Hello Claire. I have been away for a few days and so have only just seen this thread.
My mother was an alcoholic too, and had the constitution of an ox, which enabled her to survive far longer than reason would dictate. She died when I was 32, and I can't really remember her not being a drunk. The only mum I knew was an unpredictable, sneering bully. I remember so many times the kind of things happening that you describe, the suicide attempts, as well as accidents where she'd do things like dive into the shallow end of a pool. We had to call ambulances so many times we ended up quite blase about it in the end.
I remember such occasions as standing with her in A & E as she kicked my pregnant sister in the stomach. Five minutes later my sis and I were being berated by the nursing sister for treating her so badly that she had to resort to this (which was the story she was sweetly telling the staff).
My dad has been insulted and told he was a bad husband for going out without her after years of missing everything because she was always too drunk to go. My sister, brother and I have been sworn and shouted at for refusing to join her in calling my dad a fing b*.
We tried everything to help her but none of it worked because she didn't want to change things. And until the alcoholic does want to change things, you are wasting your time. The reason she just brushes it all off the next day is because she can't remember what a cow she was to you. You can spend hours talking to her, think you have really progressed with her, and the next day she will have no memory of it.
It almost ruined all our lives. I was trained from a very young age to attend to my mother's needs very carefully. Any errors would lead to violence or at the very least sneering and bullying. I was taught that if I mentioned any needs of my own I would be slapped down, accused of being selfish, and reminded of her much greater needs. I grew up thinking that my job in life was to squash my own needs and take care of other people's emotional requirements. I chose emotionally crippled men who bullied and abused me. I had no education because I left home at 16 in order to avoid being hit every day.
I always felt I should try to care for my mother, even when sometimes I felt at the end of my tether, after all I had been trained to respond, and I felt bad leaving my father to try and deal with it all alone. No matter how old I was she always continued to hurt me, I never learned to detach myself. Only after she died on her bedroom floor of acute alcohol poisoning was I able to address my feelings and begin to heal.
I had to allow myself to feel angry with her and to negate the years and years of believing her troubles were all my fault. I had to explain to myself that I had only been a child and so I was not responsible for her being as she was. Allowing myself to be angry and resentful towards her was a big breakthrough for me. Only then could I take off the years of blame she had burdened me with. I went through a long and extensive course of psychotherapy and in my late 30s began to find my real self and expect people to treat me well. Only then did I meet a man who respected me and thought myself good enough to marry him. I spent half my life depressed and miserable because of her. My sister and my brother had similar experiences.
Now I've moved on and I'm learning how people live when they have their needs met and are treated with love and respect. But I have lost half my life to it. I feel I have fared reasonable well though, some people never recover from such experiences and get the new lease of life I was given.
After all this, I know enough to tell you that you need to examine your own self-image and make sure your mother hasn't crushed your beliefs that you deserve as much out of life as anyone else, and that you don't have to take it when people don't treat you well. Your mother is her own problem. You are perfectly willing to help her in any way the minute she agrees to be helped. Until she does you can't do a thing for her. The only person you can help is yourself - to recover from the years of conditioning she has placed on you. Take care of you - make sure your needs are met in future and that you are receiving the support you need to get strong again. Then one day if your mother decides to change her life and asks you to help her you will be very able to do so.
I'll be here to support you if there is anything I can do, so if you want to talk to me, please do.