if she's been wrong about this the whole time as some have suggested, I'm going to start looking for a new therapist. She specialises in addiction, would a trauma-specific counselor be better to work though potential trauma?

Just to add, when I say that not all alcoholics need to have had trauma in their childhoods- as I have the belief that you can be born with it (potentially a genetic element there too)- I do think that there is a huge number of alcoholics who did have. And it makes sense as alcohol is a fantastic way of blocking out and coping with trauma or any emotions you don't want to deal with (or haven't the ability to deal with).

I'm definitely not insisting that you had trauma! I'm saying that the vast majority of alcoholics that I see have had trauma. I'm glad you are progressing so well.

.I'm not quite sure I understand. Please don't think I'm being stubborn or closed-minded because I'm not, I'm really trying to wrap my head around this and am happy to admit I may have been completely wrong. The self-esteem issues weren't caused by trauma, so is the fact I drank because I enjoyed the boost of confidence it gave me a trauma? What makes it so?

@OopsAnotherOne I think trauma focussed therapy is a tool we can use to understand what happened to us to make us the way we are. It allows us to have compassion for ourselves because our experiences were likely difficult to endure and we had limited tools at our disposal to handle the difficulties. It is that that understanding that can create the self compassion that is the antidote to toxic shame which is on a perpetual cycle with addiction and almost all trauma.

But this is only one tool. An addiction specialist is likely to have many more tools that allow us to address our experiences.

For me personally I would conceptualise low self esteem as a traumatic experience for a person to endure, I also would conceptualise ND as potentially traumatic give the impact day to day tasks can be with a ND however that doesn’t mean others need to think like me to develop that self compassion, there are other routes to achieving the same outcome I have no doubts.

@Damnspot I apologise, I think I must have misunderstood your initial reply to my post. When you said "I'm sorry, but we'd class drinking to mask or cope with a ND as a trauma" I read it as you saying you'd had identified a trauma that I didn't realise I'd experienced related to my ND. Sorry for the misunderstanding! 🙂

@Fiddlededeefiddlededoh thank you, that was really insightful. I actually feel like I've got more from a Mumsnet thread than I have from my therapist! It's like the chicken and the egg - did the trauma cause the low self-esteem or did the low self-esteem cause the trauma? Regardless I think you phrased it perfectly when you said that understanding can create the self compassion that is the antidote to toxic shame. I think no matter how someone gets there, as long as they do, they have hope on their path to recovery.

Interestingly, while my therapist established that she doesn't think trauma led to my addiction, I've often asked her if I'm dealing with some sort of trauma from my time during active addiction. I can't even think about it without my body physically recoiling and wincing, it's horrible to think about, I'm still in a deep level of shock three years later about the person I became during that time, I don't recognise who she was and I harbor a lot of guilt and confusion about that time. Again though, she essentially thinks it isn't trauma but instead is just that - guilt, confusion, upset etc, which are emotions I need to deal with individually. The more I read on this thread the more I'm wondering if I've been led down the wrong path and while I'm still in recovery, there might be more helpful ways of repairing myself.

Sorry for the rambling paragraph, it's given me lots to think about, thank you!

Maybe that's the problem though - they don't see life is better when they are sober.

Alcohol is so engrained in British culture. Foreigners here comment on it. Bad day? Have a drink. Pimm's at Sports Day. Wine on the train. Mummy's stress reliever wine. A pint at the airport at 6am. Corporate booze culture. Live Love Prosecco. Pints with football. Bottomless brunch. Have a nice glass of wine and a bath. Christmas work parties. All acceptable reasons for binge drinking.

"Drink responsibly" is a nonsense really. Drink but don't take it too far. This whole thread is full of judgement on 'alcoholics' which as a term doesn't mean anything and doesn't make sense. You can't say things like "most alcoholics" because it's not a quantifiable or medically accurate term.

She’s made her choice. Keep a distance from her and get on with your own life.

I don't think that alcoholics necessarily had to have had trauma in their childhoods. I know plenty of people in AA who say they had very blessed childhoods.

Not necessarily true though - not saying everyone is lying, just that people don't always recognise that something wrong was done to them or that a situation was inappropriate. Or they just don't remember.

What makes you think you can speak for everyone? IRL I keep my past private and I am sick to death of people who have also been affected by a family member with addiction thinking the way they feel about it is the only way.

I can say "most" in my experience as someone working with alcoholics. I've personally never known an alcoholic who didn't start by using alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Although I take full responsibility for my drinking and behaviour, I do think this is what contributed to the development of my alcoholism to a certain extent. I was 18, surrounded by people in pubs and clubs that drank, I worked in a pub and saw the same successful, professional men and women coming up for their daily pint. It made it easier for me to convince myself that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing because it felt as if everyone else around me was drinking too. I enjoyed getting drunk, it boosted my confidence and I didn't have the feeling of shame because I didn't see my (early) levels of drinking as abnormal.

Obviously, in hindsight, I was completely wrong but at the time I genuinely believed for a while that I was just like everyone else. When I started working in my chosen career, I'd have a "cheeky" glass of wine after a busy day at work, because why wouldn't I?! Everyone does! I've had a stressful day! And of course I was having drinks on Friday and/or Saturday, hell even if it's mid-afternoon, because it's the weekend! Everyone drinks at the weekend! God forbid it's a hot sunny day and you don't have a Pimms in the garden! Obviously this is untrue, but there was enough of an acceptance of this behaviour that I felt it wasn't out of the ordinary.

This then allowed me to become addicted, at first by habit but then it got so far it was compulsion. My drinking soon surpassed anything I'd convinced myself was normal or acceptable but by then it was far too late to just stop drinking and I needed professional help to do so. It's hard though, because if someone had stepped in early on and said "Oops, I think you're drinking too much, maybe ease off for a bit", I don't think I had the emotional maturity at the time to see that as anything other than a criticism and take it personally because "everyone drinks like this, everyone has a wine after work, everyone drinks at the weekends" etc.