To wish my mum would stop drinking..

[fairymoo]

My mum is drunk almost every night. She hides her drink, in cupboards or behind shelves, and denies she's been drinking when it's blatantly obvious. She can slur, fall over and get quite nasty. Then she gets up for work the next day like nothing happened.
We've tried getting rid of alcohol from the house, pouring it down the sink.. I've begged her to get help.

What can I do? It's ruining our relationship.

Could you flat/house share with a friend to make moving more affordable for you? You can't change her, only she can do that, it'll improve your own wellbeing to have a safe, stable home of your own.

My sibling and I moved out asap, at 18, as far as possible due to mum’s drinking. She’s never stopped. She’s lost a lot of friends over the years. I gave her a choice one night when I stayed (I live at the other end of the country). I told her if she was carrying on drinking, I was going to bed. She told me to do what I wanted and was then surprised I went to bed at 8pm. I went to visit recently but stayed in a hotel. Well worth the money.

Have a look at NACOA, @fairymoo, they are really good and they have a helpline.

nacoa.org.uk/support-advice/for-adults/

And yes, move out as soon as you can.

There's nothing you can do. Stop looking for bottles, emptying them, counting etc. You need to detach as much as you can - nothing you can do will stop her.

Move out when you can.

Here's their Instagram: instagram.com/nacoauk?igshid=NGVhN2U2NjQ0Yg==

Move out and leave her to it.

It can be very hard to do that. @fairymoo could do with some support to understand the very difficult dynamics around having an alcoholic parent, and how to cope with that. Which is why I mentioned NACOA.

@Antst I'd be wary of a couple of your suggestions: You can keep confronting her, you can enlist other family members to confront her, but you can't force her to acknowledge that she has a problem. and If she has a "best" friend who she's close to, I'd tell that person what's going on. It probably won't change her but maybe if there are other people involved in confronting her, she'll make more of an effort to get help.

Even if those suggestions may increase the chances of a good outcome for the mother, they also come with the risk of angering her, and getting the OP thrown out of the place she lives (and she's said she can't afford to get her own place).

I'm not convinced confronting an alcoholic can ever work. They're either going to be mid-drink or in desperate need of another one, so they will only get defensive and blame and insult the person confronting them. Alcoholics have to realise for themselves that they're wrecking their own lives and throwing blame around isn't the answer. Even then, they might not be strong enough mentally and be in a constant rollercoaster of sobriety and relapse.
OP, I really feel you should leave if it's at all possible, even if that means staying with another relative. Who knows, it may be a wake-up call for your DM. But whatever happens if and when you leave, it is not your fault or responsibility.

I agree that it rarely works to confront an alcoholic and particularly when there's only one person doing it (me, in my father's case; everyone else enabled him). But it's also the only possible way to communicate that there's a problem that needs a wake-up call.

I do agree with @dcsp that if the OP can't afford her own place (I missed that update), she should not risk getting kicked out until she can. The OP will know her mother and what she can get away with. The OP may also not want to feel like she's in a constant battle where she's trying to get her mother to behave reasonably and running into nastiness from her mother.

My fear is that it sounds like the mother is escalating. That generally happens anyway with addicts and abusers because whenever they behave badly, they and those around them get used to the worsened behaviour and see it as normal, so that they can push the boundaries even harder next time. That said, if no one is challenging the behaviour, it's likely to get worse faster.

I obviously don't have a clear solution for the OP. It's so unfair that she's trapped in this situation by high housing costs and low wages for young people. OP, if you can share a flat without creating financial stress for yourself or if you can possibly get a higher-paying job (or grit your teeth and live with your mother for as long as it takes to train for one), please do that. I wish you all the best.

My advice is don't get sucked into it with her. Everytime you confront her, find and hide her bottles, you're making her problem your problem too. And you really don't need it to be. You have your own life ahead of you to live as you choose and you can choose for your mums alcoholism not to be part of it.
Get out as soon as you can, and until then give her a wide berth when she's drunk. Don't engage. Leave the room. When you no longer live with her, keep contact to her sober hours.
She will either address this or she won't. Nothing you do either way will make that better or worse. You are powerless to influence this for her. Never forget that. So resolve to do nothing at all, and look after you.