If your father left you to die [Trigger warning for addiction/alcoholism added by MNHQ]

[WildeWoman]

By leaving you to die, I mean 'she's an alcoholic, what can you do'.

And you later found out that he may have been complicit in welfare fraud..........

Would you report him?

Yes

Yes X

Well, I maybe should have asked the question a few hours ago. But I have already reported him today. I feel no guilt. He left me to die.

Good for you. He let you down.

OP, it sounds as though you have been through an awful time. What happened that your dad left you to die?

He left me to die homeless. My siblings intervened. My father maintained his view that any money spent on me would be wasted. My brother's bil (my brother's wife's brother) died Sunday - homeless. My father sees illness as weakness. A small loss.

Cruel unfeeling individual.

Let's see how he feels while himself and his OW are done for welfare fraud (Ireland). He might come down from his righteous tower.

THumbs-up from me, too.

Btw - my father is a man of 'assets'. He could have gotten me off the streets in 12 hours.

He chose not to.

Some man for one man.

Assuming that it took some time before you found yourself on the streets, are you saying your df has never helped you in any way when you were under his roof or after you left home?

Yes I think that's fair enough.

I know that alcoholics often can't be helped until they're ready to face their demons themselves - but I wouldn't leave my child homeless and about to die to prove a point. Glad your siblings stepped up and helped you and hope that you are helping yourself now.

I think I remember your previous posts OP. What's happening with you now? How are you doing?

Yes, goddess - that is exactly what I am saying.

Thumbswitch - this shit about 'enabling' addiction needs to end. The alternative is enabling death.

Dione - I'm very angry, very weepy. But I am going to hit him where it hurts. He might learn something. Can't keep enabling him!!

How did it come about that you were on the streets and how close did you come to dying during that time?

Did paramedics resuscitate you and were you taken to hospital? Or did your siblings step in before you spent a night on the streets or in a homeless shelter?

I sent him the following message today; the first contact with him in months.

^It is with sadness that I learned of the death of A today - regrettably through a story all too familiar to my own. I don't have to imagine the torture of his alcoholism and homelessness. I have lived through it.

It is with desperation however that I realise that you will feel that you made the correct decision by not rescuing me off the streets of London last year. After all, it would have been an awful waste of money! Especially, if you then had to fork out for the cost of a funeral having 'wasted' such an amount!

This must be a terrific endorsement of your rhetoric - "how utterly helpless and unwilling to help themselves those alcos are!"? Sure - what could you do? "Arah, sure there's nothing you can do!"

Well let me tell you this Scrooge!

Despite 'scutter' to the contrary, you would not have enabled me. You might have saved my life however. Perhaps the price of two cows was too much of a price for a mere daughter? Particularly if you have the snake in the grass protecting your/HER interests. Perhaps, you literally couldn't give two continental SHITES about me? Perhaps, money means more to you than I do?

It suits your narrative not to help me, NOT because I'm beyond help, but because you are TOO FUCKING GOD-DAMNED MEAN and you are dominated by a woman who is, in my view, cunningly passive-aggressive.

People pay thousands for treatment for illnesses for just another few months with a loved one.

You hold onto your few cows and your worm-infested sheep.

I am writing this with tears in my eyes. You have disgusted me and disappointed me. You have shown your true colours after my blind faith. I genuinely do not know how you sleep at night with a clear conscience.

When you have left this earth - what will you have to show? A fractured family, a broken child (or three). An adulterous, remorseless legacy. Some legacy, whah?

And a few plots of land you rented in an effort to be as good as 'the millionaire across the road'. Some legacy. Some father. Some role-model.

Wildewoman*real name as Gaeilge (I actually cannot stand having to use your surname).^

Goddess - I will reply tomorrow.

Oh darling you have to let this go now before it eats you any further. You know what it's like in this God-forsaken country when it comes to the land....John B said much in The Field. You have said your piece and it's done now. Allow yourself to be free of him, and her, and his wrongs. Live a wonderful life not because of him but in spite of him. Prove him wrong every day xxx

Good for you.
I had a child that needed my help, I also had people like your father telling me not bother what can you do.
Believe me I done everything absolutely everything to help her.
Your father sounds a right bastard.
Hope your ok take care.

it sounds like you've had an awful time OP. I trust you are getting help to stay clean and sober now.
I will say however, whilst I may not know what life is like as addict, i DO know what life is like as a close family member of an addict and that isn't an easy way to live. I learned to eventually decide and set my bottom line and make it clear to my mother. I wouldn't give her money, or a roof to continue watching her kill herself. I believe that would be enabling her to continue her addiction and i wasn't prepared to do that any more, at the detriment of my own mental health and well being. So, whilst your feelings about your father may be justified, or not justified, I can't say I agree that enabling is some sort of made up excuse for families to deny to help. Its not.
I hope you find peace.

I've been in rehab. One of my group was a beautiful, sparky, 19-year-old girl called Zoe. She was a crack addict: really bad stuff happened to her while she was using. Her very wealthy family came to the therapy days. They'd suffered: she'd stolen from them many times, smashed things up; stuff people do when addicted and desperate not to have to be gang-raped for their next few hits.

She stayed clean all through the program. At the end, she had no home to go to. None of her relatives would have her, neither would they fund a rental for her. Eventually the clinic found her a place in a halfway house, hundreds of miles from her home. She would be sharing with strangers who were using. On her first day there she was raped. Within a week she was on heroin and on her tenth day she killed herself. Aged 19.

I have other stories, but Zoe's is the one that haunts me. At any point during her ordeals, her family could have given her a softer landing. Every addict has to reach their 'rock bottom', but none has to be abandoned there.

I agree with you. "Don't enable" is too often twisted into an excuse to turn away, self-righteously ignoring a badly wounded human bleeding at their feet.

I'm relieved to hear some family members did provide you with a landing, or your story might have looked like Zoe's. And I share your anger at your "father". The better thing for you, if you can find the right support, will be to detach him from your emotions so that he is ... just another of this world's arseholes, nothing of interest.

Wishing you all kinds of well.

I don't feel able to make any judgement until I know how close you were to death, OP, or whether you've used emotive words to project how you felt at that time or how you've come to feel since your siblings, presumably, provided the werewithal to get you off the streets.

These are in memory of a beautiful young woman who died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 31 and there wasn't a damn thing anyone, not her dm, her fiancee, her wider family, her friends, her acquaintances, her psychiatrists, her counsellors, her social workers, her priest, or her doctors could do to prevent her death. She was once so vibrant and always so passionate about life that I can't help but cry when I think of her and rarely a day goes by when I don't. RIP lovely girl - you know who you are.

Well I'm glad you sorted yourself out. But do you think you could ask mumsnet to put some kind of trigger warning on your title.

You see some of us have spent most of our lives trying to get loved ones to over come addiction. We don't all have the emotional and financial ability to take decades of crap and watching someone slowly die. Some of us turn suicidal because of it.

So reading your story has opened up some hurt that will never go away.

Although I got to say how did you end up homeless? Genuine question my mother at least had some state assistance and lived in a flat. She was known to all the local police, social services, hospital etc. But she still died and no after my own brush with wanting to die and seeking help I did walk away and go no contact.

Honest to god if any of my children grew up to become addicts and refused the initial attempts at seeking help I would have to walk away. I don't have it in me to do it all again. I don't see why you should chastise someone who can't face watching a loved succumb to addiction and all the awful behaviour and deceit that goes with it. After all addicts themselves are hardly coping well with the situation either.

do you blame all people who can take no more or just your father?

I agree with you, Garlicbake - this bit in particular: "Every addict has to reach their 'rock bottom', but none has to be abandoned there."

An addict does have to want to help themselves, if they don't/won't then no one can do it for them.
And sure, you don't want to help them kill themselves either (that "enabling shit") - but at the point when they have reached their turning point, then that's when they DO need the help to come back. And anyone who turns their back on them at THAT point, well they've their conscience to deal with. I couldn't do it. So sad for that poor girl, Zoe. :(